Planner of Santa Monica, Westwood Renewal Projects to Move On

He helped transform Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade from a ghost town into a booming tourist Mecca. He has laid the plans for a hoped-for economic turnaround in Westwood Village.

But after a decade of trying to reinvent two of the Westside’s most important shopping districts, Tom Carroll is leaving town.

He’s moving to Sacramento to take charge of the state capital’s massive downtown redevelopment plan.

“It’s bittersweet because things are just getting going in Westwood,” said Carroll, 48, who for the last two years has been the executive director of the Westwood Village Management Corp.

“I’m not leaving Westwood because Westwood isn’t happening,” said the planner, who headed up the construction of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. “Westwood will come up. It has the opportunity to be a significant cultural and arts center. I’m leaving because this was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Carroll leaves May 19, three days after a crucial City Council vote is scheduled on Westwood’s Business Improvement District. If approved, the district would raise $800,000 a year from business owners to implement a redevelopment drawn largely by Carroll.

Carroll starts his new job June 1.

He will be president of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, an agency that will oversee a 65-square-block renovation of Sacramento’s riverfront area, old downtown Sacramento and areas near the Capitol building, a light-rail center and a shopping mall.

Carroll began his career as the redevelopment director of downtown Charleston, W. Va.

He worked for the preservation association in Savannah, Ga., before coming to Santa Monica in 1984.

Rich Given, president of the Westwood Village Assn., said Carroll’s departure will be a loss, but he added that he has finished the majority of the planning that business owners had wanted.

Carroll spearheaded the planning for a 400-space parking garage that will be built in Westwood Village later this year.

He also helped organize Westwood’s new Thursday afternoon Farmer’s Market and a street renovation aimed at making Broxton Avenue the central pedestrian thoroughfare through the village.