Out With the Old, In With the Fake

I took my daughter to the Grove the other night and she loved it. She doesn’t talk yet, but she looked like she wanted to say:

“Daddy, I feel like I’m in Italy.”

It might have been the cobblestones, or the fountain, or maybe it was Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant.

The developer of the sensationally popular Grove is a gent named Rick Caruso, who seems to be remaking half of Southern California as we speak. For the Disney-esque Grove, he says he was inspired by the Italian villas he visited as a boy, which leads me to believe he and I visited different parts of Italy.

Glendale, site of a future Caruso makeover, will go Italian with a development called Americana on Brand. It seems to me that Armeniana on Brand would have been more appropriate, but Caruso seems to know his business.

Arcadia will go New Orleans soon, probably because of the huge Cajun population in the San Gabriel Valley.

But these are not malls we’re talking about. Traditional malls are Caruso’s biggest foes, in fact. He’s on a mission to obliterate those dinosaurs, running them into the ground with outdoor emporiums he likes to call “lifestyle centers.”

“As the world becomes more complicated and people have less time in their lives, these kinds of places become retreats for people,” Caruso told The Times. “The property has the ability to transport people to a better time.”

At the Grove, this is no lie. We boarded the block-long trolley at Pottery Barn Kids and were indeed transported to a better time. We got off at the Farmers Market.

As far as I can determine, a “lifestyle center” is a place where there might once have been a real cityscape that has been replaced by a sanitized one that resembles a movie set.

To each his own, I guess. Some people, for instance, like to take pictures of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. Then you have wiseguys like me, who take pictures of the people taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.

But getting back to the experience at a Caruso “lifestyle center,” you can browse at a Crate & Barrel and a Gap, go to a movie and dinner, toss a coin into the fountain and then take the elevator home. It’s ideal for anyone who’s ever dreamed of living atop a P.F. Chang’s.

Look, I may have once written that Southern California is doomed to even worse traffic congestion and smog if we don’t find a way to get more people to live at or near commercial developments. But this isn’t quite what I had in mind.

It is, however, the Caruso vision that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called “daring” and Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn called “fantastic.” Former L.A. Mayor Dick Riordan said simply, “I think he’s ready to take over Los Angeles.”

First there was Da Vinci, then Michelangelo.

And now Caruso.

As my colleague Tina Daunt pointed out in a profile, Caruso lives in a 20,000-square-foot Brentwood manse with his wife and children, a Rolex collection and a personal staff of 10. I haven’t met him yet, though I hope to soon, if he’d consider taking a call from someone with a Swiss Army watch and a personal staff of just eight.

On Friday morning, I found myself at the site of an abandoned Glendale fire station that will be obliterated -- along with 21 other buildings revered by the Glendale Historical Society -- to make way for Caruso’s Americana on Brand, which will include a Cheesecake Factory restaurant.

Glendale will donate acreage to Caruso and spend $77 million on the development with the obvious hope of reaping huge returns through sales taxes and other revenues.

“Anyone who opposes this is held up to public ridicule,” John Paul LoCascio told me in front of the fire station, which dates back to the 1920s but has been vacant for years.

An architect, LoCascio is on the board of the Glendale Historical Society, and he’s definitely got problems with the Caruso vision.

City development ought to be organic, he said, and specific to history and sense of place. Old Pasadena is a flawed but better redevelopment model, he said, because it was about preserving a city rather than erecting one.

But Glendale city leaders “fell under the spell of Caruso,” LoCascio said, and residents then went to the polls in September and narrowly approved Americana on Brand despite an anticipated traffic nightmare.

“People want their Crate & Barrel and Cheesecake Factory, even though it makes every place look like every other place,” LoCascio said. “It’s more homogenization of the urban environment.”

Of course it is, but Caruso is no dummy.

My guess is that Americana on Brand will work, commercially speaking, and so will New Orleans in Arcadia. And then 180 city councils will bend over backward to get theirs, and we’ll all be eating cheesecake.

The Grove does not merely lack soul and originality, it celebrates the death of both. But who can deny its success?

It’s the rare Southern California public space where people’s lives intersect, and my baby daughter was dazzled by all the make-believe. She and a little boy stood together at the edge of the fountain as if they were in love, transported to a better time.

I bet they thought they were in Venice.

The columnist can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com. To read previous columns, go to latimes.com/lopez.