The Los Angeles Rams will move their practice facility to Woodland Hills next season as part of a large-scale real estate development planned by owner Stan Kroenke that could help give the car-centric Warner Center district a more urban feel.
The Rams officially announced the long-expected move Tuesday at an outdoor shopping center that Kroenke bought earlier this year as he assembled a 100-acre parcel for future development that will include a new headquarters for the Rams.
The move will center the Rams, now based in the city of Agoura Hills, in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood. The team plays at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on game days, but spends most of the year at its headquarters and practice facilities.
“It’s important for us to have a foothold in L.A.,” said Kevin Demoff, chief operating officer of the Rams.
A temporary practice facility similar to the one the team now uses at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks will be built on what is now a parking lot next to an unoccupied office tower the Kroenke Group bought in Warner Center in 2022.
Kroenke plans to build a more permanent and expansive training facility and team headquarters on the site in the future, part of what is expected to be a sprawling mixed-use complex that may include stores, restaurants, hotels and residences.
The parking lot at the former Anthem building in Warner Center will be the new location of the Los Angeles Rams practice facility.
(Los Angeles Times)
Work will start shortly on the temporary football compound at Erwin Street and Canoga Avenue, Demoff said. Asphalt and two one-story buildings will be removed to make way for two practice fields and a network of temporary modular trailers that will be similar to the setup the team uses at Cal Lutheran.
The trailers will include office space and meeting rooms for coaches, players, scouts and staff, along with a weight room, a training room, a locker room, a media room and a meal room.
City Councilman Bob Blumenfield called the facility “a great use that brings a lot of value” to the neighborhood and “not much traffic.”
The 13-story tower on the site that was formerly home to health insurer Anthem Inc. may be part of the future mixed-use campus or could be eventually razed to make way for other uses.
Kroenke Group is working on a new land-use design for the site that also includes the former Woodland Hills Promenade, a largely inactive shopping center built in 1973, and the thriving outdoor mall Topanga Village built next to the Promenade in 2015. The move was announced at the Village, which will remain a cornerstone of the Kroenke complex that could take many years to complete.
Los Angeles city officials are encouraging dense mixed-use development in the Warner Center neighborhood that could include new housing, offices, shops, restaurants, hotel rooms and entertainment venues.
The planned building boom may help Warner Center finally achieve its original purpose. In the early 1970s, planners decided that the west San Fernando Valley land, once the site of movie mogul Harry Warner’s horse ranch, should be turned into a “downtown” for the Valley.
As it developed, however, Warner Center bore only passing resemblance to the densely built urban districts people associate with that word.
Today, the neighborhood is mostly a mix of office towers that jut up from a sea of cookie-cutter, low-slung office buildings served by acres of surface parking lots. Apartments and stores are mostly isolated in discrete blocks, and the whole expanse is cleaved by wide, fast-moving streets that flow to freeways.
Kroenke’s $325-million purchase of the Village in January further signaled the billionaire businessman’s intention to build a sports-centric development like the one around SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
In Inglewood, Kroenke controls nearly 300 acres surrounding SoFi Stadium, in what was formerly the Hollywood Park horse racing venue. When the Inglewood complex is completed, it will be 3½ times the size of Disneyland and contain a performance venue, hotel, stores, restaurants, offices, homes and a lake with waterfalls.
With the additional 100 acres in Woodland Hills, Kroenke is now one of the largest real estate developers in the Los Angeles region, Demoff said. His company could build and operate as much as 7 million square feet of property in Woodland Hills as envisioned under the city’s Warner Center 2035 Specific Plan.
“Stan and everybody else is a believer in the potential of Warner Center,” Demoff said. “Everything keeps growing here.”
The Kroenke Group owns and operates shopping centers in 39 states with a combined total of 40 million square feet, the company said.
