A Southern California city has big plans to bring a dead mall back to life and they include turning the area into a mini Bourbon Street.
Santa Monica city officials recently voted to lift restrictions on alcohol permits on the 3rd Street Promenade open air mall Santa Monica Place to lure back shoppers and businesses that have left the area for a variety of reasons, including homelessness.
The outdoor Santa Monica Mall, two blocks from the beach, used to be bustling with shoppers, but online shopping and homelessness in the city changed all that.
Now empty storefronts line the promenade, with the vacancy rate reportedly sitting at 25%, though shoppers The Post spoke with said it felt more like 50%.
Big retailers like Old Navy, Gap, H&M, AMC and more left the area, making less of a draw for shoppers to come down and spend money.
In June of 2025, the city approved an outdoor Entertainment Zone for the area, allowing drinking age adults to purchase alcoholic beverages from restaurants and enjoy them outdoors along the three-block promenade. The zone is open on a limited basis, from Friday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
At a recent city meeting, officials voted “to expand” that zone to the “entire downtown core, with event-based authority extended to the Santa Monica Pier, Main Street, and Montana Avenue.”
However, exactly what that expansion in the “downtown core” includes is unclear.
Part of the revitalization plan included allocating $3 million in economic development funds to “to support restaurant attraction incentives, tenant improvement assistance, business recruitment, and capital renewal studies for Third Street Promenade.”
As part of enticing more business to come back, the city also approved lifting “fees and permit requirements” on restaurants using outdoor spaces, along with discounted parking rates at $1 for 90. minutes.
Other changes in the works that could bring life back to the area include a substantiation for the Santa Monica Police Department that will soon open on the ground floor of the mall, along with millions of dollars invested in street improvements.
The city has approved lifting restrictions on music and arcade games, with a large music festival planned for September.
Organizers said they are hoping the single-day event brings in between “30,000 to 35,000 attendees.”
“Programming would include 12 to 15 musical artists, curated food and beverage offerings, festival and artist merchandise, art installations, partnership activations, and guest services such as restrooms, lockers, and water stations.”
The outdoor mall opened in 1965 and by the turn of the century it was the place to be to catch a movie, grab something to eat or soak in all the local street talent that were staples.
The Post reported that mall popularity started dropping in 2018, with many putting the blame partly on all the homeless that occupy the strip, followed by the pandemic and looting of stores around the same time that drove away customers.
In 2023, the city declared a local emergency on homelessness, with officials saying the problem was too big for them to deal with alone.
The Post reached out to city officials for further comment.
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