Lunching With the Caruso of Retail
Most people I criticize have the good sense to ignore me. Take Cardinal Roger Mahony, for example. His Eminence never writes, never calls. It’s un-Christian, if you ask me, but to each his own.
Rick Caruso, the creator of the Grove at 3rd and Fairfax in Los Angeles, is a different breed. I said some unflattering things about the Grove and about Caruso’s plans for a similar colossus in Glendale. And what did he do?
He called and invited me to lunch.
This was pure evil on his part, because there is always an outside chance I might find something I like about the targets of my poison darts.
Case in point:
Over lunch at the Grove, I learned that Caruso has a real problem with Cardinal Mahony. Also, he thinks the development at Hollywood & Highland -- the centerpiece of the new Hollywood -- is hideous.
Regarding the former, Caruso told me Mahony hit him up for money to build the new cathedral, and Caruso said no way.
“It’s a monument to Mahony,” Caruso said of the Rog Mahal.
If you want to spend $500 million on something, Caruso told the cardinal, spend it on the Catholic schools, and turn the church at Adams and Fig into your new cathedral.
As for Hollywood & Highland, with its gargantuan elephant props, what more is there to say except that no one has any reason to go there twice?
“They literally built a white elephant,” Caruso said.
All right, so Caruso’s taste isn’t all bad. But he was telling me this in the heart of the faux-Italian village known as the Grove, which my column described as a celebration of the death of soul and originality.
The little trolley was clang-clanging by on its one-block route, filled with people who would never dare set foot on public transit. The North Pole was set up in the middle of the plaza, and as we sat for lunch on the terrace of La Piazza, Bing Crosby began singing “White Christmas.”
“Have you seen the snow?” Caruso asked, childlike.
No, I hadn’t seen the snow.
Every night at 7 and 8, he said, Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas” and snow is shot out of machines fixed on rooftops. People gather by the thousands, he said. They love it.
What’s the snow made of? I asked.
“Gelatin,” he said.
I can’t remember my job ever being easier.
Yes, the Grove is better than a boxy indoor mall. Yes, people of all shapes and colors come together at the wildly popular Grove and seem to have a good time. And Caruso has every right to build fake urban settings and profit like a bandit.
But it’s all Disney.
“What’s wrong with that?” Caruso asked.
I scanned the fake urban landscape from one end of the Grove to the other.
“There is nothing here that says I’m in Los Angeles,” I said. “This could be in any city in America.”
And before long, it will be.
Caruso wanted to know what’s wrong with a spotlessly clean place where families can feel safe and “enjoy a little magic?” What’s wrong with an operation that, by Caruso’s claim, has doubled the foot traffic at Farmers Market, a Los Angeles institution? And what’s wrong with doing a similar “lifestyle center” in Glendale, and another in Arcadia, and another and another and another?
These are good questions.
I have good answers.
For starters, the last thing Southern Californians need is more places to shop. We’ve already got an obscene number of options, and when you build a new mega-mall, super discount store or “lifestyle center,” you don’t necessarily create a net increase in shoppers or sales. You just clutter the landscape with offensive architecture and suck shoppers from one place to another.
Except for temporary construction jobs, malls create the worst kind of low-end employment, even as the gap between rich and poor grows wider by the day.
But city officials, generally speaking, are not visionaries. Although their most important role is to safeguard history and nourish a distinct sense of place, they’re like heroin addicts when it comes to retail.
They’ll bulldoze the past, raffle off the last precious parcel of open space and build parking garages over their mothers’ graves for a quick hit of sales tax revenue.
The historic adobe house near the Grove, dating back 150 years, is invisible now. I think it might still be back there, somewhere behind Maggiano’s Little Italy, but I’m not sure.
The city of Glendale is offering a $77-million carrot to Caruso, as if he needs the handout, to build the humongous Americana on Brand. It will be ACROSS THE STREET from the gigantic Glendale Galleria.
How about a park?
How about a planetarium?
How about the world’s largest outdoor theater?
Are we so shallow, materialistic and predictable that the only way we can imagine bringing people together is with a Cheesecake Factory and a Pottery Barn?
Do I even need to ask?
While Caruso and I ate lunch, the Grove was mobbed, and he was constantly greeted, waved at and hugged by admirers, as if he had built the pyramids or the Roman aqueducts.
It’s hard to build something brand new that feels old, Caruso said, but erecting “lifestyle centers” on open land is not his only interest.
He said he loves the organic feel of old-fashioned shopping strips like Larchmont or Honolulu Avenue in Montrose, and he’d like to take rundown commercial centers and give them that kind of life. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles was one place he mentioned, and Westwood Village was another.
Get to work, I say. But let me see the plans first.
I don’t want to be picking gelatin out of my hair.
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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. You can reach him at steve.lopez@ latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez
