Old-World Charm Is Developer’s Magic Touch

Like the upscale suburban retail centers on which he’s built his reputation, developer Rick Caruso is colorful but respectable. Elite but inclusive. Modern but rooted in tradition. European--in an American way.

At 42, this lawyer turned deal maker sports an August tan in winter, wears expensive suits and can chat effortlessly about subjects from French chateaux to boating to suburban shopping patterns.

He wears a look of calm and control. And a smile that seems to say: I’m suave. And if you’re shopping here, you must be too.

“If I can get you here just to hang out,” he said during a recent interview at his Promenade at Westlake center in Thousand Oaks, “I’m going to get you here as a customer.”

In the last five years, Caruso has earned the trust of Thousand Oaks officials with two popular shopping centers on Thousand Oaks Boulevard: the Village at Moorpark near the west end of the boulevard, and the Promenade at Westlake.

Caruso’s newest challenge in town lies squarely between the two. The City Council has asked him to develop a stylish retail and office center on the boulevard to anchor a pedestrian-friendly downtown in a city that wasn’t designed with one. Work has not begun on what’s been dubbed Discovery Park, but it could be completed as early as the end of the year, he said.

Deputy City Manager Jim Friedl said Caruso was chosen to tie together a downtown because “his projects end up feeling like warm, friendly ‘people places.’ And that’s the feeling we want to bring to the property.”

As an Angeleno of Italian American descent, Caruso spent his formative years walking hip Westwood neighborhoods and vacationing with his parents in Europe.

He developed a taste for the energy and flair of urban meccas: Pockets of colorful architecture. Stylish stores and bistros. A buzz that creates a shared sense of belonging among people who might otherwise remain strangers.

The son of a successful businessman, Caruso learned the rule “know your customer.” As a developer he has bet that most well-off suburbanites settled where they did for safe neighborhoods and good schools. He also bet they longed for some of the chic they’d seen on their own European vacations but lacked at home.

In several projects around Southern California, the president of Santa Monica-based Caruso Affiliated Holdings has sought to manufacture that vibe--something between the Westwood Village of his youth and Rome’s Campo dei Fiori, but more sanitized than either--and impart it on suburban intersections.

Ambience Important to His Projects

Not everyone in this slow-growth city is a fan of Caruso’s Discovery Park plans. Some think Thousand Oaks is becoming too glamour-obsessed and materialistic. Others take issue with the $12.2 million in redevelopment funds the city will contribute. And there are those who oppose any more development here, period.

But as a rule, project opponents say they like Caruso personally--even admire him.

“He’s a decent developer and a smart, shrewd man,” said one project critic, local slow-growth advocate Joy Meade. “He’s a very nice man.”

One afternoon last month, Caruso discussed his design philosophy as he sipped a decaf latte near a 68 1/2-foot, $39,000 Christmas tree at the Promenade.

“Our corny little token term is ‘an entertainment and shopping resort,’ ” he said of the atmosphere he tries to give his projects.

“I really do try to think of things that would enrich people’s lives in an otherwise ordinary setting,” he said.

His friend James Ashton of Westlake Village, a broker who has represented him on several retail centers, said Caruso’s charm belies a serious businessman interested in the technical aspects of each project.

“I’ve worked with a lot of landowners, and rarely are they as interested in projects as he is,” Ashton said. “When they built the Promenade, he literally stood out there and watched them put every stone in. He takes an interest in every aspect of the project.”

In addition to the Thousand Oaks centers, Caruso’s projects include the Commons at Calabasas and Encino Marketplace. The Grove at Farmers Market in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles is now underway and will have its own trolley system. Caruso also will develop a 23-acre town center at Playa Vista near Marina del Rey.

Caruso typically invites residents of a neighborhood where he’s building to public meetings before his projects get underway. He asks them what stores they do or don’t want, what concerns they have and what he can do to win their approval.

This approach has made him popular with many officials and residents in Thousand Oaks. It’s what enabled him to sell city residents on the Promenade in 1997 after other developers had failed.

Shops there include a Bristol Farms market, Restoration Hardware, an eight-screen movie theater, bookstore, and restaurants and coffeehouses mixed together in a tree-lined, pastel Mediterranean-style enclave.

Stores at the Promenade are laid out in a crescent rather than linear pattern. The storefronts are set off by cozy outdoor seating, stone fountains, stained-glass lighting and intricately paved walkways. The parking lot is usually packed.

Such a retail center won’t succeed everywhere, Caruso said. But in a place with upscale demographics like Thousand Oaks, customers can afford to sustain high-end stores that, in turn, can afford to pay him enough to make this sort of development profitable.

Not all tenants succeed, however. The former Club Disney store has been vacant since it folded nearly two years ago. But lease payments on the 25,000-square-foot space are still being made by the store’s parent company, Caruso said, and a new tenant could be announced this month.

