New Trader Joe’s Taking Shape in UCLA Westwood Village Area

The sign itself is modest, muted behind tinted glass, belying the certain impact the contents of its message are soon to reak upon a neighborhood and retail district. It is a simple banner, somewhere between the sort you might make at Kinko’s for a birthday party and one you might hang over an aircraft carrier deck to celebrate the victorious end of the Iraq war, bearing four words in happy fonts that simultaneously elicit giddy anticipation from prospective shoppers while striking the fear of God into the very hearts of Westwood Village food and drug retailers: Trader. Joe’s. Coming. Soon.

After long being rumoured and finally confirmed earlier this year, the UCLA area outpost of the cult grocer inches towards becoming a reality. It is situated pleasingly away from the overtrafficed Westwood Blvd drag. Slowly taking form in the ground-level space of the god-awful butter-yellow Brobdingnagian Palazzo complex (“Southern California’s most luxurious rental community!”) at the T-insection of Glendon and Le Conte Avenues, the nascent TJ’s corner space looks to boast an almost luxurious amount of square footage, compared to their typical location’s cozy confines. In a twist from the usual charm of their tight parking lot clusterfucks, this one looks to have no dedicated lot at all, instead sharing an underground garage with the apartment building. Crucially, it remains to be seen if the lot will validate for TJ’s customers.

Keep it tuned here for continuous updates on the Trader Joe’s as it nears its grand opening. Suffice to say, the evil reign of Whole Foods over the Westwood area is sure to suffer a severe blow, if not crumble altogether.

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