Ask anyone in Valencia what's new and they'll point you toward the mall. Centennial bought Valencia Town Center in September 2023, and since then the property has generated a steady stream of press releases about bowling alleys, Korean hot pot, and Japanese arcade games shipped in from overseas. It reads like a neighborhood in the middle of a makeover. But walk the storefronts on a random Tuesday and you'll find a mall that's still mostly the mall it was two years ago, with a handful of new tenants seated among a lot of promised ones.
A short drive away, at the corner of Navigation Avenue and Magic Mountain Parkway, something quieter has been running the whole time. No press release announced it. It just showed up one Sunday in August 2024 and kept coming back.
What's Actually Already Running
The Valencia FivePoint Farmers Market held its grand opening at the main entry to the FivePoint Valencia community on August 4, 2024, managed by California Direct Markets, the same operator behind the long-running Old Town Newhall Saturday market and the Canyon Country Wednesday market. Two years later it's still there every Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the vendor list reads like a small business who's who rather than a generic amenity checklist.
F&F Farms brings mushrooms, avocados, and arugula up from Ventura County. Guiterrez Farms hauls berries from Nipomo. Urban Fresh Farms is grown right here in the Santa Clarita Valley, run by a farmer named Guido who brings lettuces, herbs, and free-range eggs. Verni and Halaby Farms has been in the olive oil business for more than a hundred years and sells almonds and walnuts alongside it. Tamales Express grinds its own masa and makes its tamales in Santa Clarita. Antipasti L.A. shows up with fresh burrata and take-and-bake lasagna. None of that is filler copy pulled from a chamber of commerce page. It's the actual roster, and it's the kind of detail that only shows up if you've stood in that parking lot on a Sunday morning.
The market isn't the only thing happening at that corner, known locally as The Porch. It's also home to Friday Night Happenings, a recurring live music and food series that's run through summer and fall since the community's early days. Once a month, an event that started as a food truck gathering called What The Truck has been rebranded as the 661 Night Market, still landing on the first Saturday of the month. The Porch also hosts the recurring Roots & Rhythm Night Market, and in July it ran the Rhythm of the Tropics Night Market, a cultural celebration built around Caribbean, Pacific Islander, Latin American, and Southeast Asian food and performance. None of these events require a car ride to a different part of town. They happen on the same patch of asphalt where the farmers set up every week.
The Mall's Redevelopment, Phase By Phase
Meanwhile, Valencia Town Center is in the middle of what Centennial has called a multi-phase reimagining, and the timeline is worth looking at closely, because the headlines and the storefronts aren't saying quite the same thing yet.
The property has a history of stalled ambition. Back in 2019, Westfield proposed a Patios Connection project on the former Sears site, complete with a luxury cinema, a gym, and a Costco with rooftop parking. That plan was canceled in April 2021. The Sears building sat there for years afterward, empty and unresolved.
In March 2026, Centennial announced that Round1 Bowling & Arcade would finally take over that same 125,000 square foot space, bringing bowling, billiards, karaoke, and an arcade concept called Spo-cha along with a Japanese food hall. The announcement put a number on the wait: Round1 isn't expected to open until early 2027, nearly six years after the previous plan for that same footprint fell apart.
Then in April 2026, Centennial went further, announcing a wave of ten new tenants and more than 175,000 square feet of new dining, entertainment, and retail across the property. Some of those names are already seating guests. Others are still on the way. Here's the split as of this fall:
| Already open or opening now | Still to come |
|---|---|
| KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot | Round1 Bowling & Arcade (early 2027) |
| Slice House by Tony Gemignani | Bushfire Kitchen |
| Wafflecomb | Bacio di Latte |
The mall is also expanding its menswear and jewelry footprint, with J David and Pandora both growing their existing spaces, a renovated lululemon, and a skate culture shop called Pharmacy Boardshop joining the lineup. Elsewhere in Valencia this year, the fast-casual Mediterranean chain CAVA announced a new location, staffing 25 to 40 local positions and running a community fundraiser for LA Food Cycle as part of its opening. It's one more sign that Valencia's dining scene is filling in from multiple directions at once, not just from one mall relaunch.
Why The Timeline Actually Matters
Here's the part that gets lost in the coverage. When a story says a mall is "transforming," it's easy to picture a finished thing. What's actually happening at Valencia Town Center is a property working through a backlog that in some cases dates back to a canceled Costco plan from six years ago, releasing new tenants in stages that stretch into 2027. That's not a criticism. Redeveloping an anchor space this size takes time, and a project moving from a stalled 2021 cancellation to an actual opening date is real progress. But it means the mall's new identity is still assembling itself piece by piece, while the neighborhood's other center of gravity, the farmers market and the Friday night gatherings at The Porch, has already had two full years to become a habit.
If you're trying to figure out where Valencia's actual weekly rhythm lives right now, in September 2026, the honest answer is that it splits in two directions that aren't equally far along. The Sunday market and the Porch's recurring nights are a known quantity, running on a schedule that hasn't changed since 2024. The mall's new wave is real, and some of it, like KPOT and Slice House, is already worth the drive. But if you're waiting for the bowling alley or the last couple of dining concepts, you're waiting for 2027, not this fall.
That gap between announcement and opening day is worth remembering the next time a press release makes a neighborhood sound finished. Valencia isn't waiting on the mall to feel like itself. It already does, every Sunday morning at Navigation and Magic Mountain, and has for two years.
If you're weighing what a home near either of these centers of activity might be worth, or wondering how a corner like this one shapes buyer interest in FivePoint versus the streets closer to the Town Center, that's exactly the kind of local read Paula Stafford Estates can walk you through. Curious about your home's worth? Request a free home valuation.
