If you last set foot in the Promenade sometime between the Saks closure and the Ruby's Diner closure, the map in your head is out of date. The second floor is no longer a corridor of gates and paper signs. The fountains are running more than they aren't. There is a Korean-Italian fusion restaurant across from Conscious Ink, an ice rink where the old Promenade Ice Chalet used to sit, and a full bowling alley under the Regal. None of that existed the last time most residents did a Saturday circuit of the mall.
The thesis, in one sentence
In the 2020s, the mall entered a period of change and revitalization marked by the coming additions of new dining and entertainment venues, and if you look at what's actually opening, it is not a specialty-retail play. It is a deliberate return to the family-anchor formula the center abandoned around 2000, when the roof came off and the Pottery Barns moved in.
That matters because the businesses arriving now are not interchangeable. They are the specific slots a family mall needs, filled one at a time.
A quick inventory: what changed, and where
| Space | What was there | What's there now |
|---|---|---|
| Second floor, next to LA Kings Ice | Ruby's Diner (closed 2024) | Pho Redbo, a wagyu-forward Vietnamese noodle house |
| Second floor, former Red Brick Pizza | Red Brick Pizza | Daisy Buchanan's Pizza Bar |
| Second floor, across from Fuego Cravings | Long vacant | SUGO Social |
| Lower level, beneath Regal Cinemas | Empty | Level Up Bowl & Bistro |
| Center of mall | Promenade Ice Chalet | LA Kings Ice PV |
| Second floor, former AT&T next to Conscious Ink | AT&T | Kickin' Kolaches, coming soon |
That is six meaningful spaces filled or in-progress in roughly eighteen months, in a mall that had spent a decade shedding tenants without replacing them.
The second floor is a sit-down dining band now
SUGO Social Restaurant, a casual yet stylish restaurant featuring a thoughtfully curated menu influenced by multiple culinary traditions, opened in November 2024. Co-owner Gloria Lee grew up in the South Bay, and her pitch for opening on the second floor of a mall most people had written off is worth quoting directly:
I'm from South Bay. I lived here for 20 years, and there's not enough places to eat in PV and we wanted to be another spot. We want to be a hip spot where people can come have a drink right before the movies or after the movies.
The menu reads less like a mall restaurant and more like a Culver City brunch spot that got homesick. Executive chef Michael Castaneda Bryant D'Roma ran a brunch restaurant in Korea before heading back to the South Bay, and he previously did training in downtown Los Angeles under Chef Steve Samson, owner of Rossoblu. He calls out the sweet-and-tangy pork belly baos and the stone pot Korean bibimbap as the signature dishes. There is also a bone-in ribeye and a small pizza list.
Two doors down, in the former Red Brick Pizza footprint, Daisy Buchanan's Pizza Bar joined the mall in the second-floor space that was formerly Red Brick Pizza. The restaurant serves bar pizzas, pasta dishes like vodka rigatoni and chicken piccata, and salads. There is also a beer and wine list, and they offer a selection of board games for guests to enjoy as they eat and drink. The reference point they cite openly is bar pizza as a working-class tradition in the pubs, taverns and dive bars on the South Shore of Boston. It's a specific choice, not a generic one.
The third piece is Pho Redbo, which took the Ruby's restaurant overlooking the ice rink after it closed in 2024. A critically noted Vietnamese noodle house with a wagyu program in a former all-day diner space is the kind of swap that only happens when a landlord is finally being selective about tenant mix.
Three sit-down restaurants opening within roughly twelve months of each other, all on the same floor, all doing something the Hill does not otherwise have. That's not coincidence, and it is not a food court expanding. It's a dining anchor being reassembled.
The lower level is where the kids ended up
Level Up Bowl & Bistro, an upscale bowling alley and entertainment venue featuring a full-service restaurant and bar, opened in winter 2025 on the lower level beneath Regal Cinemas. Combined with the ice rink reintroduced as LA Kings Ice PV, replacing the former Promenade Ice Chalet, the mall now has two anchor entertainment tenants that keep people on-site for two to three hours at a time.
