In the context of the Dead Malls competition, the winter edition of the Forum's newsletter examines the landscape and infrastructure of commerce. Covering both new and old shopping malls and districts, it provides a framework for understanding the issues and experience of retail design and property in the city. Funded in part by a grant from City of Los Angeles, Cultural Affairs Department.
Commerce is a fundamental function of the city, if not the primary reason for urban life. What else is the city but a giant machine for making money?
This winter the LA Forum examines the infrastructure of this money machine. Commerce, of course, is an exchange of both goods and services, implying not only purchases but also production. Yet increasingly the city features only one side of this equation - consumption. Indeed, as is stated by Rem Koolhaas' Harvard Project on the City, "the voracity by which shopping pursues the public has, in effect, made it one of the principal - if not only - modes by which we experience the city." The experience of the city as shopping is more often than not combined with multiplex cinemas, rendering consumption a type of entertainment as much as film. For Angelinos, the pre-eminent examples are Universal CityWalk, Old Town Pasadena and Third Street Promenade, where the concentration of people and activity indicates a healthy commercial district. But insofar as these are packaged and managed environments visited on Friday or Saturday night, urban life has become a product we consume as much as latest offering from Sony Pictures, Banana Republic or Crate & Barrel (or Prada, if your pocketbook allows). We consume the city.
If the rhetoric and hype (and to a greater or lesser extent, the facts on the street) is to be believed, Hollywood and Downtown LA are poised to become the next urban entertainment districts of this type. To achieve this, both locations must transform from one kind of place to another. As any observer of gentrification knows, the moment high-end shopping begins to arrive in a neighborhood, its character begins to shift. The proliferation of brand-name stores and purpose-built malls consumes the very features that make the place unique and desirable. Retail consumes the city, not just by colonizing territory, but also by converting street trends into commodities - cities are the places where retail trends are created, which are then packaged and sold internationally.
Although the monumental Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping covers these characteristics, the Koolhaas-directed study does not seem to recognize the full extent to which this regime of shopping has generated other means for consuming the city. As consumption has eclipsed production as the primary urban activity, we no longer think of urban centers as places we work, learn or even live - business, industrial, educational and residential districts have been largely removed from the current repertoire of urban design possibilities. The result is a dramatic diminishment in the generative tools for design and policy. This is particularly so in the Prop 13 fiscal world of California politics, where retail taxes fuel city budgets, which amplifies the predatory behavior of shopping. In an effort to (literally) land the latest major retail establishment, municipalities frequently engage in bidding wars with each other, leveraging tax incentives and other public subsidies as weapons and enticements. It is an end-game scenario in which cities and neighborhoods in effect cannibalistically consume themselves while being consumed by retail itself. Meanwhile, a housing crisis has been steadily building in California, and the over-production of commercial retail space has consumed both land and public dollars that should be directed towards housing. The city consumes itself.
The catastrophe of a policy of quick retail tax fix is clearly demonstrated by the decaying shells of failed shopping environments. Ever focused on the new trend, retail real-estate is a disposable product, built not to enhance the long-term order and sustainability of the city, but to satisfy ten-year consumer trends and financial investment horizons. Abandoned or devalued, the detritus of the shopping regime is empty commercial centers in the first-ring suburbs, disinvestment in the inner city, and an abundance of third-rate mini-malls everywhere. The ultimate white elephant is the vacant regional shopping mall, the subject of the LA Forum's "Dead Malls" competition. It appears retail consumes itself, or at least abandons its young.
This winter the LA Forum explores these themes, and in so doing, provides a framework for understanding the issues and experience of retail design and property in the city. Tom Marble provides an introduction to this subject with a "white paper" describing design guidelines for shopping malls, while Michael Bohn and I each consider future prototypes for the mall in Southern California. John Southern examines the transformative effects of retail on Hollywood, whereas Sonia Rivas describes Broadway's vibrant retail culture, so far resistant to gentrification. Functioning like urban anthropologists, Mimi Zeiger unearths the multiple historical layers of Chinatown and Cristina Polyzoides documents her own social life in a mall. These essays in turn create a context for the finalists of the "Dead Malls" design competition, a manifestation of the Forum's interest in the current status of shopping infrastructure in Los Angeles. The ideas of the competitors signal a hope that the consumption of the city is not necessarily a zero-sum equation, but might form the basis for reinvention and renewal.
