Ask a longtime Calabasas resident what happened to the Regency and you'll likely get some version of "nobody goes to the movies anymore." That's the easy explanation, and it's not quite what's happening behind the construction fencing on the west side of The Commons this summer. The theater didn't die of neglect. It was traded, on purpose, for something the property's owner is betting the neighborhood wants more.
The Regency Cinema, the last movie theater in the long stretch of corridor between Thousand Oaks and Woodland Hills, closed on December 28, 2025, and was demolished earlier this year. In its place: 80 luxury apartments, roughly 27,000 square feet of new retail and dining, a pedestrian-only paseo, and a community green space built specifically for outdoor movie nights, live music, and neighborhood events. The multiplex isn't coming back. The lawn that replaces it is designed to do the one thing the theater did best, minus the ticket booth.
Why The Screen Actually Disappeared
The Commons at Calabasas has been Rick Caruso's project since it opened in 1998, and the redevelopment now underway, officially called Commons Lane, broke ground in February 2026 after what Caruso's own newsroom describes as years of city council workshops and community meetings. Calabasas Mayor James Bozajian, who also held the office when The Commons first opened, has framed the apartment component as an answer to a demographic pressure point locals already feel: residents who want to downsize out of a house without leaving the city they raised a family in.
The property management's own explanation for losing the theater is blunt. A movie theater at The Commons, per the center's construction FAQ, is "no longer a sustainable use" given how people consume entertainment now. That's a real estate calculation, not a cultural verdict. The square footage a multiplex needs to break even doesn't pencil out the way 80 units of housing and a dozen new storefronts do. What the plan keeps, deliberately, is the communal function. The green space going in where the Regency stood is built for outdoor screenings and gatherings, so the town square keeps its movie nights even after it loses its movie theater.
What Actually Changes Before Labor Day
If you run errands at The Commons on a normal week, here's what the construction phase running through September 2026 actually means for you right now:
- Gelson's and the existing restaurants on the north and south ends of the center remain untouched. The active construction is contained to the west side, where the old Regency footprint sat.
- Valet parking is still running, Friday through Sunday from 11am to 7:30pm, staged near Sugarfish by Sushi Nozawa and Polacheck's Jewelers.
- A portion of the two-way drive aisle between the two new buildings has been converted to one-way to keep circulation safe while crews work on the parking structure that will serve the new apartments.
- New tenants are already moving into build-out on several of the 12 to 14 retail and restaurant spaces slated for the west side, with some expected to open by the end of 2026.
- The apartment building itself won't be ready until 2027.
None of this required the everyday version of The Commons to shut down. That's the part worth sitting with. Retail centers that gut-renovate usually ask shoppers to tolerate a season of inconvenience. This one is being staged specifically so the daily errand run, the coffee before school drop-off, dinner at Porta Via, doesn't change while the west end gets rebuilt around it.
The Same Playbook, A Few Miles From Palisades Village
If the mixed footprint sounds familiar, that's because it's the same formula Caruso used at Palisades Village: smaller retail bays, curated tenants, housing folded directly into the retail plan instead of built separately down the street. The difference here is what the housing is solving for. In a town where the median household has lived in the same neighborhood for years and where kids grow up and want to stay close, an 80-unit apartment building inside walking distance of Gelson's and the paseo isn't a novelty. It's a release valve for people who want to remain in Calabasas without carrying a second mortgage on a house they no longer need.
That's a different kind of proof point than a shiny new retail count. A shopping center adding stores tells you the property is healthy. A shopping center adding housing tells you the surrounding market is tight enough that even a 200,000-square-foot retail center thinks its highest use includes apartments.
Where To Walk It Off While The West Side Is Torn Up
If the construction noise sends you looking for open space instead, King Gillette Ranch sits a few minutes down Las Virgenes Road at the edge of Malibu Creek State Park, and it's worth knowing before you just show up. The ranch's centerpiece is a Spanish Colonial Revival mansion designed in the 1920s by Wallace Neff for razor magnate King C. Gillette, and the grounds still carry the original landscape plan: a tree-lined entry drive, a constructed pond, a formal courtyard and terrace.
The short hike to Inspiration Point is steep but brief, climbing to a knoll with a 360-degree view that takes in the rock formations of Malibu Creek State Park below. For more distance, Stokes Ridge Trail runs about 2.9 miles with roughly 790 feet of elevation gain, the longest and highest-climbing route in the park. One detail worth knowing before you load the car: dogs are not permitted on the trails at either King Gillette Ranch or Malibu Creek State Park proper, a rule the National Park Service and California State Parks both enforce, not a suggestion.
The Actual Shift
The story most people will tell about The Commons this year is that it lost its movie theater. The more accurate story is that it's converting one kind of shared space into another, an indoor screen into an outdoor lawn, a parking lot into housing, while keeping the parts of daily life that don't need reinventing exactly where they've always been. Gelson's isn't moving. The valet line isn't disappearing. Dinner at Porta Via still happens the same way it did last year. What's changing is what sits behind it, and whether that trade works out will say more about how this town wants to grow than any single tenant announcement will.
If you're weighing what a shift like this means for property values on either side of Calabasas, or simply want a second opinion grounded in how these towns actually behave through a redevelopment cycle, Neyshia Go and The Go Group are available for a confidential conversation about what you're seeing on the ground.
