Ask a Calabasas resident last fall what was happening near Liberty Canyon Road and they'd have shrugged. Some kind of animal bridge, still not done, probably years out. Ask about the Commons and they'd have mentioned the movie theater closing, vaguely, without much urgency. Neither felt close to finished. Neither felt connected to the other.
That's no longer true. This fall, the two projects bookending the short stretch of the 101 that defines daily life in Calabasas are both mid-construction at the same time, for the first time since either one started. One has a completion date on the calendar. The other has cranes where the parking lot used to be. If you drive that stretch to get anywhere, the next four months will reroute more of your week than either headline suggests on its own.
The Freeway Finally Gets A Finish Date
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, the vegetated bridge over US-101 just west of Liberty Canyon Road in Agoura Hills, broke ground on Earth Day in 2022 and has been a fixture of local traffic advisories ever since. This year it stopped being an abstraction. In early August, the City of Calabasas warned drivers that the northbound 101 on-ramp at Liberty Canyon would close during the day for a stretch of construction work, with Caltrans routing traffic through a detour via Agoura Road and Chesebro Road. That kind of daytime ramp closure is new. Earlier phases mostly meant nighttime lane restrictions.
The reason for the tighter timeline: the project now has an actual finish line. On Earth Day this year, Beth Pratt, the wildlife advocate who has championed the crossing since before it had funding, announced a ribbon-cutting date of December 2. That's the same completion window Caltrans has posted for the broader project, which will let mountain lions, bobcats, and other wildlife move between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills without crossing traffic. For residents, the practical read is simpler: expect more daytime and nighttime closures at that interchange through the fall, with the ramp work easing once the bridge itself is finished in December. The Caltrans project page posts updates as closures are scheduled, which is worth bookmarking if Liberty Canyon is part of your regular route.
Two Exits East, The Town Square Is Also A Construction Site
Drive two exits east on the 101 to Calabasas Road and you hit the other active site. The Commons at Calabasas has been the city's de facto town square since it opened in 1998, and it's now three-decades in the middle of its first major overhaul. Rick Caruso broke ground on the renovation in early February, and the old Regency movie theater, the anchor that gave the property its shape for a generation, is gone to make room for new construction.
The approved plan replaces it with roughly a dozen new shops and restaurants along what's being called Commons Lane, plus 80 apartment homes on the south side of the street. Caruso's team has said some of the new storefronts could turn over to tenants by the end of this year, with the apartments following in fall 2027. As of this summer, the Commons' own construction updates describe the shop and restaurant buildings as well underway, with some spaces already being handed to incoming tenants to start their buildouts. Calabasas Mayor James Bozajian, who was also mayor when the Commons first opened, put the shift plainly at the groundbreaking: the concept of a mixed-use town center didn't exist here thirty years ago, and now it does.
What's easy to miss is that the property was already refreshing itself before the shovels went in. Superba Food + Bread opened its Calabasas location at the Commons in late March of last year, nearly a year before the larger renovation broke ground, which tells you the shopping center wasn't waiting on permits to start turning over tenants where it could.
Old Town Didn't Wait For The Cranes Either
While the two big projects work through their permitting and phasing, the smaller storefronts on Calabasas Road have kept moving at their own pace. Yume Sushi Bar recently opened a second location in Old Town, expanding a concept that already had a following elsewhere. The Mulholland, a newer restaurant in the neighborhood, has become one of the more talked-about additions to the strip. And in March, the city's own newsletter flagged two more openings at 23504 Calabasas Road:
- The Library Calabasas, a new addition to Old Town's retail mix
- KittyBird Blooms Calabasas, a florist joining the same block
Both landed at an address that already hosts the Saturday morning fixture of the neighborhood: the Old Town Calabasas Farmers Market, running 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. most weekends. None of this required a groundbreaking ceremony or a completion date announcement. It's the version of neighborhood change that happens one lease at a time, without a ribbon cutting.
The Same Two Miles, Both Ends, The Same Season
Here's what makes this fall different from any other stretch of Commons or freeway construction Calabasas has lived through. The wildlife crossing and the Commons overhaul aren't happening in different corners of town on separate timelines. They're happening at the two ends of the same short 101 corridor, in the same six months, for the first time since both projects started.
For years you could route around whichever project was active and still count on the other exit being clear. Not this fall. Liberty Canyon is absorbing daytime ramp closures as the crossing finishes. Calabasas Road is fronting a construction zone where the movie theater used to sit. If your normal habit is to hop on or off the 101 depending on which exit is faster, both of your usual options are compromised in overlapping windows between now and December.
What Actually Changes For Your Week
The Calabasas Pumpkin Festival returns to Juan Bautista de Anza Park in October, as it does most years, drawing families into the same general traffic pattern that's already absorbing detour routing from the wildlife crossing work. If you're headed that way, building in extra time isn't overcaution, it's just what the season looks like this year.
Closer to home, the practical shift is smaller but real. Between Yume Sushi Bar's second location, The Mulholland, and the Commons' incoming restaurant lineup, there's less reason to drive over the hill for a meal out than there was a year ago. And once the Commons' new storefronts start opening later this year, the parking and walking patterns around Commons Lane will shift again, this time for the better, once the construction fencing comes down.
None of this changes what Calabasas is. It changes how you get around it for one specific season, and it's worth knowing that before October traffic and December closures collide.
For more on what's changing in the neighborhoods across Calabasas and the greater San Fernando Valley, Brandolino Group keeps a closer eye on local shifts than most portals bother to. If you're thinking about what any of this means for your own property or your next move in the area, reach out. We're happy to talk through it.