This edition of the Forum's newsletter is the second in a series that will collectively examine the constituent elements of Los Angeles architecture and urbanism as they are arranged at the contemporary moment. Utilizing the "Functional City" definition of Housing, Work, Recreation and Traffic provided by the Athens Charter as a departure point, each newsletter will investigate a particular function of the city, as defined by an almost bureaucratic and seemingly straightforward description of program. The series begins with the spring 2002 newsletter edited by Barbara Lamprecht - Rethinking Housing: Prototypes and Proposals. Future newsletters over the course of 2003 will address Parks/Recreation and Transit, among other topics. Contributions and suggestions are welcome.
All texts © the authors and LA Forum, 2003
This article is in adobe acrobat .pdf format, also readable by the Mac OS X preview program.
The shopping mall is perhaps one of the most cataclysmic typologies of architecture to evolve in the Twentieth Century. What the skyscraper did for the urban commercial landscape, the mall has done for suburban retail. Malls successfully weaned customers away from the shopping districts in urban centers during the post-war years and have yet to lose their edge. Over the past decade however, the contemporary notion of the shopping mall is increasingly appearing in a new context: the city.
In Los Angeles several large-scale "urban mall" projects are taking root and transforming areas of the city from blight (or at least developmental jaundice) into glimmering blobs of globally recognized corporate retail. While these schemes have the potential to dramatically rejuvenate dilapidated urban environments, they fail to capture the complexity and eccentricities that the urban realm evokes. These shopping giants have the potential to provide a space of distinction in the city. However, current examples appear to be just as formally bland and spatially ambivalent as any shopping mall in the suburbs. The arrival of this typology of architecture to the contemporary metropolis is symbolic as it preludes an erasure of difference that has, up to now, been antithetical to the notion of the city.
One such project, Hollywood & Highland, located at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, has already rejuvenated street life in a once decayed section of Hollywood. It has provided tourists with corporate alternatives to the mom n' pop souvenir stores and shabby eateries that line this section of Hollywood Boulevard. The project is an attempt to transform Hollywood from a tawdry tourist destination to a glamorous vortex of nightclubs, restaurants, and upscale retailers that will generate millions of tax dollars for the city of Los Angeles.
As if one large shopping center in Hollywood weren't enough, ten blocks to the southwest a large hole in the ground constitutes the future West Hollywood Gateway - a "big box" retail scheme from the Jerde Partnership renowned for its "place making" retail strategies. Complete with a Target and a Best Buy, this emerging project hopes to clean up an area of the city currently known only for its post-production houses and rampant prostitution. The renderings appear pleasant enough, but give little illumination as to the architectural impact of the scheme on the surrounding area.
Hollywood itself seems an appropriate enough locale for the introduction of the shopping mall into Los Angeles's urban landscape. Because of its location halfway between Downtown LA and the suburban tract developments that rose from the sands of the San Fernando Valley in the 1920's, Hollywood was once thought of as a retail "hinge-point" capable of serving the adjacent suburbs of Melrose, Los Feliz, and Hancock Park as well as those on the other side of the Hollywood Hills, thus giving suburbanites faster access to the retailers already established in Downtown. Hollywood's retail core straddled the area's two major north-south arteries - Vine Street and Highland Avenue - and included several street-facing outposts of major Downtown LA department stores. However, Hollywood's prospects as a retail satellite sputtered out during the Great Depression and never re-ignited to its full capacity, despite small surges in the 30's and 40's. [1]
Hollywood's decline as a retail center was not an unusual phenomena during the Post War years. In the 1950's as America's suburbs mushroomed outward, urban retail cores wilted and inwardly focused "regional shopping centers" quickly became the destination for suburbanites, due to their efficiency and ability to condense the shopping experience into a singular event. Located on the periphery of cities and suburban developments, and next to primary streets or highways, these gargantuan facilities were cities unto themselves, gobbling up hundreds of acres, and offering retailers thousands of square feet and the shopper infinite opportunities to consume. [2]
"A reciprocal relationship exists between a shopping center and its surrounding area. A well planned center can exert a highly favorable and invigorating influence on the area surrounding it, and a well planned surrounding area can add, in large measure, to the prosperity of the center."
- Victor Gruen and Larry Smith Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers.
