Westwood Village Changes Coming

Westwood Village, West Seattle's largest shopping mall, is getting its first major face lift since it opened about 1964 and will be renamed with the help of residents in the area.

Wesbild Inc., a Vancouver, B.C., company that bought the open-air mall in June from another Canadian firm, held a contest to select a new name. More than 500 entries were received, and the name will be announced soon. The contest winner will receive gift certificates for use at mall stores.

"We want to change the mall, upgrade it and create a new image for it without offending anyone. That's why we asked people to help select a new name," said Elizabeth Eisen, property manager at the mall.

The name Westwood Village will not die easily, however, having been associated with the mall and the Westwood residential neighborhood for about 27 years. Several people who entered the contest said the name should not be changed.

Other names suggested in contest entries include Westwood, Westgate, Barton and Trenton, the latter two referring to nearby streets, and Longfellow. The mall is near the source of Longfellow Creek, at 25th Avenue Southwest and Southwest Barton Street.

"I would like it to remain Westwood Village. I think there is some history (to that name) in this area. We'd like to keep a bit of our own personality here," said Luana Senske, who has shopped at the mall since it opened.

The 220,000-square-foot mall, just south of the Delridge area and close to White Center, has 23 tenants, including Lamonts, Target, Ernst, Pay'n Save and Big 5 stores and a Keg restaurant. It once had more than 40.

A three-year project to renovate and expand the mall has begun, despite the generally weak retail economy. Quality Food Centers is to open a supermarket in December, in a building formerly occupied by Food Giant, where construction is under way to enlarge it to 38,000 square feet of space and to include a deli and seafood bar, mall officials said. A "topping off" party was held there yesterday attended by construction workers, architects, and officials of QFC and the mall.

And negotiations are under way with prospective tenants for a one-story retail-service building being built elsewhere on the mall.

Some parking lots have been repaved and a new storm drain is being installed under one of the lots before it is repaved.

The project's next phase will be to renovate in about a year an older section of the mall, a pedestrian boulevard lined by small stores and shops; and then, in a third phase, perhaps to put up more retail buildings, Eisen said.

Westwood Village has been owned by various developers through the years, but little was done to improve the mall since the 1970s, said Rozanne Kipnes, development manager for Wesbild, which bought the mall from Brookfield PNW Inc., headquartered in Toronto.