Caruso says he didn’t always know he wanted to be a developer. But he knew he wanted to work with land.

Life as Lawyer Was Not Proactive Enough

His father, Henry Caruso, started as a car salesman, went on to open dealerships in the Long Beach area and eventually built Dollar Rent-A-Car into the largest privately owned rental car company in the United States before selling it to Chrysler in 1990.

“Being raised with an executive and going to work with him on the weekends was a big influence,” Rick Caruso said. “But I never had any inclination to get into the car business. I always had a passion for real estate, not for cars. And I wasn’t real enamored with being a second generation in a business.”

After his graduation from USC, Caruso earned a law degree from Pepperdine University and went to work as a real estate lawyer in 1983. But he said he quickly found he was more interested in making things happen than in doing paperwork for the people who made things happen.

His father helped guide him. “I still go to Dad for advice,” Caruso said. “He’s one of my closest advisors.”

Caruso said his average workday runs 12 to 15 hours, though he tries to avoid weekends. He describes himself as a night owl, whose best ideas for project details often come to him at home--a custom-built, five-bedroom southern France-inspired house on Los Angeles’ Westside--after his wife, three sons and baby daughter have gone to sleep.

In addition to running his business, he has served for years as a commissioner on the board of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He also serves on the board for USC’s School of Planning, Policy and Development.

Last year, Caruso’s name was entered into nomination for a seat on the Los Angeles Harbor Commission, but he was rejected by council members in the midst of a political squabble with Mayor Richard Riordan. Los Angeles Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who serves with Caruso on the USC board and was one of the council members who voted against his Harbor Commission nomination, said he doesn’t always agree with Caruso politically but considers him “a straight shooter.”

“He’s a creature of the private sector and argues from that vantage point,” Ridley-Thomas said. At the same time, the councilman said Caruso “prides himself on professionalism and candor. He’s civic-minded.”

Caruso has contributed to several political campaigns in the last decade. He counts Riordan and Gov. Gray Davis among his friends. Regarding politics, he said he tends to prefer Republican candidates to Democrats, and describes his own ideology as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

Family Members Are His Consultants

Caruso likes being a mover and shaker. He also admits a penchant for the finer things. Much of his home’s interior, including floors, furniture and the fireplace, were imported from a demolished chateau in France that his decorator discovered. He likes single-malt Scotch, golfing around Los Angeles, snow- and water-skiing. He owns a racing boat and a motorboat.

But Caruso said above all he considers himself a family man. He spends weekends playing sports with his boys, ages 5, 9 and 11. Parenthood, he said, influences how he shapes his projects.

After all, the people who shop in upscale suburbs are largely mothers and fathers, who usually have kids in tow.

“What motivates me is: Is it a place where someone would want to load up their family and go hang out on a Friday or Saturday night?” he said.

He admits his schedule doesn’t leave him much time to go shopping at his own centers, or anywhere else for that matter. But Caruso said he asks his wife and their kids what they like and don’t like about malls, and he factors their opinions into his projects.

In Thousand Oaks, his Discovery Park project is still just a big dirt lot. But, he said, it could be built within months, with a $40-million mix of retail shops, restaurants, office space, a 14-screen movie theater with stadium seating, a seven-level parking structure and family-friendly grounds, including a man-made pond that can be frozen over for ice skating in winter.

The project will be built on 11 acres next to the 6-year-old Civic Arts Plaza, home to Thousand Oaks’ City Hall and its Performing Arts Center. The land is flanked by boxy, outdated storefronts along Thousand Oaks Boulevard in what was the city’s original retail corridor. A $6-million public garden is being built across the street.

City officials say they are counting on Discovery Park to draw a crowd year round, not just to itself but to other stores on the boulevard, the arts plaza, the public gardens and an ambitious future project known as the Ventura County Discovery Center, a children’s science facility. That multimillion-dollar effort can’t get off the ground until more private money is raised, but it is envisioned to include an Imax theater and would take advantage of its proximity to the new shops and restaurants.

The project faces complications. Several movie-theater chains are in bankruptcy nationally, which seems to have slowed Caruso’s ability to sign the theater deal upon which his existing development agreement with the city hinges.

Critics of the project, including City Councilwoman Linda Parks, hope the trouble with the theater industry forces Caruso to scale back his plans and reopen negotiations with the city.

Also, the land is not as close to a freeway exit as would be ideal. And the modern, angular look of the Civic Arts Plaza prevents Caruso from going with his preferred Mediterranean look, because it would clash architecturally.

But as Caruso surveyed a Promenade parking lot filling up with early evening shoppers recently, he smiled. If he’s sweating the months of work or uncertainly that lie ahead, he doesn’t show it.