Walk down Broxton on a Thursday evening and you can hear the Village doing something it hasn't done in a decade: filling in. The corner that housed BJ's for years has fresh signage. The old Fox has scaffolding along its flanks and a new name on the marquee. A burger shop is papering its windows two blocks away. Ask a longtime resident what changed, and most will point at the same building.
The thesis of this summer's Westwood story is simple. The seismic retrofit of the Village Theater is not just a construction project. It is the anchor that is pulling the surrounding storefronts back into use, and the tenants arriving in 2026 are shaping themselves around a movie palace that will re-open with screening rooms, a bar, and a full restaurant. If you live here, the practical version of that story is a summer with more places to eat, one very specific film to see, and a clearer sense of what the next twelve months of the Village will look like.
The Theater Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
The temporary renovations to the Village Theatre are mainly seismic work, in addition to the construction of new screening rooms, a bar and a restaurant, according to Michael Russell of the Westwood Village Improvement Association. That is a bigger program than a facade refresh. It reframes the theater as a multi-room venue with food and beverage attached, which is why the retail leases nearby are moving now rather than waiting for a ribbon cutting.
The clearest signal that the theater is functional again as a cultural draw is what is on its screen in July. Christopher Nolan's latest film, The Odyssey, opens at two Westside theaters this July for a series of exclusive 70mm film screenings, with Universal Pictures partnering with The American Cinematheque and the Village Directors Circle to bring the 2026 release to Directors Village, aka the Westwood Village Theater. The Directors Village run in Westwood covers July 16 through August 6, with a concurrent shorter engagement at the Aero in Santa Monica. Three weeks of 70mm Nolan is exactly the kind of programming that pulls foot traffic across Broxton and Weyburn on a weeknight, which is precisely what neighboring operators are betting on.
The retail mix on Broxton is being re-priced against a theater that will open with a bar and restaurant inside it. Every new lease this year should be read against that fact.
Broxton Avenue Fills In
The most-watched vacancy in the Village belonged to BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, which sat empty after its July 2024 closure. That address now has a tenant. Yemeni coffee shop Sana'a Cafe is opening a location in Westwood Village at 939 Broxton Ave., formerly occupied by BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse. The chain has roots in the Bay Area. Primarily based in San Francisco, Sana'a Cafe has eight locations along the California coast and one in Tacoma, and the new Westwood location will be the third in the Los Angeles area, joining Hollywood and Lake Forest.
For residents used to the coffee options thinning out after 6 p.m., the menu is the more interesting part. Sana'a Cafe offers a wide variety of espresso drinks and Yemeni specialties like Sana'ani, a coffee flavored with cardamom, or qishr, a drink made from coffee bean husks, cinnamon, and ginger. Sana'a Cafe is aiming to open in the first week of March, according to operations manager Sadeq Alaqel, who said the Westwood location is designed to be a welcoming gathering space for students, locals, and visitors alike. The site line matters: 939 Broxton is a short walk from the theater entrance, which means the cafe is positioned to catch the pre- and post-screening crowd once Directors Village re-opens in full.
A block over, another vacancy is coming down. Construction is underway for the new Raising Cane's location on the corner of Weyburn Avenue and Broxton Avenue. Whether or not Cane's is your particular preference, a national quick-service tenant taking that corner tells you what the leasing brokers already know: Broxton and Weyburn is again considered a high-traffic intersection worth paying for.
The Lindbrook Wave You May Have Missed
Not all of the movement is on the main drag. Lindbrook Drive has quietly become the block to watch for smaller independent operators.
- Le Phant Milk Tea Co., a specialty milk tea shop, arrived on the scene June 20 on Lindbrook. Co-owner Saul Lopez said the business distinguishes itself as a milk tea shop by brewing their tea leaves with an in-house espresso machine to achieve a stronger flavor and making their creamers by hand using real milk without any powders.
- Danny Boy's Pizza, a New York-style pizza restaurant, officially opened July 17 on the same block. Owner and head chef Daniel Holzman said the idea was inspired by the pizza of his youth, describing it as a traditional New York City-style pizza by the slice joint, authentic to New York City in 1996.
Two small food-and-beverage operators opening within a month of each other on the same side street is not coincidence. It is what happens when a corridor gets re-leased around a bigger draw. If you live within walking distance, Lindbrook is now a legitimate weekday dinner option in a way it was not a year ago.
What Is Still Coming
A handful of tenants have signed but not opened. This is the practical calendar for the back half of 2026.
A new burger joint is bringing gooey goodness to Westwood Village soon, with window paper up at 913 Westwood Blvd announcing the arrival of The Melt. The Melt has locations across California and Arizona, with a menu of grilled cheese, "mac n cheese," and chicken sandwiches, and they are planning on a fall opening. Fall in this context probably means late Q3 or early Q4, which lines up with the tail end of the Odyssey run and the start of the UCLA academic year.
Westwood residents can also look forward to Bruxie, a fried chicken and waffles restaurant, and Milksha, another boba and tea shop, along with 2nd Street USA, a Japanese-based clothing resale store. Three signed tenants in three different categories, in the same window, is the retail-mix version of a portfolio: coffee, quick-service burgers, chicken and waffles, a second boba concept, and a resale apparel anchor. Someone leasing this corridor is deliberately building for a foot-traffic pattern that assumes the theater is open.
Reading Between the Storefronts
If you are a homeowner in Westwood, Holmby Westwood, or the condo corridor on Wilshire, the useful takeaway is not a list of restaurants. It is timing.
The Village went through most of the 2010s and early 2020s as a corridor with high storefront turnover and long vacancy cycles. What is happening in 2026 is a different pattern. Leases are closing in clusters, the anchor property is investing in food and beverage inside its own footprint, and the tenants signing on are betting that pre- and post-screening spend will support their model. Russell put it plainly, saying the theater renovation presents a unique opportunity for somebody to come in and leverage new interest and new investment in that building. He added that with the Olympics coming to Westwood Village soon, as well as the future opening of the Metro D Line station, these events make Westwood an interesting and exciting area for new businesses to enter.
Two of those catalysts, the D Line extension and the 2028 Games, sit on longer horizons. The theater is the near-term one. If you are watching the Village to understand where it is heading, the summer of 2026 is when the pattern becomes readable from the sidewalk.
A Weekend Plan, if You Want One
For the resident version of all of the above, a workable July or August Saturday looks like this. Coffee and a qishr at Sana'a on Broxton once it opens. A slice from Danny Boy's on Lindbrook. A late-afternoon 70mm ticket to The Odyssey at Directors Village between July 16 and August 6. If the show runs long, Le Phant's milk tea is around the corner. If you are the type to plan ahead for fall, put The Melt on Westwood Boulevard on the list for October.
None of these are destination restaurants in the Michelin sense. They are the texture of a neighborhood that is filling back in. That is worth walking through and noticing, because the version of the Village you tell out-of-town guests about in 2027 is being cast right now.
If you own in Westwood and you are curious what the leasing patterns on Broxton and Weyburn are doing to values on the surrounding blocks, or you are quietly watching the Village because a move-up or a sale is on your two-year horizon, that is a conversation worth having sooner rather than later. Reach out to Mitch Bassett to book an appointment and talk through what the block-by-block picture looks like from a homeowner's seat.
