Erewhon Is Replacing Lassens at The Lakes, and That's Only Half the Story

"It came as a shock to the community to learn that our beloved local organic market, Lassens, is being shuttered by Caruso as part of the collaboration with the city to develop a downtown Thousand Oaks."

That's Lauri Kamiel, the Thousand Oaks resident who founded a Facebook group called SaveLassensTO after she read a sign on the door of her favorite health food store. The group passed 100 members within weeks. Kamiel took her case to the April 8, 2025 city council meeting. She lost. Lassens Natural Food & Vitamins closed for good on May 1, 2025, after seven years at The Lakes at Thousand Oaks, because Caruso, the property's owner, chose not to renew the lease.

What's replacing it says more about where this city is headed than the closure itself. Erewhon, the organic grocery chain known for celebrity customers and a $20 Hailey Bieber smoothie, is set to open its first Ventura County location in the same spot this summer. But the more interesting fact buried in Kamiel's quote isn't the swap. It's the phrase "collaboration with the city to develop a downtown Thousand Oaks." That's not spin. That's the actual plan, and it's playing out in real time across the same six blocks residents already treat as their default weekend stop.

The Lease Caruso Didn't Renew

The Lakes at Thousand Oaks has been a fixture since it opened in 2005: a 48,000-square-foot center built around two lakes, a rose garden, koi ponds, and a playground, sitting directly next to the Bank of America Performing Arts Center at the Civic Arts Plaza. It's the kind of place where a Wednesday kids' club has run every spring through fall since the center opened, and where regulars know the koi are well fed enough that you shouldn't bother feeding them yourself.

Caruso, the development company founded by Rick Caruso, owns The Lakes along with The Promenade at Westlake and The Village at Moorpark. When Lassens' lease came up, Caruso let it lapse rather than renew, and Erewhon signed on for the space at 2150 E. Thousand Oaks Boulevard. City Manager Drew Powers told residents at that April 2025 meeting that the city has no control over private lease negotiations. Economic development manager Haider Alawami offered to help Lassens find another spot in town using the city's database of vacant properties, but as of the closure there was no announced relocation.

Kamiel's objection wasn't really about brand loyalty. It was about fit. Erewhon's flagship locations sell produce boxes and skincare-branded smoothies at prices that work in Calabasas or Pacific Palisades, and Kamiel argued on record that Thousand Oaks, while health-conscious, doesn't share that same spending pattern. Online reaction split the same way: some longtime shoppers called the swap a loss of "a great community" hub with a genuinely useful hot bar, while others were happy to see a splashier name move in. Neither side is wrong. They're just describing two different visions for what this center is supposed to be, and both were true of Lassens on the same day it closed.

As of early July 2026, Erewhon still hadn't opened its doors, with local reporting pointing to a debut sometime this month. When it does open, it'll bring a cafe and a Tonic Bar alongside the grocery floor, plus produce sourced in part from regional growers.

Two Deliveries, Same Six Blocks

The Lassens-to-Erewhon swap isn't an isolated event. It's one entry in a busier ledger than most people walking past The Lakes probably realize, and the pattern cuts in two directions at once.

On one end: Sette Sorelle, chef Jacopo Falleni's Italian concept, opened Feb. 10, 2026, with house-made pastas, shareable plates, and a bar area that quickly became a date-night draw with live music. It's the kind of opening that fits the Erewhon script, aspirational and destination-driven.

On the other end: Raising Cane's held its grand opening Aug. 10, 2026, at 400 N. Moorpark Road, part of the chicken chain's 30th anniversary expansion. That's a budget-friendly, drive-through-adjacent addition, and it landed in the same summer as Erewhon's arrival, a few minutes away. Laidrey Coffee Roasters, a small specialty roaster with locations across the Conejo Valley, has also announced a fourth location coming to Thousand Oaks, its second in the valley after an Agoura Hills shop opened last year. Timing is still to be determined, with late 2026 or early 2027 the working estimate.

Put the four next to each other and you get a corridor that's adding a $20-smoothie grocery chain and a hand-battered chicken finger restaurant within the same few months. That's not contradictory. It's what happens when a city tries to build a downtown from scratch: you get both the version aimed at people with disposable income to spend on wellness and the version aimed at everyone else who just wants dinner on a Tuesday, occupying the same real estate at the same time.

The Plan Behind the Parking Lot

This didn't happen by accident. Back in November 2021, the Thousand Oaks City Council approved Caruso's request to build new residential units on a portion of The Lakes' parking lot, after months of resident meetings. Caruso's own framing at the time was explicit: the housing was meant to support the area's growing biotech and tech employers while complementing the city's push to activate businesses along Thousand Oaks Boulevard and create what the company called a pedestrian-friendly civic center.

That's the same language Kamiel invoked when she pushed back on Erewhon. She wasn't wrong to connect the dots. The Lakes sits directly beside the Civic Arts Plaza precisely because Caruso and the city have been treating this corner as the seed of an actual downtown for years, not just a shopping center that happens to have a lake in it. Every tenant change here, whether it's a beloved health food store losing its lease or a celebrity grocery chain moving in, is a data point in that larger project. The center's own turnover history backs this up: Claim Jumper gave way to Lassens in 2014, Umami Burger closed in 2020 after eight years, P.F. Chang's shut down in August 2022. This property has never stood still. What's different now is that the turnover is happening alongside a deliberate civic plan, not just ordinary retail churn.

What Doesn't Change

None of this touches the parts of The Lakes that don't have a lease attached. The rose garden is still there. The koi are still overfed. The Wednesday kids' club still runs from spring through fall, and the bridge over the lake is still where families end up regardless of which grocery chain occupies the northeast corner.

Right next door, the Civic Arts Plaza's fall calendar is already locking in, and it's a useful reminder that the neighborhood's actual gathering rhythm has less to do with any single retailer than with what's on stage. New West Symphony's 2026 Masterpiece Series runs through Dec. 5, and Broadway in Thousand Oaks continues its current season through June 2027 at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center, one of the larger performing arts venues between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Dinner before a show, coffee after a Saturday morning at the farmers market, a walk around the lake with the kids before a Sunday matinee: that pattern holds whether the anchor tenant is a family-run health food shop or an eleventh-location grocery chain with a Tonic Bar.

The lesson in Kamiel's fight isn't that Erewhon is right or wrong for this address. It's that watching what leases turn over at The Lakes is now the closest thing Thousand Oaks has to a live readout on how its downtown experiment is actually going. Keep an eye on that corner through the fall. It'll tell you more about the city's next few years than any single grand opening will.

If you're curious how these shifts in daily life around Thousand Oaks connect to what's happening in the broader coastal and Westside markets, Robert Edie has spent nearly two decades tracking how neighborhoods like this one evolve. Let's Connect if you want a local read on what any of it means for you.