This luxury mall in L.A. survived the wildfires—but not without a lot of help

FastCompany: Palisades Village, the high-end outdoor mall in Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades, is a rare chunk of the neighborhood that wasn’t destroyed in the wildfires that struck the region in January 2025. More than 6,800 structures perished in the Palisades fire, but aside from a few singed awnings and roasted patio cushions, the mall was relatively unscathed. After a year-and-a-half smoke cleanup and refresh, the shopping destination recently reopened, even as the neighborhood around it remains a mix of homes under reconstruction, charred land, and general uncertainty.

[Photo: Connie & Stewart Photography/courtesy Caruso] Controversially , the mall remained standing through the fires partly because it had what many of those lost homes didn’t. Caruso, the developer of the mall and other L.A. shopping centers including The Grove , had a private firefighting service on call ahead of the fires, and its firefighters were on site protecting the property within hours of the wildfire’s first spark. Palisades Village, largely undamaged by the Palisades Fire, surrounded by damaged buildings on January 15, 2025.

[Photo: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Caruso and its billionaire founder Rick Caruso, who ran for L.A. mayor in 2022 as a Republican , aren’t hiding the fact that hired firefighters helped keep the mall intact while much of the Palisades burned. Rather, the company sees the approach of prioritizing wildfire mitigation in its building practices and operations as part of the new way real estate developers have to do business in vulnerable areas.

“We learned very early on that building systems and materials were very important, as well as fire prevention protocols and having an emergency response team on hand,” says Corinne Verdery, CEO of Caruso. Responding to a new reality In December 2017, the company was less than a year away from the opening of the $200 million Palisades Village project when another of its major developments nearly burned to the ground. The Rosewood Miramar Resort , a 153-unit luxury beachfront property in the affluent Santa Barbara enclave of Montecito, was in the wood frame stage of construction and just months away from completion.

Then one of the largest wildfires in California history, the Thomas Fire , broke out nearby. The flames came within a few miles of the project and the local fire department notified Caruso that because the site was unoccupied, it wouldn’t be able to use firefighting resources if the property caught fire. “We totally understood that,” Verdery says. “So we immediately started making some phone calls.” The company hired a private firefighting company with its own trucks and water, and retired or off-duty firefighters on staff, to protect the project.

“They were there for several weeks, fighting the fire when embers were flying onto the site,” Verdery says. “They were aggressively clearing brush, watering down our wood structures. And then at one point, the embers got quite intense and we deployed this fire-retardant material onto the wood framing, which protected the building materials.” The Thomas Fire was eventually contained in early 2018, and the construction site for the Rosewood Miramar Resort was spared any major damages. It opened in March 2019. Expanding a proven solution In the meantime, Caruso realized the scale of the risk it dodged.

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The article discusses a significant case of brand strategy in the context of environmental challenges, which is increasingly relevant for brand strategists focusing on sustainability and community responsibility.