Holiday Changes Coming to Fashion Square Mall

Shoppers with small kids, take note: Westfield Fashion Square's Playtown, the Sherman Oaks mall's popular toddler play area, is having a 10-day time out while undergoing renovations.

The koi are gone, swimming temporarily in fish tanks in two other malls, and workers are pulling up the worn benches, nicked play toys and torn carpeting. The generic play area will be replaced by an aquatic-themed Playtown, similar to that in Westfield’s Valley Fair Mall in San Jose.

“A lot of people don’t know that it’s coming,” said Fashion Square marketing director Juliet Mothershed.

Also coming will be changes to the nearby Family Lounge, with its diaper changing tables, nursing areas and bottle warmers, and to the adjacent restroom areas.

Mothershed said Westfield includes a Playtown in the mall because it’s “not just a shopping center to buy things, but like a town square. People like to have those places where kids can play indoors.”

She couldn’t say how long the existing Playtown has been at the mall, but noted that a 27-year-old friend of hers recalls the fish from her own childhood visits there. One of the biggest changes will be to redesign the fish tank, a pyramid-like structure that children used as a climbing toy, Mothershed said. When the new tank is completed Dec. 1, children will be able to view the fish at eye level.

Sure enough, on Tuesday, the last day of the old Playtown, kids were scrambling all over the empty fish tank, like 3-year-old Winston Smith.

“Whenever I come to pick up something at the mall, we have to stop here,” said Winston’s mom, Shontae Winston of Toluca Lake.

“Oh, good, it needs an uplift,” said Carrie Cohen of the coming redo, as she kept a watchful eye on her two children, Leila, 3, and Alex, 8. Both Winston and Cohen said they visit the play area frequently and that their kids spend a half-hour to an hour there.

For child-care worker Rosaura Castillo, Fashion Square’s Playtown provides a daily excursion of nearly three hours and lunch for her charge, 17-month-old Sofia, who dislikes the dirt and dust of an outdoor playground.

“It’s very pleasant here,” Castillo said. “And when it’s hot outside in the park, it’s air-conditioned and nice here.”

The new Playtown opens Nov. 19 at 10 a.m.., the same day Santa Claus comes to Westfield Fashion Square. Kids are invited to make starfish holiday decorations with Santa in the play area.