What's Actually Open at Valencia Town Center This Summer, and What's Still Just a Fence

Drive past the west end of Valencia Town Center this month and you will notice two competing stories about the same parking lot. One story, repeated across nearly every local outlet in late April, says the mall is being reinvented with new dining and entertainment. The other story is the one sitting right there behind a chain-link fence: a 125,000-square-foot construction site where Sears used to be, with no opening date earlier than 2027.

Both stories are true. Neither tells you what you can actually walk into this week.

The announcement everyone repeated the same way

In late April, Centennial, the Dallas-based developer that has owned Valencia Town Center since September 2023, put out a release naming ten new tenants and more than 175,000 square feet of new dining, entertainment, and lifestyle space. The Santa Clarita Valley Chamber, SCVNews, and KHTS all ran versions of the same quote from Michael de Leon, the center's general manager:

"We aren't just adding stores, we are curating experiences. From the high-energy gaming at Round1 to the communal dining of KPOT, these brands reflect the vibrant, family-oriented energy of Santa Clarita."

The release named Round1 Bowling & Arcade, KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot, Bushfire Kitchen, and Bacio di Latte gelato, and said the new tenants would open in phases through 2026 and 2027, with several marquee locations debuting that summer.

If you read only that release, "this summer" and "Round1" sit in the same sentence. That is the part almost every outlet reprinted without separating out. It is also the part that does not hold up against what is actually happening at the property.

The anchor that is still a hole in the ground

Round1 is the headline tenant in every version of this story, and for good reason: it is taking over the old Sears building, one of the mall's largest footprints, and bringing a 14-vendor YUU Japanese Food Hall along with Spo-cha, its all-you-can-play area for batting cages, trampolines, and roller skating.

It is also, as of this writing, under construction with no earlier opening date than early 2027. The Signal reported the lease in March, describing it as the first phase of a multi-phase redevelopment. Five months later, nothing about that timeline has moved. The mall's own homepage, updated as recently as August 4 for back-to-school promotions, makes no mention of a Round1 opening because there is not one to announce yet.

Meanwhile, a second anchor spot sits empty on the other side of the property. Forever 21 closed its Valencia Town Center location in 2025 and that space has not been re-leased. So the mall is simultaneously running a fence around a future 125,000-square-foot entertainment hall and sitting on an already-vacant anchor with no announced replacement. Two different kinds of empty, on two different timelines, both invisible in a headline that just says "new tenants coming."

What you can actually walk into right now

Strip out the multi-year anchor projects and the list of things genuinely available or close to it this year gets shorter, but it is real. Bushfire Kitchen and Bacio di Latte gelato are part of the announced lineup of tenants already welcoming guests or set to open within the coming months, according to the April release. On the mall's own directory, a new nail salon is running a 15 percent grand-opening discount for new clients this August, and Wafflecomb, a dessert shop built around bubble waffles, ice cream, and taiyaki, is listed as coming soon.

Here is the honest version of the timeline, based on what has actually been confirmed rather than what got bundled into one press release:

That is not a smaller story than "the mall is transforming." It is a more useful one if you are deciding whether to build a Friday night around it this month or wait until next year.

The part of Valencia that already works

While the mall waits on a construction schedule, the paseo system that runs behind and around it has been doing its job for over a decade without a single press release.

On Saturday, September 26, the Be The Light 5K and 10K returns for its 12th year, a night run and walk on the San Francisquito Creek Trail paseos starting from West Creek Park. Check-in runs from 2:00 to 6:45 p.m., the 10K starts around 7:00, and the 5K follows five minutes later, timed so the finish line lands right as the sky goes dark. Runners loop the paseo from West Creek Park down to Decoro Drive and up to Copper Hill Drive, with headlamps and glow gear turning the flat, easy course into something closer to a community parade than a race. Proceeds benefit A Light of Hope, supporting youth in recovery.

Twelve consecutive years is longer than Centennial has owned the mall. The paseo network was not announced in a press release with a general manager quote. It was just built, and it has been quietly doing exactly what it was designed to do every year since, rain or construction fencing.

What this actually means for how you plan around here

The lesson here is not that the mall's redevelopment is a bad idea. Round1's food hall and entertainment concept will likely be worth the wait once it opens, and a Bushfire Kitchen or a proper gelato counter fills a real gap in the sit-down options at Valencia Town Center. The lesson is that the press-release version of "what's new" compresses a multi-year construction project and an August grand opening into the same paragraph, and that compression is exactly what makes every local write-up sound identical to the last one.

If you want dinner and a walk this month, Bushfire Kitchen and gelato at Bacio di Latte are the realistic options at the mall right now, with Wafflecomb worth checking on as the season goes. If you want a full evening built around something that already exists and does not depend on anyone's construction timeline, put September 26 on the calendar and walk the paseo after dark with the rest of the neighborhood.

The mall will catch up eventually. The trail already has.

Curious what a market this well-covered by press releases and this quiet on transaction data actually looks like when you dig into recent sales? Cristina Realty has spent years reading Valencia block by block, not headline by headline. Contact us any time you want a straight answer about this neighborhood, whether or not you're thinking about a move.