In the book he co-wrote with Larry Smith, Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers, shopping center designer Victor Gruen states that "...when the site for a shopping center is the one remaining piece of land within a completely built-up area, there will obviously be meager possibilities for influencing the character of the surrounding area". Gruen goes on to point out that shopping areas in already built-up areas risk "...the handicap of having to be fitted into existing area conditions..." Developers have taken this to heart in most cases and balked at the thought of trying to work their ungainly consumer behemoths into denser urban environments. While much of this is caused by the interior-oriented nature of the shopping mall; high land costs, heavy traffic congestion, and even the misconception of urban environments as poor retail markets has kept many developers from engaging the inner-city as a place to build their next large scale retail project.
An exception to this convention is the Hollywood & Highland development that opened in the fall of 2001. The shopping center, with its multi-level outdoor atrium of shops, eateries, star-studded Kodak Theater (a recent host of the Oscars), and abutting luxury hotel appears to the observer as a cacophonous parade of architectural styles and forms. It is a jungle of retail zoning schemes, subterranean parking, dead space, and disjunctive circulation systems - all mashed together into a pile of consumerist confusion.
Despite (or perhaps because of) this seemingly chaotic mixture, the effect on the visiting consumer is to encourage more looking and less shopping. A large, stepped plinth separates it from the buzzing Hollywood Boulevard thereby creating a space of respite within the larger, more enigmatic chaos of the surrounding cityscape - one that the general public, tourist and Angelino alike have embraced. Forget shopping! The potential of the project as a retail paradise seems forever unrealized as people stroll about the circular promenades checking it all out - checking out the million dollar views of Hollywood from the spacious observation decks, checking out the gilded interior of the Kodak theater, checking out the heroic quotes from Hollywood's brightest stars etched in the paving, and of course, checking out each other.
The effect of Hollywood & Highland upon its surroundings is immediate. By car it is a blur of pedestrian activity and the usual gaudy retail distractions, but on foot it is another vision entirely. What was once a city block ridden with prostitutes, tourist trap retail dives, drug dealers, and gristly locals now plays host to a newly refurbished Walk of the Stars, a subway stop on LA's billion dollar Red Line, throngs of camera-clicking tourists, and of course The Gap. The Gap is hard to miss since it occupies the corner anchor spot on Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Rising above its three stories and the looming five story mass of the H&H project, a large, curved LCD screen morphs into an enormous four story billboard (at one time adorned by a leering Brittany Spears, and now by a speeding Audi) which reaches upwards into the night sky crying to Los Angeles to please, come and "check it out".
This is perhaps the sad legacy of Hollywood & Highland. It functions very well as a new pocket of semi-public space within the city. The mall's arrival signaled a turning point for an area hard hit by drugs and crime. It even defies Los Angeles's predisposition toward the automobile, as it contains a connection to the subway. However, as an architectural overture to the future of the shopping mall within the city, it seems an impotent gesture, space filler. It is something that is appreciated as a destination, but lacking in any sort of critical dialogue with the context around it. The interior space of the project is as vacuous as any other mall in any other place. In short, Hollywood & Highland acts as an exit from the city, but an exit without destination, an exit to nowhere. It is just another contextual void, in a city already brimming with them.
"West Hollywood Gateway creates a landmark entrance for the West Hollywood's eastern entrance at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea. By creating a vibrant communal destination, the project is expected to become a catalyst for future development in the declining eastside urban environment."
- Jerde Partnership press release.
Another potential "contextual void" is already realized as a physical one. As construction begins on the West Hollywood Gateway project, a large pit (eventually to be subterranean parking) is busy with workers and equipment preparing the site for the pouring of footings. The project is to become "a lighted gateway" that will serve as a visual transition from the city of Los Angeles to the city of West Hollywood. It is meant to serve as a catalyst for an area consisting of dilapidated production houses, strip malls, and fast food joints. It is to be a medium density development containing both a Best Buy and Target store, along with an entourage of support shops, eating establishments, and office space. Like Hollywood & Highland, much of the project is outdoors, and the pedestrian entrance is oriented to encourage flow from the corner of La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. As in all Jerde projects, this is "place making" on speed, an instant shopping destination with a distinctly "urban" vibe. Where before there was only a car wash and a taco stand, you will be able to buy a pair of cargo pants at Old Navy and close a deal on a new television at Best Buy.