Around them, the specialty small-format tenants are the ones most residents haven't heard about yet. Palos Verdes Source's March 2026 walkthrough lists the new kids space green area, Level Up Bowling & Bistro, Sky Photo, Zenesisx Gaming Lounge, Kiddleton Claw Machine Zone, LAB Basketball Academy and coming soon Mega Looma Epic Adventure Park & Golf Theory. A basketball academy and a claw-machine arcade are not the tenants a mall chases when it is trying to look like South Coast Plaza. They are the tenants a mall signs when it has decided its job is to give families somewhere to go on a Sunday.
Still to come
- Kickin' Kolaches, in the former AT&T space next to Conscious Ink. There is no word yet on when to expect it to open, but it looks like the space is still under construction.
- Mega Looma Epic Adventure Park, a place for children and adults to have fun together, scheduled to open in 2026.
- Golf Theory, listed alongside Mega Looma as coming soon.
- Good Stuff, the South Bay burger chain, is moving to the Hill after a snag in the permitting process; after submitting plans and receiving a demolition permit last year, Good Stuff has had to wait until February to receive its building permit. Owner Cris Bennett had been searching for a spot on The Hill for about a year and a half before finding a home in the Promenade on the Peninsula shopping center.
Four coming-soon tenants in the pipeline is a healthier future book than this mall has had at any point since the last renovation.
What a Friday afternoon actually looks like
The texture matters more than the tenant list. Palos Verdes Pulse walked the boardwalk earlier this year and described what has changed at foot level: a stroll through the Promenade on a Friday afternoon reveals a somewhat revitalized community gathering space. High school students walk around, stopping by Big Island Eats or misc. coffee for an after-school treat. The fountains at the center of the mall are on more often now, providing a place for families to gather and children to play. The escalators around the mall are running again, and there are more wooden tables and chairs scattered about the mall to encourage community.
Fountains running, escalators moving, tables scattered around. These are not glamorous line items. They are the operational signals that the property is being managed for daily use rather than for a future sale.
The Palos Verdes Peninsula Chamber of Commerce has also started staging its 2026 Street Fair partly at Promenade PV, with the Community Stage at Promenade PV, hosted by PV Music House. Programming a community stage is another sign that the center is being treated as civic infrastructure again, not just leasable square footage.
What it means for the Hill, honestly
For most of the last decade, the practical answer to "where do we go for dinner and a movie without driving off the Hill" was "we drive off the Hill." Regal Promenade Stadium 13 has always been here, but the surrounding tenant mix rewarded a trip to Torrance or Manhattan Beach more than a stay-put. That calculus is shifting. Three real sit-down restaurants, a bowling alley, an ice rink, and a growing block of family entertainment inside a fifteen-minute drive of most Peninsula addresses is a different center than the one residents got used to ignoring.
It also changes what a Sunday looks like for households with kids in the Palos Verdes Unified School District boundaries. The mall's history is instructive here. By March 1982, 65 of the 92 stores were occupied. The ice skating rink was well patronized, but it proved difficult to attract shoppers from the immediate area who had already become accustomed to driving to what is now Del Amo Fashion Center. Del Amo is still there, and it is still bigger. The Promenade is not trying to beat it on scale. It is trying to be the place you go when you don't want to drive to Del Amo, and the tenant list finally reflects that.
One practical note
Parking is easier than at any comparable South Bay center, and the multi-level structure connects directly to both floors by elevator. Weeknight visits to Level Up or SUGO around 6 p.m. are the sweet spot. Saturday afternoons around the ice rink are the busiest window, particularly during LA Kings Ice public sessions.
If you're thinking about the Peninsula
A functioning neighborhood center is one of the quieter drivers of long-term residential value on the Hill, and it doesn't show up in a portal's median price. When Gayle Probst walks buyers through the Peninsula, the Promenade coming back matters as much to a family with school-age kids as a specific school assignment does to their planning. If you'd like a market conversation grounded in that kind of local context, schedule a complimentary consultation or call Gayle for a free home valuation.
