Beverly Center

View from the intersection of La Cienega Blvd. and 3rd St, prior to renovations
Location	8500 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles, California, U.S. 90048
Coordinates	34°04′30″N 118°22′37″W / 34.075°N 118.377°W / 34.075; -118.377
Opening date	March 1982; 41 years ago (March 1982)
Developer	A. Alfred Taubman, Sheldon Gordon & E. Phillip Lyon
Management	Taubman Centers
Owner	Taubman Centers
Architect	Lou Nardorf of Welton Becket and Associates (original),[1] Massimiliano Fuksas and Doriana O. Mandrelli (2018 renovation)[2]
No. of stores and services	100+
No. of anchor tenants	2
Total retail floor area	883,000 sq ft (82,000 m2)
No. of floors	8
Website	https://beverlycenter.com/

Beverly Center is a shopping mall in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is an eight-story structure located near the edge of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood but within Los Angeles city limits, between La Cienega and San Vicente boulevards. The mall features Bloomingdale's , Macy's, and Macy's Men's Store. The mall's dramatic six-story series of escalators offer visitors views of the Hollywood Hills, Downtown Los Angeles, and Los Angeles Westside.

History

The Beverly Center was originally opened in 1982 by developers A. Alfred Taubman, Sheldon Gordon, and E. Phillip Lyon. (The site's former occupant was a small amusement park known as "Beverly Park",^[3] featuring a Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and mini roller-coaster, and a pony ride called "Ponyland". The northeast corner of the mall, at the intersection of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards, is the geographic center of the city's studio zone.

The mall's unusual shape and lack of street frontage along San Vicente Boulevard are the result of both its position at the intersection of a number of angled streets and its location above the Salt Lake Oil Field. As of 2009^[update] the western portion of the mall property contained a cluster of oil wells in an active drilling enclosure operated by Freeport-McMoRan (formally Plains Exploration & Production.^[4][5]

The mall opening featured the debut on July 16, 1982, of a multiplex movie theater containing 14 screens, then the largest number of movie screens in any US multiplex shopping mall. Even though the movie theater was located in Los Angeles, the opening was newsworthy enough to warrant a full article in The New York Times.^[6] In the late 1980s, three smaller screens were removed on the main floor, so two larger auditoriums could be built on the roof. The theater portion of the mall was closed altogether on June 3, 2010.

The Beverly Center was originally anchored by Bullock's and The Broadway department stores, and in 1993 Bullock's opened a separate Bullock's Men's store, before both stores were renamed Macy's in 1996. The Broadway shuttered its location in 1996 when it was absorbed into Macy's and its previous outpost became a store format for Bloomingdale's in 1997.

In 2004, Taubman Centers, the public Real Estate Investment Trust and successor to A. Alfred Taubman's shopping center interests, purchased its partners minority investments stake in the property.

The Beverly Center underwent a renovation from 2006 to 2008. These renovations included reconstructing the escalators visible from the outside.^[7]

A food court formerly operated at the mall until 2014, when it was eliminated. Uniqlo opened one of its first Southern California locations in the space.^[8][9] As part of renovations starting in 2016, the mall aims to bring restaurants back to the empty spaces on the street level.^[10]

Starting in March 2016, the Center underwent a major renovation that aimed to add a food hall and several new street-level restaurants and a skylight. Renovation costs were given as US$500 million.^[11][12] The new Center will also have a perforated steel facade on the outside of the building and an upgraded parking structure which will include technology to help drivers remember where they've parked.^[13]

In popular culture

• A chapter in the 1985 Bret Easton Ellis novel Less than Zero is set in The Beverly Center.
• Beverly Center was the setting of the 1991 film Scenes from a Mall starring Bette Midler and Woody Allen. The movie's interior mall scenes were filmed between the Beverly Center and Stamford Town Center in Connecticut, another Taubman mall.
• Beverly Center played a part of the plot near the end of the 1997 disaster thriller Volcano starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche. A triage and childcare center for neighboring Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was set up in the mall's Hard Rock Cafe. This was evacuated when a geyser of lava erupted out of San Vicente Boulevard, threatening the structure and its occupants.
• Beverly Center was shown briefly in the 1997 film Selena, where Selena (played by then up-and-coming actress Jennifer Lopez) and her friend went shopping at an upscale store in the mall before Selena attended the Grammy Awards.
• On May 18, 2009, rap artist Dolla was fatally shot at the Beverly Center.
• In the film Eraserhead, industrial wasteland scenes were shot at the present location of Beverly Center. Prior to its current state of development, the site was an oil field.^[14]
• On the 2013 SNL sketch "Waking Up With Kimye", Lady Gaga plays an Apple Store employee at the mall who works at the Genius Bar.^[15]
• Beverly Center (named as Beverly Hills Mall) was the setting in the animated series Totally Spies!, is shown from the first three seasons until was destroyed in the episode "Head Shrinker Much?" and was replaced by The Groove in the fourth season.
• Appears in the video game Grand Theft Auto V as "Rockford Plaza"
• Referenced by musician Lana Del Rey in her song "Sweet" on the 2023 studio album Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?