The ribbon cutting happened at 10:30 in the morning on August 15. Doors opened to the public at 11. By early afternoon, mannequins stood half-dressed in the windows of A.L.C., Brunello Cucinelli, and elysewalker, and the freezers at McConnell's Fine Ice Cream were running again after nineteen months dark. That much has been covered from ABC7 to Bloomberg.
What gets skipped is what was still true a hundred feet in either direction from that ribbon. Across Sunset, the empty lot where Ralphs used to anchor the block was still just that, an empty lot, with no construction underway. The historic Business Block, boarded up since the fire, sat exactly as it had for the better part of two years. If you lived in the Palisades before January 2025 and tried to run your actual Tuesday, getting your favorite sushi counter back would not solve the one errand you used to do without thinking about it at all.
That gap, between what the Village restored and what the neighborhood's daily errand map still lacks, is the real story of this reopening. The Village came back. Two of its most-used neighbors did not, and as of now, neither has an announced date to.
What Came Back, Storefront by Storefront
Caruso's own numbers are specific: the center is 99 percent leased, and about two-thirds of the businesses are former tenants returning to the property. Against a property with a little over 40 storefronts, that leaves roughly a dozen names on Sunset and Swarthmore that weren't there before the fire. Not everything opened the same morning, either. About 70 percent of leased storefronts opened on August 15, with the rest, including additional buildouts and a handful of new concepts, phasing in through the fall.
The returning list reads like the pre-fire directory. Erewhon, Blue Ribbon Sushi, Buck Mason, and Anine Bing are back. So are two Palisades-grown names, K Bakery and Loomey's Toys, both of which lost their original locations in the fire and rebuilt inside the Village instead. Porta Via, Zimmermann, Veronica Beard, and Café Vida returned as well. Chef Gino Angelini is bringing back Angelini Ristorante & Bar, choosing, by his own account, to reopen quietly rather than stage a splash.
Elyse Walker's return carries extra weight. Her original boutique on Antioch Street ran for 25 years before it was destroyed. Her new space takes a corner position at Sunset and Swarthmore instead, at the entrance to the Village rather than a block away, which means even a fixture that established didn't simply resume where it left off.
The New Names Are Playing a Different Game
The additions are where the reopening stops looking like a restoration and starts looking like a repositioning. Nancy Silverton is opening an Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto inside the Village, a reservation that pulls from well outside the 90272 zip code in a way the pre-fire mix rarely did. The h.wood Group is bringing Alphabet Bar & Grill. Beauty retailer Violet Grey joined the roster, and activewear label LESET chose the Village for its first store anywhere on the West Coast.
None of these are neighborhood-errand businesses. They're the kind of names that show up in citywide dining roundups, not on a resident's grocery list. PAIGE reopened its store selling limited-edition Palisades Social Club merchandise, with proceeds benefiting Steadfast LA, a nonprofit funding wildfire recovery across the Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena. The gesture is real. So is the pattern underneath it: a meaningful share of what's new here is built to draw people in from outside the neighborhood, not simply to serve the households three blocks away.
The Two Grocery Anchors Still Missing, By Name
Start with what didn't disappear. Vons, on Sunset near Pacific Coast Highway, survived the fire structurally and reopened not long after, and it has functioned as the neighborhood's full-service grocery option through the entire rebuild. That matters, because it means the gap isn't a total void. It's specific.
The former Ralphs at 15120 West Sunset Boulevard has not started construction as of early September 2026. No timeline has been announced for when it might. Gelson's, which operated for decades at 15424 Sunset Boulevard, announced in March 2026 that it intends to rebuild at that same address, but the company has not set a construction timeline or reopening date since. Erewhon inside the Village covers specialty grocery, and covers it well, but it isn't built to replace the weekday supermarket habit that Ralphs specifically served for years.
Caruso himself has been publicly impatient about this. In a social media post around the Village's reopening, he called out both chains directly, saying the community needs a traditional market. It's a notable moment: the developer whose own $100 million bet just paid off is now the one pressuring two major grocers to make their move.
The Business Block Is Still a Question Mark
Across the intersection from the Village, the 1924 Spanish Colonial Revival building known as the Business Block remains an open question. Before the fire it held Bank of America, Café Vida's original location, Casa Nostra Trattoria, and a Starbucks, among other tenants. Two of the largest surrounding parcels, including this one, are owned by Topa Management, and as of early September 2026 neither has an announced rebuilding plan or active construction.
The building's fate isn't simply a matter of money. An engineering analysis commissioned by City Councilmember Traci Park found that at least part of the historic structure could be preserved, a conclusion that put the Los Angeles Conservancy on one side of the debate. Caruso, whose Village sits next door, has said the building should come down entirely. Until that disagreement resolves, the most visible ruin on Sunset Boulevard stays exactly as it is.
What's Actually Been Filling the Gaps
None of this means the neighborhood ran on nothing for twenty months. Anawalt Lumber survived the fire outright and reopened in mid-February 2025, faster than almost anything else on the block. CVS completed a full interior rebuild and reopened in September 2025, the first major retailer to do a complete rebuild rather than simply reoccupy an intact space. Entrepreneur Michael Edlen opened Pali Trading Post, a general store stocked with Palisades-themed merchandise and goods from local vendors. A former Shell station on Sunset was converted into an Ace Building Materials outlet serving the rebuild itself. Flower Pizzeria and Cafe is moving into the former Noah's Bagels space on Sunset, separate from the Village entirely. The Palisades Garden Cafe has served as an informal meeting spot for contractors and returning homeowners for most of the past year.
That corridor, Anawalt, Vons, CVS, Pali Trading Post, Café Vida, and the Garden Cafe, is the actual map residents have been working from while the more photographed reopening was still under scaffolding. It's worth knowing that map exists on its own terms, separate from whatever gets announced with a ribbon.
The New Weekly Calendar
The Village has also started hosting a recurring events calendar, new territory for a property that spent most of the past year and a half behind construction fencing. The Pacific Palisades Farmers Market is now held there on Wednesdays from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. A Mahjong Social meets Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon, a Rummikub Social runs the first Tuesday of each month from 6 to 7:30 p.m., and Cars & Coffee happens the fourth Sunday of every month starting at 8 a.m.
One detail worth a calendar note rather than just a read-through: complimentary parking at the Village runs only through September 30. After that, whatever the property's standard parking arrangement turns out to be goes back into effect.
The Honest Read for Anyone Still Here
The residential rebuild explains some of why the commercial side moves at this pace. As of August 12, 2026, Pacific Palisades passed 1,000 homes started under active construction, according to the Pali Rebuild Map, a milestone the community had been building toward steadily. More than 6,800 structures were destroyed in the fire altogether, and only a fraction of those have been completed and reoccupied. Grocery chains weighing a multi-year rebuild are, by their own account, waiting on rooftops before they commit capital, the same math Caruso has publicly pushed back against.
For now, the honest version of this story runs in two directions at once. The Village is back, and about two-thirds of what made it feel familiar came back with it, alongside a set of new additions clearly built to pull in visitors from beyond the neighborhood. The two anchors a lot of households used without thinking twice, the full-service grocery run and the corner where the Business Block used to stand, are still unresolved, with no announced date attached to either. Both halves of that sentence are true right now, and neither cancels out the other.
If you're weighing a move within the Palisades, watching how a specific block is recovering before listing a property here, or want a second set of eyes on what the rebuild means for a home you already own, Team Sorrentino has been tracking this neighborhood address by address. Book an appointment when you're ready to talk it through.
