Palisades Village — the luxury shopping and dining destination that ultimately served as a tony town square for residents of Pacific Palisades, California — is eyeing a reopening of “early to mid” 2026 in the wake of catastrophic fires that ravaged the area.
Palisades Village owner Rick Caruso and key members of his Caruso team were on site Wednesday afternoon for an official press conference to announce the news and reveal that Palisades retail guru Elyse Walker will aid revitalization efforts by bringing her namesake shop to the flagship space on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Swarthmore Avenue. Walker, who opened her Palisades store in 1999 and expanded over the years into something of a retail empire with stores in New York, Newport Beach and Southampton, lost her shop on Antioch Street in the Palisades Fire.
“Today marks an important milestone for Palisades Village as it signals not only hope, but our steadfast and unwavering commitment to the Palisades. Our future here at Palisades Village is brighter than ever,” said Caruso CEO Corinne Verdery to kick start the press conference against the backdrop of an “active” construction zone, hard hats and all. “Our end goal is simple, it’s to bring families back, small businesses, jobs, spark economic revival and make Palisades stronger.”
They plan to accomplish that by reconstructing the public park inside Palisades Village, rebuilding streetscapes around the hub to “beautifully restore the sidewalks, lighting and landscape,” bringing back the annual Christmas tree lighting and Menorah celebration this holiday season and adding “an exciting new dining concept,” the latter of which will be announced in the coming months, Verdery confirmed.
She then welcomed her boss to the podium. Caruso, the billionaire businessman who made a bid to become mayor of Los Angeles, has emerged as a key figure in the city’s rebuilding efforts. He founded Steadfast L.A., an organization led by the private sector to “prioritize action, accountability and results over red tape.”
“When the fire hit, and obviously in the wake of that fire, it touched every corner of our city. I became a student of what it takes to bring back a city or a town or a community from a disaster,” offered Caruso in opening his comments. What he learned was that public and private partnerships become key to rebuilding efforts “because the problems are too big for a government alone,” and that common spaces that foster community become even more crucial.
“People want to congregate. They want to shop, they want to dine, they want to gather, they want to have a cup of coffee with their friends and their family. So how do we accelerate all of this? It’s not only about rebuilding a town, it’s about an acceleration of the rebuilding,” he added. “I believe you have to have an economic engine. If you look at all the examples around the country or around the world, if you have a partner — whether it’s a retailer or a restaurateur that believes in the future of a community that’s committed not only to great commerce but great community — you create a powerful partnership.”
That thinking led Caruso to pick up the phone “a few weeks ago” to share his big idea that called for her to move into the Palisades Village space formerly occupied by Saint Laurent. “Elyse said, ‘I am in, let’s rebuild the Palisades,” recalled Caruso, who saved Palisades Village with the help of a private for-hire firefighting team. “Then she said something that was very powerful. She said, ‘We will be unstoppable.’”
“It’s a truly magical moment to be working together, and I know that this community is not going to be coming back, it’s going to be roaring back,” Caruso said, adding that revitalization efforts include extending the streetscape, building new sidewalks, new trees and new lighting at their expense.
Connie & Stewart Photography
Caruso then welcomed Walker to the podium with quite a compliment: “In my 35 years of being in the development business, I’ve done business with a lot of retailers, the best and the brightest, but let me tell you something, there is nobody better than Elyse Walker.” The Palisades resident and retail vet, who raised her two sons in the city and opened a shop there so she could walk them to school, expressed optimism about the announcement while also nodding to the destruction still visible on all the surrounding streets.
“Today is an exciting day. It’s also with mixed emotion as just five months ago, we watched our beloved community of the Pacific Palisades experience incredible loss, and my team and I lost our flagship Elyse Walker Palisades store, our work home, a store that had just celebrated 25 years,” she explained of the elysewalker boutique. “However, I have always believed that the Palisades community is strong, and that in time we would heal and rise up together. Today is the beginning of our rebuilding efforts.”
She called this moment “the most pivotal time in the Palisades community history,” and said that her new location will mirror the old one and align with what Caruso has created at Palisades Village by becoming a hub for community and something more than a place that sells clothing, handbags and designer items.
“Our goal is to create jobs and enthusiasm. Reopening in the Palisades and moving our flagship across the street to the Palisades Village is incredibly exciting and important as we focus our efforts on supporting the strong and resilient town,” she said. “We fully intend to recreate the Elyse Walker experience at the Palisades Village and look forward to a time very, very soon when we can open our doors and our community can reunite.”
“Twenty-five years ago, my husband David and I moved our family here from New York,” Walker said. “When I opened my first store across the street, I chose that location because it was one block from my kids’ school and I wanted to be room mom and I was every single year. I also recognized that there was a huge opportunity to bring fashion retail to the Palisades. I knew that I wanted to create not just a place to shop, but also a place for this beloved community to come together. Friends gathered every day at three o’clock when the kids got out of school. We created a hub way more powerful than any fashion or clothing.”
Connie & Stewart Photography
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