Caruso shows off his new world
The invitation arrived in a jewel box with a faux diamond garter around it, or maybe a faux diamond necklace.
“A Return to Glamour,” said the platinum, beaux-arts card. In the black velvet case was a sprinkle of artificial rose petals.
Rick Caruso, who is remaking Southern California as a constellation of lifestyle centers anchored by Cheesecake Factories, was inviting me to a black tie affair on May 1 -- the grand opening celebration of the Americana at Brand in Glendale.
Even before I could accept the invitation, Caruso e-mailed me to see if I wanted a sneak preview.
I thought he’d never ask.
Caruso greeted me at the entrance on Brand Boulevard one morning last week as dozens of workers put the finishing touches on his $400-million vision of residential and retail nirvana, a project so fantastical it will -- for better or worse -- transform the center of Glendale and blow the adjacent Galleria mall back into the last century.
Caruso was tan and loose as a Rat Packer at a cocktail party, a man who could not be more comfortable in his own skin. He wore pressed slacks and a sharply cut dress shirt, along with a Swiss coffee-colored hard hat that said “the Americana at Brand” on it, with his name underneath. He handed me a hat of my own, with my name already affixed. In Caruso World, details are everything.
He is, of course, the man who gave birth to the Grove at 3rd and Fairfax, a wildly popular, Disneyesque Main Street of chain stores, dancing water and babes in strollers. Rockwellian nostalgia is blended with Pottery Barn modernity at the Grove, and a Sinatra-and-friends soundtrack brings a little bit of Vegas to the party.
Americana is clearly a first cousin of the Grove, except that it’s not just a destination, but an address, with 238 apartments and 100 condos (priced from $700,000 to $2.4 million) built into an upscale village Caruso says he modeled on Madison Avenue in New York and Newbury Street in Boston.
The stores include Barneys New York, Juicy Couture, Anthropologie -- the kind of places that will “redefine” the retail experience in Glendale, my guide explained. A two-car trolley will transport shoppers through an undisturbed dream of consumptive indulgence, a movie-set reality dressed up with an 18-screen theater, dancing fountain and massive outdoor crystal chandelier.
“We’re trying to re-create urban living, where it’s nice and luxurious,” Caruso said as we came upon a European-style entryway to the Marc, an apartment building he said is inspired in part by the Four Seasons Resort in Maui. It has a “Caruso Affiliated” symbol blazed into the ground like a medallion. For the busy professional just home from work, he told me, there will be a concierge to answer every need.
“You’d call the Call Center and they’d say, ‘Mr. Lopez, how can I help you?’ Let’s say you want a steak, a Caesar salad and a bottle of wine.’ ”
All of that would be delivered to my apartment after a massage at the spa and a quick splash in the lap pool.
“Bottom line -- we’re operating like a five-star hotel.”
We worked our way up to an apartment with a bird’s-eye view of Caruso World. From a broad balcony, we took in a perfectly manicured park -- children’s play area included -- called the Green. A full-grown sycamore is one of more than 500 trees on the property. You shut down the freeways at night, Caruso explained, and truck in your ready-made forest.
The gold-leaf statuary includes an 18-foot tall replica of “The Spirit of American Youth” from Omaha Beach in France, commemorating the invasion of Normandy, and atop a domed condo stands lady “America” with sword, wreath and eagle.
“This symbolizes for me a lot of my beliefs as to what this country is about,” said Caruso.
What’s interesting about Caruso’s invitation to me was that he knows I’ve critiqued the Grove as commercial artifice -- the very antithesis of a serendipitous, organic experience in city living. He knows, too, that what he showed me last week is not my cup of tea, and he even joked about dropping the outdoor chandelier on me depending on the drift of this column.
Traffic will be unbearable, I told him. He sloughed it off, saying he paid $7 million for road improvements that will make it work. We’ll see about that.
What I like about Caruso is that he is unabashed and unapologetic. And judging by his success, more of the world shares his taste than mine.
But here’s my question: Where do all these shoppers come from? There isn’t an unlimited pool of people who can afford places like Americana on Brand or the Grove. So you have to think they’re just luring people away from some other shopping spot, including more authentic cityscapes like Larchmont Village or Montrose’s Honolulu Avenue.
Caruso has told me he admires those more organic commercial zones, but he is in a very different business. Caruso builds monuments to Western civilization, and while some might find the Americana at Brand a soul-sapping contrivance of nostalgia and patriotism, the masses will undoubtedly flock there.
The truth is that I occasionally go to the Grove, which my daughter loves (though not as much as we both love the adjacent Farmers Market). I could imagine her running across the Green at the Americana too, as I reluctantly surrender my stuffy inhibition, knowing that with several more mega-projects in the works after this one, soon the matter will be indisputable.
It’s Caruso’s world, and we just live in it.
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