"Have to go to The Valley or Thousand Oaks to take kids to a movie now." That was one of the more measured reactions when Regency Calabasas Commons posted its farewell message last December. The theater had been part of the property since 1998, and its last showing ran on December 28, 2025. For a lot of people who grew up here, that date marked the end of something that felt permanent.
But the theater's closing was never really the story. It was the opening act. The property it sat on is now a construction site for a project called Commons Lane, and the sequence of what gets built, and when, tells you more about how this year and next will actually feel than the loss itself does.
The Order Things Are Actually Happening In
The Calabasas City Council approved Commons Lane back in December 2023, after roughly two years of meetings between developer Rick Caruso's team and residents. Construction didn't start until January 2026, and the official groundbreaking, with Caruso on site alongside Mayor James Bozajian and the rest of the council, happened February 3, 2026, on the former parking lot facing the old theater.
Here's the sequence that matters for anyone living nearby:
| When | What Happens |
|---|---|
| Dec. 28, 2025 | Regency Calabasas Commons shows its last film |
| Jan. 2026 | Demolition and site work begin |
| Feb. 3, 2026 | Official Commons Lane groundbreaking |
| July-Sept. 2026 | Active construction on new retail buildings and on the apartment parking structure |
| Late 2026 | New shops and restaurants expected to start opening |
| Fall 2027 | The 80-unit apartment building comes online |
The retail piece lands a full year before the apartments do. That gap is the detail most of the closure coverage skipped past, and it's the reason this year reads very differently than 2027 will.
What's Actually Replacing The Marquee
Commons Lane isn't a like-for-like swap. In place of the old six-screen theater, the plan calls for 80 luxury apartments tucked between the shops and the hillside, plus roughly 27,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant space organized around a paseo with wide sidewalks and a community green space. The architecture is meant to match the Commons' existing Mediterranean style rather than depart from it.
The north and south ends of the property, where Gelson's and the center's longtime restaurants sit, are staying put during construction. That's not a small distinction. It means the disruption is geographically contained to the west side of Commons Way, on the footprint the theater and its parking lot used to occupy, rather than spread across the whole center.
Valet parking is still running Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., near SUGARFISH by Sushi Nozawa and Polacheck's Jewelers. Surface parking elsewhere on the property remains available. The one operational change worth knowing about: a portion of the two-way drive aisle between the two new buildings is being converted to one-way to keep circulation safe during the build. If you've used that aisle as a shortcut, expect to reroute.
The Food Scene Didn't Wait On The Construction Schedule
While the west side of Commons gets rebuilt, the rest of Calabasas has kept adding places to eat, and none of them are waiting on Commons Lane's timeline to open.
Cheesesteaks by Matū is already open and listed in the Commons directory, with the city highlighting its arrival back in May. That's a new tenant in the part of the property that construction hasn't touched.
A few minutes away on Calabasas Road, across from Sagebrush Cantina, Jon & Vinny's took over the space that had been Mulholland restaurant until it closed in October 2025. The California-Italian spot from chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo spent months waiting on permits before finally opening its doors on July 27, 2026.
And on Las Virgenes Road, Salsa & Beer Mexican Grill has signage up at 4895 Las Virgenes and is finishing construction on a location owner Gabriel Huerta had originally planned back in 2020 before those plans stalled. As of a June report, no firm opening date had been announced, but the buildout was active.
None of these three are part of the Commons Lane project itself. They're spread across three separate addresses in town, which is worth noting because it means the story of "what's new to eat in Calabasas" and the story of "what's happening at the Commons" are two different threads that happen to be running at the same time. Conflating them is how you end up thinking the whole town is one construction zone when really it's one specific parking lot.
What Actually Changes For You This Year
If you're weighing how this affects your week-to-week routine, here's where things stand as of late summer 2026:
- Movie night now means a drive. The nearest options for anyone holding an old Regency gift card are the Granada Hills 9 and the Van Nuys Plant 16 & REX, both about 12 miles away, a minimum 30-minute drive each direction.
- The Saturday farmers market in Old Town Calabasas is unaffected. It's a separate part of town from the Commons, and nothing about Commons Lane touches that morning routine.
- Valet at Commons still runs its usual Friday through Sunday hours near SUGARFISH and Polacheck's.
- If you cut through the drive aisle between the two new buildings, expect the one-way conversion.
- New dinner options this year are Cheesesteaks by Matū (already open), Jon & Vinny's on Calabasas Road (open since late July), and Salsa & Beer on Las Virgenes Road (still finishing out).
Why This Particular Year Feels Different Than Next Year Will
The timing here isn't an accident. Retail construction and the apartment parking structure are both underway right now, according to the Commons' own summer update, but the pain of that work has been kept to the west side of the property while the parts residents actually use stay open. The restaurants opening this year, both inside Commons and around town, are arriving roughly a year ahead of the apartments. That means 2026 is shaping up to be the year Calabasas gains new places to eat without yet absorbing the fuller disruption that a residential building under construction next to the library is likely to bring in 2027.
The theater's closing genuinely changed something about how this town spends a Friday night. But the redevelopment replacing it isn't landing all at once, and knowing the order it's arriving in is the difference between bracing for a rough year and actually enjoying the one you're in.
If you're keeping an eye on how Calabasas continues to change, whether that's a new restaurant on your regular rotation or a shift in what a property near the Commons might be worth down the line, the Witek Lewin Group team knows this neighborhood block by block. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's actually happening here.
