WELL DEVEVLOPED

Rick Caruso, the developer/owner of The Grove shopping mall, explained his personal philosophy of developing retail property in an article he wrote for the Times that ran this morning. Putting aside for a moment its phenomenally self-serving, self-congratulatory tone, my question is, what the hell was this “ad” doing in the editorial section of Los Angeles’s most influential newspaper (not counting La Opinion).

Am I to believe that the best minds in the country are pouring over the Iraq Study Group Report, desperately scrambling to figure how best to extract our troops from this ill-considered adventure, but the Times has nothing better to put in its editorial section than this love letter from Rick Caruso to himself? I respect Mr. Caruso’s right of free speech, as well as the right of The Times to run advertising, I just think it should be labeled as such.

Caruso’s assertion that The Grove is successful because it connects “wandering” Americans with some sense of real community is pure invention. The Grove may be warmer and fuzzier than standard shopping malls, but it isn’t real. People interested in a sense of real community gather a hundred yards to the west at Farmers Market. Every day you can find pretty much the same people having lunch at Charlie’s in the West Patio. That’s community.

The Grove is deceptively unreal. Like Main Street at Disneyland, The Grove is a pre-fabricated, synthetic version of an American experience that existed once, but survives now only in memory. Rick Caruso is using that memory not to keep people connected or make them feel better, but to turn a profit. I have nothing against the pursuit of profit, I just think it should be labeled as such.

I actually enjoy The Grove. I think the computer-driven fountain, which ejaculates fifty foot high spurts of water in sync with Dean Martin singing Amore is a bit over the top, but people seem to like it. The down side, of course, is The Grove’s 5,000 space parking structure. Usually pretty full, on the weekends it is totally full. While money pours into cash registers, traffic pours into and out of The Grove. For a mile in every direction, every major street is clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic, turning neighborhood errands into Homeric journeys. It takes a little of the edge off that warm and fuzzy feeling.

“It’s rewarding,” Caruso writes, “when people want to go to my developments because they need to spend hundreds of dollars, but what really thrills me is when people go to merely hang out.” A lovely sentiment, but, like The Grove itself, a synthetic creation intended entirely for public consumption. If the majority of Grove visitors did nothing but hang out, Rick Caruso and co. would be hung out to dry.

A foot on either side.

B. Louis Braverman