The Los Angeles Rams will soon be pounding the pigskin at a new training center in the west San Fernando Valley.
Stan Kroenke, owner of the NFL team, will relocate its training facilities next year from Thousand Oaks to practice facilities and a future headquarters at 21555 Oxnard Street in Woodland Hills, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. They will replace parking lots next to the former Anthem Blue Cross offices.
The move from training facilities at Cal Lutheran University to the Warner Center would be complete ahead of the 2024 NFL season, according to the Rams. Plans for a Valley training facility were filed in June.
“We will take a new temporary facility, new buildings and basically assemble something similar to what we have at Cal Lutheran,” Rams Chief Operating Officer Kevin Demoff said during an announcement at the nearby Topanga Village mall in Woodland Hills.
Although the Kroenke Group did not reveal detailed development plans in Woodland Hills, the practice facility is widely expected to spearhead a smaller version of its $5 billion, 300-acre SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park development in Inglewood.
Demoff spoke of the practice field’s excellent location to create a “sports and entertainment district.” He also discussed how the San Fernando Valley has been overlooked as a venue for sports teams, and how the practice facility could fill that gap.
“When we moved the team back with the design, now making Hollywood Park and SoFi Stadium the world’s greatest sports and entertainment district and seeing that come to life, there was always a second mission, which was to build the world’s greatest practice facility and sports and entertainment development around a practice facility,” Demoff said at the Woodland Hills event. “It was always about creating a second heartbeat and from the moment we landed back our goal was to deliver that second heartbeat to the San Fernando Valley.”
The team will plant two permanent gridirons and park temporary modular trailers at Canoga Avenue and Erwin Street, on the northeast side of the 13-story former Anthem office building.
Permanent training facilities will be built on the north side within three to five years.
Demoff said the team will move its Agoura Hills business office to somewhere in Warner Center in the “near future,” and then combine the football and business offices when the permanent facility opens for training camp.
Kroenke has invested $650 million for three Warner Center properties across 96 contiguous acres just north of the 101 Freeway.
They include the Anthem site, a largely vacant Promenade mall and Topanga Village, a functioning outdoor mall.
Kroenke bought the former Anthem Blue Cross building in June of last year for $175 million. The 450,000-square-foot vacant building surrounded by 32 acres of landscaped parking is just east of The Promenade.
In March 2022, a Kroenke affiliate bought The Promenade, a dead indoor mall just south of the Village, for $150 million. He initially planned to convert the mall at 6100 North Topanga Canyon into the Rams’ practice field and headquarters.
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Under previous owner Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the 34-acre mall site has been approved for redevelopment into a 3.2 million-square-foot urban retail village to include more than 1,400 homes, hotels, offices and a 10,000-seat indoor sports and concert arena.
In December, Kroenke bought the 600,000-square-foot Topanga Village at 6220-6344 North Topanga Canyon Boulevard for $325 million. The seller for the 30-acre Village was Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, based in Paris.
— Dana Bartholomew