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Article Excerpt
The clock upon the bronze dome of the Abercrombie & Fitch building strikes six, the bells announcing that all the dirt and chaos and crime of Los Angeles are hereby suspended. Whatever befalls the city beyond, the Grove shopping center at 3rd and Fairfax will be a haven this spring evening--spotless, safe, and luxurious, a spawning ground for nothing but the fondest of memories.
Through hidden loudspeakers, Dean, Sammy, Frank, and Ella sing about the good life. Sycamores, aristocrat pear trees, and jacarandas rustle in the evening breeze. The streetlights throw daubs of soft buttermilk on the smooching teens, the slow-strolling grandparents, and the sated shoppers toting dresses from Banana Republic and MacBooks fresh from the Apple Store. The vast granite fountain erupts into a dance, to the tune of "That's Amore" On the Grove's immaculate lawn, toddlers of seemingly every race and nationality turn somersaults. Moms and dads stand at the border of the grass, worlds more at ease than when their children play on city sidewalks and in public parks. In a region where so much history has been bulldozed away, the Grove has rewritten all our yesterdays. It immerses us in a more wholesome time where family is paramount and old age is to be respected, where the Golden Rule is not so much enforced as cheerfully abided by.
In his executive suite, floating above the Palm store and an olive oil shop, Rick J. Caruso, the CEO and sole stockholder of Caruso Affiliated Holdings, can look out onto the shopping center he has built and take pride in a magic kingdom as nostalgic as Walt Disney's. "All of us as human beings think that somehow in the past things were simpler," Caruso says, the sounds of Sinatra a distant murmur. "Maybe it's a way that we keep our sanity. People, they generally say, 'Gee, when I was a kid, things were simpler, my parents had a simpler life,' and it's true. I don't think people pick an era, but I know today in my life--boy!--to have an opportunity to have things a little bit simpler is nice. All of us lead pretty hectic, complicated lives."
Walt Disney was content playing a supporting role to Mickey House, but Caruso is always out front. Around his office is evidence of the rarefied Republican political circles in which he moves--a portrait of him and his wife with George and Laura Bush, a photo of a youthful Caruso meeting Ronald Reagan, a snapshot in which he's joking around with his good friend Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vice President Dick Cheney. There are models of his yacht and his Gulfstream G4. He favors sartorial flash--custom-tailored pinstriped suits by Brioni, handmade striped ties, and polka-dot hankies in his breast pocket. The brass-buckle loafers are Gucci.
At 48, Caruso's got game-show-host good looks. His deeply tanned face is free of worry lines. Not a strand of his auburn hair is ever out of place. He has waltzed into middle age with an assurance that few of his contemporaries could match; then again, their generation, youth obsessed and hard rocking, was never truly his. When he compares his memories of the early '70s with the world today, he can say without any irony, "I grew up in an era that was much more formal and sophisticated, and I certainly respect it." The only sense of unease you feel when spending time with Caruso, disarmed by his optimism and courtliness, is the same you feel after spending a couple of hours in the Grove: How could Los Angeles have nurtured anything or anybody so scrubbed clean of noir? Could all this be for real?
From the smallest details to the overarching themes of all Caruso's shopping centers, he is the tastemaker and the idea man. He leads his staff around the world--to the Bahamas, old Savannah, the isle of Capri--seeking inspiration and cribbing motifs. Caruso Affiliated's in-house architect, Dave Williams, says the design process begins by mining the intentions inside the CEO's head. "The first step," Williams says, "is really to draw out of Rick, 'What are you thinking? Where do you want to go with the architecture? What do you want the place to feel like?'" At the Grove, Caruso selected the marble mosaics and the Murano glass. When he first brought up the notion of introducing a streetcar, Williams was worried that it would go over like a giant Tinkertoy. Designed by a retired Disney Imagineer, the trolley has become the Grove's signature.
Once a month Caruso will stroll through four or five of his malls, praise the shopkeeps, pick up trash, and fire off notes about sidewalk cracks, faded awnings, or a badge that's missing from a security guard's hat. The property managers who follow him around survey the landscape with the same forensic precision. They're just as gracious with the tenants. Their pin-striped suits don't flatter like a Brioni, their pointy loafers lack Gucci buckles, but give them time.
Caruso Affiliated has coined a term for this sensibility: Equal parts breezy efficiency and blueprint for living, it's called CarusoStyle. In the coming years, we're going to be seeing a lot more of it, as the developer presses on with perhaps the most ambitious city-shaping campaign since the days of Isaac Lankershim and Harry Chandler. Already, on L.A. County's northwest fringes, his Promenade at Westlake, his Commons at Calabasas, and his Village at Moorpark have taken on the significance of downtowns. His Playa Vista town center, slated to open in the fall of 2009, will define that nascent neighborhood. He's soon to begin a makeover of Montecito's Miramar beach resort, and next spring he'll unveil the Americana at Brand, a 15.5-acre residential-retail project in Glendale. In Arcadia, he's pursuing a 45-acre shopping center in what is now the parking lot of Santa Anita racetrack.
Constructed for the greater good of tenants like NikeWomen and the Gap, Caruso's halcyon environments have made him a billionaire. The Grove's Barnes & Noble has posted sales several times higher than the company's store average. The 14-screen multiplex has been ranked...
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