By 5:15 on a Friday, cars are already circling for spots near El Torito. Folding tables go up in rows, a DJ tests the sound system, and the smell of grilled elote starts to travel across the asphalt before the first customer has paid for anything. This is Fun Fridays, the recurring market that Angel City Market runs in partnership with the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce, and if you live near Lakewood Boulevard and Del Amo, you have probably already stumbled into one without meaning to.
What's easy to miss, standing in that lot with a plate of tacos, is that you are looking at the exact patch of ground the new owners have announced plans to redevelop. The market didn't wait for a master plan. It's already running the experiment.
What Actually Happens Out There
Fun Fridays sets up in the Lakewood Center parking lot, typically the stretch between El Torito and Target, though some themed nights have shifted closer to the Target and Panera Bread side of the lot. The standard cadence is the first and third Friday of the month, 5 to 9 p.m., admission free. This past summer the schedule ran heavier than that, with weekly markets confirmed through August and into September, meaning residents who've made a habit of it this season have had more Fridays than usual to work with. September 25 closes out that stretch before the market presumably settles back into its twice-a-month rhythm.
A typical night draws more than 70 vendors and upward of 15 food vendors, alongside a live DJ that runs the full four hours. Themed nights add small, specific touches on top of that baseline. A February Sweetheart Night included free caricatures for couples and a DIY Valentine's card station for kids. It's the kind of detail that tells you this isn't a generic craft fair rotating through the same booths every time. Someone is actively programming it.
This Isn't a One-Season Thing
Fun Fridays has already run a full holiday cycle once, and the naming pattern tells you how much thought goes into each installment. Last fall and winter, the series worked through Fright Night, a Dia de los Muertos night, The Market Before X-Mas, Gingerbread Land, a Disney Christmas Market, Christmas Celebration & Happy Howlidays, and a January close-out called 2026 Kickoff to a Magical Year. Organizers haven't published this year's fall and winter names yet, but the pattern from last season suggests specialty nights are coming again as the weather turns, not just another round of the same booths.
None of this is unusual for a community night market. What's unusual is where it's happening.
Why This Particular Lot Matters More Than It Used To
Lakewood Center is not just any mall parking lot. The center opened in the early 1950s as one of the first large-scale shopping developments built to serve a brand-new postwar suburb, and it's recognized by the Los Angeles Conservancy as a historic property. At nearly 2 million square feet across 150 acres, it still ranks among the largest shopping centers by leasable area in the country, and the current ownership has said publicly that it generates roughly $1 billion a year in total sales.
That number sounds enormous until you break it down per square foot. CoStar's reporting put Lakewood Center's sales productivity at around $343 per square foot, which places it in the middle tier of malls nationally, not the top. A mall can move a billion dollars in goods and still be considered underperforming relative to its size. CoStar also noted that Forever 21's bankruptcy left a vacancy, and that JCPenney and Starlight Cinemas both had 2025 lease expirations putting close to a fifth of the property's rent in question at the time of the sale.
In August 2025, a joint venture of Pacific Retail Capital Partners, Lyon Living, and Silverpeak bought the property for $332.1 million and announced plans to rebuild it around a very different idea: less enclosed retail, more walkable mixed-use space, with residential units, green space, wellness amenities, and what the announcement called "unique entertainment" woven into a pedestrian-friendly layout. Steve Plenge, CEO of Pacific Retail Capital Partners, framed the goal simply, saying the plan is to honor the property's heritage while "transforming Lakewood Center into a next-generation mixed-use destination." No construction timeline has been made public. The companies have said the process starts with master planning, in coordination with city officials and local stakeholders.
The Market Is Already Doing the Job the Master Plan Describes
Here's the part worth sitting with. Every phrase in that redevelopment announcement, walkable, green space, entertainment, pedestrian-friendly, describes something Fun Fridays already delivers, for free, in a parking lot, twice a month. Families push strollers between vendor tables instead of driving between them. People linger past dinner because there's a DJ and somewhere to sit. The Lakewood Center parking lot became a gathering spot without anyone needing a permit for a new building.
That doesn't mean the eventual redevelopment will look like a bigger version of Fun Fridays. Retail construction projects of this size take years, and design specifics haven't been released. But it does mean the new ownership group inherited a property where residents had already answered, informally and repeatedly, the exact question a master planner spends months studying: will people actually show up and stay if you give them a reason to. Lakewood has been showing up on Friday nights for a while now. The market isn't a preview built to sell you on a future mall. It's evidence the new owners can point to that the appetite for that kind of space already exists here, without them having to build a thing.
If you've been to a few of these nights already, you've effectively been part of that data set. If you haven't, September 25 is the last confirmed weekly date before the market likely returns to its first-and-third-Friday pace, and the full schedule is posted on the mall's own events page as dates get added.
None of this changes anything about your day-to-day plans this week. But it's worth knowing that the folding chairs and food trucks in that lot are sitting on some of the more closely watched acreage in southeast Los Angeles County right now, and that watching how it gets used might tell you more about what's coming than any press release will.
If you're the kind of person who likes to understand how a place is changing before the changes show up in a listing, that curiosity is exactly what we built PowerClose Realty around. Whether you're just watching Lakewood evolve or thinking ahead to a move of your own someday, we're glad to talk through what we're seeing on the ground. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready.