The problem with the West Hollywood Gateway project as an urban gesture is not the architectural styling nor is it the siting of the project. The shortfall of the development is that once again it fails to recognize the responsibility of architects and developers to imagine change. The project does have the cohesive ability to evoke change the area - by providing yet another uninspired shopping area where there was none before. Yet there are no deviations or novel programmatic solutions proposed here. There are no parks, no dog runs, real public spaces of any kind. There is no attached housing, nor are there any attempts to integrate new urban ideas into the mix. Like Hollywood & Highland, the West Hollywood Gateway could be in downtown Palmdale, Sylmar, or Reseda for that matter.
It takes a scary kind of illness
To design a place like this for pay
Downtown is an endless generic mall
Of video games and fast food chains
- The Dead Kennedys "This Could Be Anywhere"
The shopping mall is not simply of suburbia; many of the design concepts employed in mall design were garnered from successful elements in the urban realm. However, what developers and architects fail to realize is that by simply injecting the standard model of the suburban mall into the city, they succeed in only creating another monolithic object of blankness, incapable of communicating with the context that surrounds it. By refusing to adapt or by simply infusing the same trite New Urbanist schemes into the existing city fabric they only succeed in bringing to the city the psychological condition of nihilistic banality that the suburbs are so often criticized for. There is no way of creating an instant place, place evolves. In order to successfully engage the city context in a progressive dialogue, urban malls must be re-thought, in such a way that they attract the local as well as the global. In order to do this they must actively engage their surroundings and reflect this relationship in their architectural and spatial organization. By attempting to build every new urban mall as a singular destination, without recognizing the larger more diverse network that surrounds it, we are simply transforming the metropolis into a continuous series of impotent gestures forever locked into an egotistical pursuit of a fossilized dream of what we once thought cities to be.
Footnotes
The street bustles with people; music roars out from the stores; salespeople urge you into their shops and merchandise spills out into the sidewalks. This is Broadway Street in the historic downtown Los Angeles. Once the home to shops like Bullocks, May Company, Broadway, Woolworth, and even See's Candy, the street is still as vibrant with commerce as it was during its glory days in the early 1900's.
Boasting the largest concentration of theaters in the world, this historic street was once THE place to shop and be entertained. As with many central business districts, the historic core (Spring, Broadway and Hill streets) lost its major tenants as the department stores decamped to the suburbs along with their customers. Today, the people are different, but the synergy of retail still thrives between 3rd and Olympic streets - a long span of seven city blocks. Major retailers are Fallas Paredes (department store) and Canada (shoes) both major Mexican brand names. The new downtown along Figueroa (Financial District) is home to fine dining, better (name brand and quality) shopping and entertainment. On Broadway, by 7 pm, everything is closed.
The Merchants
Broadway Street is one of the few successful shopping corridors where name brands do not line the street, yet it is lively even during holidays and rainy days. Where many shopping areas struggle to create a sense of place, or attempt marketing strategies to attract shoppers, Broadway's retail developed without the assistance of commercial consultants. Broadway is a thriving pedestrian shopping strip where the niche is discount shopping. As major department stores left, smaller no-name merchants moved in. A few well-known retailers did come; Payless Shoes (6th & 9th Streets), Footlocker, Big Lots (previously Pic-N-Save) and Rite-Aid, but they are not the majority.
The street has several niches including some stores that are rare finds. The northern area of Broadway Street provides one-stop shopping for all your quinceñera (a coming-of-age tradition for young ladies turning 15) and wedding needs, from marriage licenses, attire for the entire wedding party, and accessories, to chapels and quick divorces. Most items are at least half off the typical mall prices. It is not uncommon to see a line of brides and grooms waiting in the sidewalks ready to vow their love for each other.
Newspaper stands, electronics, clothing, perfume and gift shops are ubiquitous. The prices are relatively low and the quality can be quite good. Without careful inspection you may not notice that the print pattern on the skirt you purchased may not line up correctly or the stitching may be a little crooked. The $4.99 clothing stores had their start right here in the heart of the City. The latest fashion trends for women can be found throughout the street's length. If a color is out of season, travel to Broadway and chances are you will find it there. In fact, the only thing you cannot find on Broadway is furniture. Yes, you can even find pets including roosters and other exotic birds. One bookstore sells revolutionary literature and a music store specializes in accordions, a bit of the exotic located in this regional shopping strip. The electronic shops sell discontinued and refurbished models of cameras - digital and print - and recording, stereos, and much more all at exceptional prices.
