Flurry of activity puts focus on area near Northridge Mall.

A stretch of land that surrounds the Northridge Fashion Center has suddenly become the center of attention of developers and retailers.

Two national retailers are planning moves into the area. A developer is set to construct an 800-unit condominium community, and smaller strip centers are getting new owners and facelifts.

More than 10 years after the Northridge Earthquake tore through the area, the rebuilding is complete. Porter Ranch continues its expansion with more affluent, single-family homes underway and even Northridge Fashion Center has begun working on revising its tenant mix as leases, many signed in the wake of the earthquake, run out.

"A lot of the shopping centers on Tampa (Avenue) went through a renovation, the growth in all the upper end housing in Porter Ranch really added a nice, new demographic boost ... the rapid expansion of the Washington Mutual campus and the construction of the courthouse ... so there's a lot of things happening all at once that are having a global influence on that section of Northridge," said Eric Smyth, a principal with CIP Real Estate in Irvine.

CIP is currently finishing up the renovation of Northridge Promenade at Nordhoff Street and Shirley Avenue, which will soon get a new Guitar Center store.

Across the way, at Nordhoff Street and Corbin Avenue, Lowe's is building a new home improvement store, which Smyth and others figure will draw shoppers from across the region.

Wal-Mart has a new store planned directly across from the Southern end of the Northridge Fashion Center in a shopping mall that once housed a Levitz and a Best store and has been vacant for years.

And next door, another developer has acquired Tampa Plaza, an adjoining center that is anchored by a Bed Bath & Beyond, with plans to spruce up that project as leases expire.

"There are so few locations in the San Fernando Valley where boxes of any size can go that they'd want to open as soon as they could almost anywhere they could go as long as they don't directly conflict with another store," said David S. Goldman, manager of Tampa Plaza Partners LLC, the new owners of the center. "These are opportunities waiting to happen for a long time,"

Mall is hub

Goldman believes that the mall is the biggest draw for retail tenants.