New Ralphs Store Ignores Rules of Good Sense and Neighborliness

Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I think that the newly renovated Ralphs Grocery Store at La Brea Avenue and West 3rd Street is an abomination.

There is no other word for the mauve blank-concrete block wall that faces the street, the giant parking lot that dissolves the corner, the huge scale of the place and its utter lack of connection to anything around it. Feeble attempts to make this blank behemoth seem friendlier by adding little steps to the cornice and vaguely pilaster-like paste-ons to the facade only make things worse. Even its pleasant interior, complete with skylight, cannot make up for the inappropriate and offensive nature of this building.

What makes matters worse is that La Brea Avenue has recently shown signs of becoming a very nice street. The opening of City Restaurant on 1st Street in 1985 and of Campanille below 6th Street four years later have anchored a stretch of boutiques, cafes, galleries and bookstores that make innovative use of existing buildings.

Unfortunately, for every friendly facade rescued from the anonymity of 50-year-old commercial buildings, another mistake of a building appears. A gigantic car dealership that fronts the street with concrete ramps or the big box of lighting showrooms immediately adjacent to the Ralphs also are recent additions to the area.

What all of these new buildings do wrong is to present thin, unscaled and closed facades to the street. They offer neither the pleasure of a pedestrian scale nor the excitement of expressive, automobile-scaled signage.

The 40,000-square-foot Ralphs makes things worse because its entrance faces the parking lot, leaving a 26-foot high wall to face the avenue. The expansive asphalt “forecourt” sports no less than 229 parking spaces in a lot devoid of plants. Not even a little kiosk is left on the corner.

The building is even more destructive of Sycamore Avenue immediately to the east. This is one of the most beautifully scaled and planted streets in Los Angeles, but its rhythm of two-story, whimsical apartment buildings now faces layers of concrete block walls and loading docks.

Inside, the store does offer a pleasant shopping environment. A coffee stand has become a gathering place for locals, who sit around sipping cappuccinos, catching up on gossip or commenting on the fancy pasta available in the store.

One could blame Ralphs and its architect, Lester Paley & Associates, for this travesty. But the real problem lies with the city, which lacks a vision for Los Angeles. This city has never had, and probably doesn’t need, review boards dictating the looks of buildings, but it should have the kind of planning that would force grocery stores and car dealerships to be designed in a way that makes use of their urban setting. In this case, a store with an entrance on La Brea (the coffee shop would have been great on the corner) and underground parking would have been an asset to the city.

The Ralphs store ignores all rules of architecture, good sense and neighborliness, leaving us with a purely economic asset that destroys the overall life of this part of the city.