IT'S LIKE, NO WAY; GALLERIA'S CLOSING MARKS DEMISE OF '80S TEEN TEMPLE.

Byline: Steve Carney Daily News Staff Writer

Once a sacred temple of consumer culture and known worldwide as the ultimate teen hangout, the Sherman Oaks Galleria is now vacant as a stereotypical Valley girl.

The storied shopping mall will close Thursday, the victim of changing tastes, troublesome parking and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. But like the trendy teens who once prowled its boutiques, the Galleria is growing up.

It will reopen in November 2000 as an office complex teamed with a collection of upscale shops and restaurants, with an outdoor plaza and fountain at the entrance.

No department stores, no food court, no video-game arcade.

``It's like a monument to the Valley is coming down,'' said Martha Coolidge, who in 1983 directed the movie ``Valley Girl,'' which featured the mall prominently. ``It makes me sad, because it is sort of a California cultural monument. Everyone in the country knew what the Galleria was.''

Trouble is, it was the folks in Sherman Oaks who had to live with it.

``No one wants to see a white elephant in their community,'' said Richard H. Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association. ``This reconfiguration will take something that's sort of an embarrassment and turn it into a jewel of the community.''

Mee Lee, vice president of Douglas, Emmett & Co., the developer that bought the mall in 1997, said the Garden Office Building in front of the mall will be scaled back, and a pedestrian plaza built on that corner of Ventura and Sepulveda boulevards.

She said the renovation will add office space and cut back on retail but improve the caliber of the shops and eateries. Mainly, though, it will open up the complex to lure people walking off the street.

``Right now it's sort of a closed-in box,'' she said. ``It wasn't very inviting for people to come in.''

She said they want the new Galleria - yes, the name will remain - to be a place where families can come on the weekends, or where office workers can stay after 5 p.m., to have a nice dinner and catch a movie.

What used to be a Robinsons-May store at the north end of the mall will become offices with high ceilings. The south end will have restaurants and shops. The cinema will expand from five to 16 screens.

And though Lee said she couldn't discuss specific businesses that might come to the new Galleria, she said residents have asked for shops like Crate & Barrel and restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory.

``We're making an investment in the community, because we're hoping to stay there a long, long time,'' she said. ``There are some people who may be nostalgic, but we have a lot more people excited about what it's going to be.''

Passing of an era

The Galleria no longer wants to be a haven for teen-agers, but ironically hopes to lure the same kids who went there in its heyday in the early 1980s. Those kids are now 25 and older, with families, disposable incomes and jobs in the neighboring office towers.

April Carter, 27, works as an assistant down the street at LMNO Productions. She said she and her friends in high school considered themselves Valley Girls, even though they lived in Alhambra. And the Galleria was their weekend hangout.

``It's kind of, like, hard to believe it's been around so long,'' said Carter, who lives in Los Angeles now. ``It's hard to believe it's, like, really closing.''

After it opened in October 1980, the Galleria starred in ``Valley Girl'' and in ``Fast Times at Ridgemont High,'' was mentioned in the Frank and Moon Zappa song, ``Valley Girl,'' and in various ``Saturday Night Live'' skits.

``It was kind of an innocent and almost naive place. It's so funny how fast it became quaint,'' said Cameron Crowe, who wrote ``Fast Times at Ridgemont High.'' ``Pop culture moves so fast it became a sweet little ghost town.''

In the '80s, the rest of the country emulated the style-conscious teens who crowded the Galleria's walkways, playing Pac-Man, wedging themselves into Sergio Valente jeans, sporting spiked or feathered hair, peppering their sentences with ``fer sure'' and ``omigod.''

Crowe said the mall, any mall, was a place where kids could work - in the shops and fast-food outlets, where they could spend their money - on records and clothes, and where they could meet each other and socialize.

Now, he said, teens have more options and can meet at cafes, all-ages nightclubs, even online. Who needs the Galleria?

``It got caught being a minute behind the times. There are more groovy, more elegant places to go mall shopping,'' Crowe said. ``Maybe it was meant to be disposable. It's not like Mozart composed there.''

``I suppose it's the vagaries of competition,'' said Alexander Moore, a University of Southern California anthropology professor who has studied pop culture and shopping malls.

``Icons pass. Look at Bullock's Wilshire,'' Moore said, referring to the downtown department store, a Los Angeles landmark that closed in 1994 after 65 years. ``It shows how ephemeral our culture is.''

Valley Girl days

For the Galleria, the fatal blow came from the Northridge Earthquake in January 1994, which closed the mall for 11 days. Its anchor department store, Robinsons-May, didn't reopen until July, and seismic retrofitting at the mall deterred nervous customers.

Less than three years ago, the mall still had 90 shops, a five-screen movie theater and a Robinsons-May at both ends. But as shoppers went elsewhere, so did the businesses - vanishing one by one until the exodus became a stampede.

Today only one store remains - a card and gift shop on the third floor.

``I remember when I first came to America in 1985, I used to come to this mall,'' said Jack Lodhia, co-owner of the lonely Nicole's Hallmark. ``It was all carpeted, beautiful. I walked in, I went, ooh. It was real fancy, a beautiful mall.''

Now the rest of the tri-level shopping center is eerily quiet, with only the comforting hum of the air conditioning overhead. Of course it's cranked to the max.

``It's kind of sad,'' said Anna Castillo, 30, of Burbank, who said she grew up at the Galleria. ``I was totally the Valley Girl.''

Castillo, who also works at LMNO Productions, said she and her friends would spend weekends doing ``the typical girl things to do - hang out, shop, look for boys, buy shoes, go have Hot Dog on a Stick.

``Bummer. Well, there goes the Sherman Oaks Galleria.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) Self-proclaimed former Valley girls April Carter, left, and Anna Castillo check out what remains of their old hangout mecca, the Sherman Oaks Galleria, which is closing Thursday.

Phil McCarten/Daily News

(2) Once packed with trendy '80s teen-agers and immortalized in movies and song, the Sherman Oaks Galleria stands empty.

David R. Crane/Daily News