For years, a sit-down dinner before a night at the Civic Arts Plaza could mean driving toward Westlake Village. The area around The Lakes shopping center is now seeing new dining and entertainment options.
The past twelve months brought notable changes to the area.
From Lassens to Erewhon at The Lakes
According to The Acorn, Lassens Natural Food & Vitamins had been a fixture at The Lakes at Thousand Oaks for seven years before it closed its doors on May 1, 2025, after Caruso, the property's owner, declined to renew the lease. The closure was not quiet. A Thousand Oaks resident named Lauri Kamiel started a Facebook group called SaveLassensTO that grew past a hundred members, and she showed up to speak against the plan at an April 8, 2025 City Council meeting, arguing that the incoming replacement, a luxury organic grocer known for high price points, did not fit the price sensitivity she associated with Thousand Oaks compared to a more affluent retail market like nearby Calabasas.
The council had no authority over private leases, and the space sat dark for well over a year. Erewhon finally opened its doors on August 26, 2026, its first Ventura County location and the newest anchor at The Lakes, a 48,000 square foot center built around landscaped lakes, a rose garden, and a playground, sitting directly next to the Bank of America Performing Arts Center.
Not everything on the announcement list has kept pace. Sora Temaki Bar, the hand roll concept from Savta Hospitality Group, which also runs the Mediterranean restaurant Savta and the Italian spot Michelina, was slated to open a second location inside The Lakes by spring 2026. Spring came and went. As of this writing the storefront is still waiting, a reminder that a wave of good news doesn't mean every piece of it lands on schedule.
The Season Next Door
While the grocery store gap was closing, the Civic Arts Plaza was building toward its biggest touring season in years. The American Theatre Guild announced its 2026-27 Broadway in Thousand Oaks lineup in May, and all four productions are Thousand Oaks premieres.
| Show | Dates | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The Carpenters Songbook: A Live Celebration | November 30, 2026 | One-night special engagement, and the Carpenters had deep roots in the area |
| Hadestown | December 11-13, 2026 | Winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards, including Best Musical |
| The Bodyguard | March 17-19, 2027 | Stage version of the 1992 film, built around the Whitney Houston catalog |
A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical rounds out the subscription titles, with an exact date still to be set. In its season announcement, BroadwayWorld quoted Craig Aikman, the Guild's senior director of presenting operations, describing it as entertainment "right in your own backyard."
That line matters more here than it would in most cities. A four-show, multi-month season means curtain times between now and next March, each one drawing audiences to the Civic Arts Plaza.
A New Restaurant Option in Thousand Oaks
Chef Jacopo Falleni opened Sette Sorelle in January at 495 N. Ventu Park Road, adding another restaurant option for a Thousand Oaks evening. Falleni is the co-owner of Nonna, the well regarded Westlake Village restaurant built as a tribute to his grandmothers, and Sette Sorelle is its more contemporary sister concept, a modern Italian menu of shareable plates and house-made pasta served in a room with live music most evenings.
For a Thousand Oaks resident deciding where to eat before a 7:30 curtain, that's a genuinely different calculation than it was two years ago. A full dinner with wine and a decent wait for a table used to mean planning around a drive to Westlake. Now it means a short drive within the city, to a theater that, by its own account, ranks among the largest performing arts centers between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The theater season and Sette Sorelle's opening are two recent additions to the area's evening options. A performance at the Civic Arts Plaza and dinner at a local restaurant can be part of the same outing.
What This Actually Changes This Fall
If you already live here, the practical shift is this: an evening at the Civic Arts Plaza can now include dinner within Thousand Oaks.
The rhythm around it hasn't changed and doesn't need to. The Thousand Oaks Certified Farmers' Market has run every Thursday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in The Oaks Mall's east parking lot since 1991, rain or shine, and it's still the easiest way to get produce, flowers, and fresh seafood without driving toward the coast. The corridor connecting The Lakes to the Civic Arts Plaza is also seeing new dining and entertainment options this fall.
If you're weighing a November evening around The Carpenters Songbook, a December weekend built around Hadestown, or simply want to know what's worth walking to on a Thursday at the farmers' market, the answer this season is inside your own zip code in a way it wasn't twelve months ago.
If you're thinking about what a shift like this means for property values or timing a move in this part of Thousand Oaks, the team at Michelle Price Realty Group tracks these neighborhood-level changes as part of daily practice, not as an afterthought. Reach out for a confidential consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
