The Westfield Group is moving ahead with plans to remake the Westfield Promenade shopping center into a big mixed-use complex, including a sports facility that could house a minor league baseball team. But there is a small possibility that Amazon.com Inc. could choose the site as its second headquarters, seriously changing those plans.
“Amazon would need every inch” of the 34-acre Promenade site, Larry Green, the senior vice president of the Westfield Group, said Thursday. He said Amazon also would need every inch of the similarly-sized old Rocketdyne site a few blocks to the north of the Promenade.
Green, speaking at a board meeting of the Valley Economic Alliance at Valley Presbyterian Hospital, opined that he didn’t think it is likely that Amazon would choose the Promenade site in Woodland Hills. Although Los Angeles was named as one of the 20 places the Seattle-based ecommerce giant is considering for its second headquarters, he believes it wants to be “in a different time zone.”
Nonetheless, he said it would be “a dynamite place for Amazon. Hopefully, we can stay in the hunt.”
Green, who appeared at the board meeting to update business leaders on the progress of the redevelopment site, also said Westfield is talking to several sports teams about the possibility of putting a practice facility or minor league team in what is envisioned to be a 15,000-seat sports arena or stadium at Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Oxnard Street, which is the southwest corner of the Promenade property.
“I think there is interest from minor league baseball teams to come and play here,” Green said after the meeting. Because a minor league team would be moving into Los Angeles, the in-market major league teams essentially have veto power. “The Angels and the Dodgers will have to approve any team that comes. The Dodgers would have to approve the Angels; the Angels would have to approve (the Dodgers). They both have to agree,” he said.
“There is a trend that is happening in baseball that you are seeing the minor league teams come closer and closer to the urban areas, so I think there is a desire. But we will have to see what happens,” he said, adding that “there are a lot of minor league baseball teams in California,” so any minor league tenant could be a team other than one affiliated with the Dodgers or Angels.
He said the Clippers seem uninterested in building a practice facility there. “But both the Rams and the Chargers are looking for permanent L.A. headquarters and practice facilities,” he continued. “We would love to be on their list of (sites). We will see what happens.”