Old Ideas Are New Again at Mall

There wasn’t much interest when Doug Brown first pitched his plan for converting a depressed area of downtown Glendale into an urban village.

“People just didn’t understand how we could turn a seedy-looking area that was 50% vacant into a place to see and be seen,” said Brown, recalling the initial response to his 1995 proposal.

Today, crowds form at the site to see magicians, clowns and musicians--providing some encouragement to the retailers who gambled by moving into Brown’s now-completed village, a pioneering shopping and dining center known as Glendale Marketplace that opened earlier this month.

The retailers operating at Glendale Marketplace--Good Guys, Tower Records and Old Navy among them--aren’t the only businesses with an interest in the new center. Architects and retail developers are taking notice because Glendale Marketplace--on Brand Boulevard across from the Glendale Galleria--is an untested retail format.

The center is designed to bring the pedestrian-friendly features of old European plazas--fountains, public seating, street fairs and outdoor dining--to an open-air mall setting. For merchants, it’s a new venue to peddle their wares. For the city, it’s a bid at revitalizing a forlorn stretch of downtown.

“I’ll want to see if this project creates a renaissance in that area,” said Los Angeles architect Ronald Altoon, president of the American Institute of Architects. “It’s comparable in some ways to main street shopping districts such as Pasadena’s Old Town and Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. However, it’s unique because the tenants are operating in a brand-new setting.”

The two-story, $50-million complex is in the heart of downtown, a 1 1/2-block area that the city has been trying to redevelop since 1991.

After the city’s negotiations with other developers fell through, Brown, managing partner of Beverly Hills-based Regent Properties, and Tolkin Group of Pasadena joined forces and created a plan, eventually obtaining a $16-million subsidy from the city. The 160,000-square-foot complex is the city’s largest retail development since the Glendale Galleria opened more than 20 years ago.

The Galleria is one of the Southland’s most successful malls, and its proximity to the Marketplace might have been daunting to prospective tenants for the new site. But the developers used the Galleria’s location as a selling point, convincing retailers that Galleria shoppers would also be likely to patronize the Marketplace.

Since many of the Marketplace’s merchants have operated less than a month, they say they cannot yet gauge the impact of the Galleria’s presence or, for that matter, pedestrian traffic in general. However, Old Navy opened shop in May and has a longer track record.

“Old Navy,” company spokesman Joe Enos said, “is pleased with the [customer] traffic.”

Movie screens are tried-and-true creators of foot traffic for shopping centers, and Glendale Marketplace has a Mann theater complex. Retailers also hope the numerous restaurants at the site--Canyon Cafe, Baja Fresh and Panda Express, among others--will attract diners who will also browse the shops.

In addition, the project’s developers believe many potential shoppers will be drawn by the center’s unusual design. Unlike the cookie-cutter style of stores at many enclosed malls, shops at the Marketplace vary in size and design. The architectural feature drawing the largest crowds is a large fountain with whimsical green frogs that act as geysers spewing water into a pool.

The popularity of the fountain does not surprise Richard Huelsman, president of Pasadena-based MCG Architects.

“Fountains and benches have drawn crowds to public spaces in Europe for centuries,” Huelsman said. “To succeed, a retail urban village must create crowd excitement on the street level. This kind of design could be the wave of the future because we have too many malls and consumers are now more interested in shopping city streets if it’s fun and pedestrian-friendly.”

Huelsman and other architects predict that developers will build other retail villages in neglected urban areas if Regent Properties succeeds at the Glendale Marketplace.

But Regent isn’t waiting. It already is making plans for a similar project at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood.

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George White, who covers retail, can be reached via e-mail at george.white@latimes.com.