Century City in 2026: How Westfield's Dining Reset and a New Two-Acre Park Rewrote the Evening Block

For years, the shorthand on Century City was that it emptied out at 6 p.m. The towers cleared, valet lines thinned, and the interesting food conversation moved a mile east to Beverly Hills or a mile north to Melrose. What was left after dark was a well-lit walk between a movie theater, a hotel bar, and a mall that was better in the daytime.

That is no longer an accurate description of the block. Over the past year, Westfield Century City has quietly turned itself into one of the higher-density restaurant clusters on the Westside, and the office campus across Avenue of the Stars is finishing a new two-acre park and retail spine that comes online in the second quarter of 2026. The two changes are not related on paper. On the sidewalk, they add up to the same thing: a corridor that finally works after sunset for the people who live around it.

The Westfield dining reset is not one restaurant, it is a bench

Malls do not usually reset their food program all at once. Century City did. As of early 2026, the property houses a run of new operators that would each be a headline opening on their own block. Super Peach by Momofuku brings chef David Chang's modern Asian fusion, with signature small plates and entrees like slow-roasted baby back ribs and lobster noodles. Casa Dani, from three-Michelin-starred chef Dani García, mirrors his New York original with refined tapas, fresh seafood, gazpacho, paellas and Andalusian-inspired dishes, and a chilled shellfish display near the open kitchen. Katsuya Century City, chef Katsuya Uechi's fourth Los Angeles location, opened in 2025 with an open-air garden terrace and a menu of spicy tuna on crispy rice, baked crab hand rolls, and yellowtail sashimi alongside newer seasonal creations. Cafe Knotted, the Korean dessert and coffee brand, brings brioche doughnuts filled with creams and jams, specialty lattes, fruitades and soft-serve.

Three more are queued. Very Thai, Rumi's Kitchen, and a fast-casual extension of Mr. Chow are set to open soon. Read that lineup as a resident, not a tourist. It means the mall now offers a legitimate weeknight dinner with sushi omakase pacing, a Sunday paella lunch that lasts two hours, a Persian option a few doors from a Korean pastry counter, and a dessert-and-espresso stop that closes late. This is what a functional restaurant row looks like when it happens on a single deed.

For the address geeks, Casa Dani sits at 10250 Santa Monica Blvd, and Super Peach is on Level 1 in the West Corner of Century City, near the Santa Monica valet entrance and the Alo store. Both are inside the same short walk from the residential towers along Century Park East.

What Century City Center actually changes about the block

Across Avenue of the Stars, the office campus that has been under construction for the last three years is nearing delivery, and the piece that matters for a resident is not the tower. It is the ground plane. According to the Century City Business Improvement District's construction tracker, the landscaping and infrastructure for the building's two-acre park are underway, and construction of the retail and amenity buildings is scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2026. The anchor tenant CAA has initiated construction of its premises, the building opening is expected in the second quarter of 2026, and leasing includes CAA, Clearlake Financial and Sidley Austin.

Two acres is not a rounding error in a neighborhood defined by parking podiums. For comparison, the four-acre central park at the Hines-owned Century Park campus across the way has been the only real green square in the corridor for years. Doubling that footprint, in a location that sits directly between Westfield and the residential mid-rises on Century Park East, changes what a Tuesday evening walk looks like for anyone who lives inside the loop.

There is a second, quieter piece of infrastructure most residents will feel before they read about it. Anderson has completed the renovation on 1800 and 1900, and the B permit work to install a drop-off turnout in front of 1900 is expected in February 2026 and should take six to eight weeks, adding a new sidewalk, relocating one streetlight slightly south, and creating a cleaner drop-off zone in front of 1900 and 1950. Small on paper. Meaningful when it is your building.

How the corridor actually reads on a weeknight

If a friend from the Hills or the flats asks how to use Century City now, the honest answer is that it has stratified into distinct rooms, and knowing which room is which is the whole trick.

• Power-lunch to date-night pivot: Katsuya is a Century City fixture for a power lunch, a celebratory dinner, or a night out with drinks, which in practice means it is one of the few rooms where a 12:30 client meeting and a 7:45 anniversary reservation feel like the same restaurant with the volume turned up.
• Long Sunday: Casa Dani. Polished service, a lively yet elegant atmosphere, and a curated wine and cocktail list that scales from a two-person lunch to a table of eight without breaking rhythm.
• After a movie at the AMC: Super Peach for late small plates, then a short walk to Cafe Knotted for a pastry and a flat white.
• Groceries and a quick errand meal: The mall's pre-existing anchors still handle the weekday middle. The new operators are additive, not a replacement.

The pattern above is the actual news. Century City used to give a resident one useful evening choice at a time. It now offers a sequence you can string together in a single walk without moving your car.

The Hollywood Bowl variable, from a resident's angle

There is one more scheduling reality worth putting on the calendar, because it changes rideshare wait times and 405 traffic across the summer. The 2026 Hollywood Bowl season is unusually front-loaded and star-loaded. The season opens with the Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, and the Beach Boys headline three nights from July 2 through July 4 with synchronized fireworks over the Hollywood Hills. A four-night tribute called "Celebrating Gustavo at the Bowl" honors Gustavo Dudamel's final season with the LA Phil from August 20 to August 23, and on August 20 he conducts Beethoven's Ninth with the LA Phil, the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. St. Vincent performs with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the Beach Boys join the same orchestra for the three-night Fourth of July fireworks, and Jon Batiste closes Bowl-produced programming on September 27.

Why does that matter on Avenue of the Stars? Because on Bowl nights the smart move is a 6 p.m. dinner in Century City and a 7:15 rideshare east, rather than a 5:30 crawl through Hollywood looking for a table. The dining bench Westfield just built makes that math work for the first time.

The through-line

Century City did not need another lifestyle brochure. It needed operators willing to run a real dinner service, and it needed a piece of open ground that connected the office campus to the residential edge. Both arrived in the same eighteen-month window. The result is a corridor that a resident can actually inhabit in the evening, not merely pass through on the way somewhere else.

For the buyer or owner reading between the lines, that shift matters in a very specific way. When a submarket goes from a daytime address to a full-day address, the calculus on a two-bedroom on Century Park East or a corner condo above Constellation changes with it. A neighborhood that reads as a place to live on a Tuesday night at 8 p.m. is a different asset than a neighborhood that reads as a place to park during business hours. The rooms have not moved. The way the block is used around them has.

If you own in Century City and want a candid read on how these changes are showing up in comparable sales, or you are a buyer trying to understand what the new evening pattern means for a specific building, Renée Avedon is available for a private consultation. Let's Connect.