Nearly four years after originally signing a lease on a 45,000-square-foot vertical retail space in Westwood, Asian supermarket chain 99 Ranch Market has opened. It’s the first major Taiwanese grocery store to open on the Westside.

“Starting the process of entitlements during Covid when city offices were not open to the public (was a major challenge),” Scott Burns, a senior managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. who specializes in retail and represented the landlord, Robertson Properties Group, in the May 2020 lease transaction, said.

The opening’s delay is mainly attributed to the lengthy permitting process 99 Ranch experienced in requesting a changing use of the space from standard retail to grocery, which was exacerbated during Covid, said Burns.

In addition, the city posed multiple “last minute requests,” which delayed the opening even further.

Located at 1360 Westwood Blvd., the two-story building with 200 underground parking spaces, which previously housed a Ross Dress for Less store, had a hard time re-tenanting as many retailers are opting against multi-level operations due to the hassle it poses with unloading products.

Westwood’s “strength of the demographics” was very appealing for 99 Ranch, despite the less than ideal circumstances, according to Burns.

“They got creative because they wanted to enter this market,” he said.

In order to best utilize the two-story property, 99 Ranch decided to designate the top floor as an upstairs food hall featuring various third-party food vendors – including a hot deli, a beer and burger bar, a hand roll sushi station, an Asian-style fried chicken restaurant and a Vietnamese street food stall – adding community excitement to the store.

“The next nearest 99 Ranch is in the San Fernando Valley,” Burns said. “It’s a great ethnic food offering that (was) not there in that town. Right now, customers that are looking for quality Asian food products have to drive outside of their city to get it. This is going to keep those folks in town and able to buy the food they want locally. That’s a huge benefit to the area.”

The Buena Park-based retailer was founded by Taiwanese immigrant Roger Chen in 1984 to serve surrounding Asian-American communities by becoming the “Gateway to Asia.” The chain currently has 58 stores in the U.S.