Shopping and living under one roof

Last week, the Times ran a Q & A with Rick Caruso, the developer of the Grove. The Grove, as you know, has become our new favorite Main Street, with exciting retail shopping opportunities, a dancing fountain and all sorts of amenities. (Naming them would take up valuable time. And as Caruso himself said in the Q & A, “People, more than anything today, need time.”)

To those of us who live in the neighborhood, the Grove -- in addition to saving time in ways it would take time to explain, which Mr. Caruso and I have already explained we don’t have enough of -- also has created outside art. There is, for instance, the mixed media installation across the street. If you have not seen “Whole Foods Parking Lot Gridlock: Fairfax and Third Street” (metal and rubber and human beings on pavement), please see this ongoing exhibition, which is free and best experienced in a car.

Caruso, in the Q & A, also discussed his latest project, called Town Center in Glendale. Unlike the Grove, Town Center will have apartments and condos. “There will be valet parking and concierge service,” Caruso said. Residents, he added, will “be able to have room service from the restaurants or have their groceries delivered. Crate & Barrel could decorate a unit from top to bottom for a tenant.”

As somebody who has walked into Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel or Restoration Hardware and thought, “Uh-huh, but what do you have in the way of wall art and a girlfriend?” I find this notion of outfitting a life in the products of a yuppie retail store intriguing.

But even more provocative is the notion that malls of the future will have residents. For if I am correctly reading between the lines, Caruso is hinting at a day when we will see the first-ever, self-contained, modern mall republic, called the Republic of the Mall.

I am talking about a mall not only with a Crate & Barrel but with its own constitution, its own police force, its own self-determining mall people whose laws and way of life may resemble the laws outside the mall, but with certain differences. Like the Amish.

A mall founded on fear and rejection of the outside world and the desire to wear merino wool is a great idea. The Grove has shopping and movies and public transportation (that trolley), but nowhere to live. Town Center will have housing, but no schools, no hospitals, no libraries, no legal system, no taxation system to pay for it all, no moral code except a product return policy. There are jobs, yes, but outsiders hold these jobs. That’s not the mall I want to live in.

In our Republic of the Mall, I don’t think we necessarily need to adhere to all those constitutional amendments fussed over in the outside world. (I’m so sick of listening to people’s problems; free speech is overrated!) Assuming I have kids, I understand that they will go to school in the mall, and have recess there, but I want to be sure it will be safe for them to play in the mall at night. I mean, what if intruders, noncitizens of our Republic of the Mall, infiltrate the mall (might I suggest an electrified fence?) and start telling me or my children their problems, thus violating the non-free-speech part of our constitution and wasting my valuable time? What then?

This is why it is so vital that our Republic of the Mall be free of fears. When I currently enter a mall, even one as quaint and full-service-seeming as the Grove, I am filled with trepidation. It feels great, but Hitchcock great, meaning evil lurks just beneath the veneer of pleasantness.

I suppose what I really want to ask Mr. Caruso is this: How long will it be before you create our utopian Republic of the Mall and I never have to leave the mall again and can stop living in fear? How long before I don’t have to have a car and talk to people, except for those who, like me, just want to decorate their apartment, from floor to ceiling, at Crate & Barrel, and order take-in from a host of restaurants, all of which offer goat cheese and beet salads as a starter?

I do think we should declare ourselves a democracy, but let’s be flexible. Democracies are great and all, but let’s not be closed off to borrowing from, say, the Communists. They were very good at gymnastics, after all. And while I could never condone a dictatorship, I think gurus make interesting leaders, particularly the guru-nutritionists. They’re idea people, and they will make sure that our citizens remain healthy.

These are all just preliminary suggestions. (What about a retractable roof? OK, I’m getting ahead of myself.) The important thing is that plans for the Republic of the Mall continue, so that those of us who are eager to be mall people don’t have to live in fear of exiting a mall ever again.

Paul Brownfield can be contacted at paul.brownfield@latimes.com.