Raytheon Puts Los Angeles Rocket Plant Site Back on Market

Canadian firm backs out of pending sale of 47-acre site in Canoga Park.

Raytheon Technologies has put its former Rocketdyne plant site in Canoga Park back on the market after a deal with Triple Five Group to purchase the 47-acre property for $150M fell apart.

The Canadian firm, which owns the Mall of America, backed out of the pending sale of the former rocket engine production site, which is located at 6633 Canoga Avenue, according to a report in CoStar.

The asking price for the Warner Center lot, which is next to the Westfield Topanga mall, was not disclosed. The property is being marketed by Realty Advisory Group.

Edmonton, Alberta-based Triple Five entered an agreement to buy the former manufacturing site, which closed in 2014, in 2018.

The site of a plant which built rocket engines for Saturn V rockets that went to the move is one of the largest available for redevelopment in Los Angeles. According to a report in TheRealDeal, the site has been approved for an urban retail village of up to 6M SF.

The site is in proximity to a site where developer Stan Kroenke, billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams, has filed plans to put practice fields on a former Anthem Blue Cross parking lot in the Warner Center neighborhood.

Kroenke wants to build a temporary NFL training facility at 21555 Oxnard Street in west San Fernando Valley, Urbanize LA reported. A rendering of the practice facility showed two fields and some low-lying modular buildings at Canoga Avenue and Erwin Street on the northeast side of the 13-story former Anthem office building.

The temporary practice facility is believed to be a placeholder for a much larger development planned by Kroenke, who has invested $650M for three Warner Center properties on 96 contiguous acres north of the 101 Freeway.

The properties acquired by Kroenke include the Anthem site, Promenade mall and The Village in Woodland Hills, an outdoor mall. The Rams owner bought the former Anthem building in June 2022 for $175M. The 450K SF building is vacant.

The Rocketdyne plant, which opened in 1955, developed and produced the F1 engines on the Saturn V rockets that blasted astronauts into outer space on NASA’s Apollo missions. The plant was demolished in 2016. In 2020, United Technologies merged with Virginia-based Raytheon to form Raytheon Technologies.

Triple Five Group is a Canadian conglomerate which specializes in shopping centers, entertainment complexes, hotels and banks, along with running three indoor amusement parks.