Ask a longtime resident where the Thousand Oaks Rotary Street Fair parks its cars every October and they will not hesitate. Janss Marketplace, corner of Moorpark and Hillcrest, same as it has been for as long as anyone can remember. This year the Rotary Club of Thousand Oaks hosts the 34th Annual TO Rotary Street Fair on Sunday, October 18, and once again fairgoers will park free of charge in that same lot, right across from the fair itself. The event now draws over 19,000 people in a single day, a tradition that has held steady for a quarter century while raising money for causes across the community.
What has not held steady is the mall lending its parking lot.
Janss Marketplace opened in September 1961 as Village Lane, the first shopping center Thousand Oaks ever had and its only one until The Oaks arrived in 1978. Anyone who has shopped there across the decades has watched anchors come and go. Sears downsized and eventually closed in 2018. Toys R Us shut its doors that same year. Sports Authority gave way to Dave & Buster's. What is different now is the pace and shape of the change happening at that same corner, and it is worth understanding before you plan your next fall weekend around it.
The Mall Behind the Fair Is Being Rebuilt Piece by Piece
Calabasas-based NewMark Merrill now controls the entire Janss Marketplace property, after consolidating ownership of the roughly 458,000-square-foot center under one company. Since then, the retail firm has been reshaping the property piece by piece. A Five Below filled one of the center's storefronts with new construction rather than a hand-me-down space from a previous tenant, and a bowling alley is planned for the mall's Sunset Terrace Restaurant & Lounge, adding a second entertainment draw alongside the Sky Zone trampoline park and the axe-throwing venue already there.
The bigger change sits above street level. The site has already secured approval for a five-story, 216-room hotel, a dual-branded property combining Homewood Suites and Home2 Suites under the Hilton flag, built on the two-story portion of the property that now houses Nordstrom Rack, Dave & Buster's, and DSW. And the city has rezoned the entire 38-acre property for mixed use, a designation that allows 20 to 30 residential units per acre. Do the math on the full parcel and the ceiling is close to 1,000 housing units, phased in over time according to NewMark Merrill's own plans for the site.
The company's CEO put the reasoning plainly when the plans were first announced. "Thousand Oaks has a real shortage of housing, especially for young people," Sandy Sigal said. Whatever comes of the housing timeline, the practical effect for anyone who lives nearby is that the same lot the Street Fair borrows every October, the same lot you have pulled into for a decade of Regal Cinemas trips or ALDI runs, is now an active redevelopment site rather than a finished piece of the neighborhood.
None of this changes what the fair looks like this October. It changes what you are looking at while you park for it.
What's New to Eat Once You're Off That Corner
The food side of the neighborhood has moved just as fast, if less visibly tied to one address. Chef Jacopo Falleni opened Sette Sorelle in Thousand Oaks in February 2026, an Italian concept built around shareable plates and house-made pasta that drew a warm reception once its quiet soft-opening phase gave way to a full house. It is the kind of sit-down, date-night addition that the area's dining scene has leaned toward more often this year, alongside the quicker-service side of the ledger.
A few blocks from Janss Marketplace, Raising Cane's opened its newest Thousand Oaks location on August 10 at 400 N. Moorpark Road, part of the chain's nationwide 30th anniversary expansion. And on the other side of town, Erewhon has confirmed plans to open its first Ventura County location at The Lakes at Thousand Oaks on East Thousand Oaks Boulevard, moving into the former Lassens Natural Food & Vitamins space, with an opening targeted for summer. The grocer's signature Tonic Bar and prepared foods counter will give the east side of the city its own draw the way Sette Sorelle has given the center of town one.
Put together, this is not a single new restaurant appearing in a quiet year. It is three different kinds of dining, fast casual, elevated sit-down, and wellness-focused grocery, landing in the same twelve months across different corners of a city that has not historically been known for food news. If you have not tried any of the three yet, fall is a reasonable time to start, since cooler evenings tend to fill patio seating fast once the Street Fair crowd starts talking about where they ate afterward.
The Trail That Gets Better as the Corner Gets Busier
Wildwood Regional Park solves the other half of a Thousand Oaks fall weekend, and it does not care what is happening at Janss Marketplace. The park's 1,765 acres hold 14 named trails covering more than 17 miles, run by the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency, and the walk to Paradise Falls remains the park's signature outing. From the main trailhead off Avenida de Los Arboles, the Mesa Trail leads to Teepee Trail, where a wooden teepee marks a shady junction before the Moonridge Trail drops into the canyon toward the falls themselves, a seasonal cascade that runs closer to 40 feet when conditions cooperate.
Summer heat makes the exposed sections of Mesa and Moonridge a genuine test of hydration planning. Fall changes that math. The same round trip that feels punishing in August turns into a comfortable two to three hour outing once October temperatures settle in, which is precisely why the weeks around the Street Fair tend to be when Wildwood's parking lot off Big Sky Drive fills earliest on Saturday mornings. Along the way, Lizard Rock and the small grotto known as Indian Cave give the hike two more stopping points beyond the waterfall itself, and the park's free 58-stall dirt lot at the Mesa trailhead means there is rarely a fee standing between you and the trail.
The connection between a Saturday hike and a Sunday fair is not incidental. A growing number of the newer restaurants sitting closer to town, Sette Sorelle among them, have become the natural stop on the way back from Wildwood, in a way that simply was not true five years ago when the options near that corner were mostly food court standards.
A Fall Weekend That Looks the Same on the Surface
Nothing about this fall's Street Fair will look different from last year's, or the one before that. The Rotary Club will run its 34th event on October 18, the parking will still be free at Janss Marketplace, and the crowd will still push past 19,000. That continuity is part of what makes Thousand Oaks feel like Thousand Oaks. But the ground underneath that continuity is shifting in ways that are easy to miss if your visits to that corner are limited to fair day and the occasional movie. A Five Below where a smaller tenant used to be, a bowling alley on the way, a hotel with an approved permit, and a rezoning that opens the door to hundreds of new units on a property that has been a shopping center since 1961. The fair will feel familiar. The lot it borrows will not stay that way for long.
If you are curious how these kinds of shifts, entertainment additions, new dining, and zoning changes tend to ripple through daily life and property values in specific pockets of Thousand Oaks, our Thousand Oaks neighborhood guide tracks the broader picture, and our piece on how the city's open space shapes daily living digs deeper into trails like Wildwood. And if you would simply like a local perspective on what any of this means for your own corner of the Conejo Valley, Rodney Johnson Team is always glad to talk it through. Schedule a Confidential Market Consultation whenever the timing feels right.