Perhaps one of the most interesting niches on Broadway is the Jewelry district. A business that continues to grow even in an unsure economy, jewelry shops are the fastest growing merchants along the street, catering to the Latino shoppers. Better quality jewelry can be found on Hill Street (one block west), yet this is not to say that quality jewelers cannot be found on Broadway. One small woman-owned jewelry shop sells custom made jewelry and specializing precious stones. She will even work with an amount you can afford to pay.
Nowhere do merchants want your business more so than the jewelers on Broadway. During one 30-second trip through the Story Building on 7th Street, at least ten merchants had exactly what I was looking for without me verbalizing a thing. Everything from 10 - 22 carat gold to silver, platinum, diamonds, precious stones, watches and anything else that sparkles can be found here, even oversized, diamond-encrusted crosses and dollar signs. Some merchants even offer lay-away. The advantage of shopping for jewelry here are the great deals to be haggled over. But beware, come prepared and be firm in what you want, the salespeople are very good. Do not be fooled by the "today only" specials. By the same token, do not expect the item you wanted to be there when you return a month later.
Foods
There are no name restaurants, in addition to the fast food establishments that have recognized the potential of these low-income, but highly traversed shopping districts. KFC, Taco Bell, and Carl's Jr. are focused at the 7th Street intersection - a highly traveled corner. Yoshinoya, McDonald's and Pollo Loco are located between 3rd and 4th Streets. Other less known food places include a place that sells both Indian and Mexican food AND you can purchase a porcelain doll before you leave. Greek, Mexican seafood, Chinese, hamburger, pizza and tacos, tacos, tacos can all be eaten on Broadway.
The Grand Central Square Market is the counterpart to the suburban mall's food court. In addition to the tortas (delicious Mexican sandwich), overstuffed burritos, and seafood eateries, the market has produce, spices, meat and seafood products at amazingly low prices. Rarely is the market not full of shoppers.
This street is full of entrepreneurs who seem to have a different set of business rules and regulatory constraints. The informal sector sells leather belts, watches, turtles, roses, bus tokens, batteries and one lady even sells toothpaste and gum. The food vendors sell bacon-wrapped jalapeno hotdogs, donuts, yellow cherries, fruit doused in chili power and lime, coffee, and my favorite, the corn vendor. Several new newsstands have take up shop on the sidewalks. The newspaper stands sell a variety of reading materials including magazines, newspapers, adult magazines and some sell snacks. These newsstands have the latest fashion magazines and even National Geographic printed in Spanish.
Entertainment
Finding traditional forms of entertainment on Broadway can be difficult. Most would argue that people watching is the best form of entertainment on this street. Perhaps you will be fortunate enough to converse with the young boy with elephantiasis in his feet. And similar to Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, Broadway has its share of entertainers - two to be exact. Both gentlemen stand along the sidewalk and dance to the music flowing from the shops. Otherwise, there's always the Shrimp Place next to the Grand Central Square Market. Open from 9 am to 9 pm, this place rocks with popular Spanish music. Whether dancing or just drinking mini Coronitas in a bucket with the guys or gals, this is definitely a spot to check out.
Signage:
Along with the sounds of the street, the signs are indicative of the business activities. Several layers of signs line the buildings' first and second stories in various stages of disrepair. Newer signs are quickly layered with more signage. Many of the merchants lack window space. As a result, there is little room, if any, to advertise more than the name of the store. To make up for this, the smaller merchants do one of two things and sometimes both; list everything the shop sells in the limited signage space, and/or display (just about) every type of merchandise along the entrance. The result is a very ethnic, third-world shopping district look. Yet the signs are almost a nonessential element to a shopper who drives or walks down the street, because there are so many visual distractions drawing your attention to the activity and products along the sidewalk that signs only matter if you want to return later. Most people walk up one side of the street and return on the other to take it all in.
Contrary to the every day appearance real estate prices are high. It is not uncommon for merchants that last only a month while others have been there for over 20 years. Retail space is sometimes used like a swapmeet, where several smaller merchants share space within one retail space. These shops tend to be more organized and easier to walk through since they cannot encroach on each other's areas. Often times, sidewalk space and even exterior walls are used as additional display areas. It works.
The competition is tough for retailers on Broadway Street. The Macy's Mall is only a few blocks away as are the various specialty districts that make Downtown a magnet for bargain shoppers. The famous Santee Alley, toy, and flower districts are walking distance away, as is the garment district complete with the California and LA Marts.
Even with all the great deals one can find on Broadway it is not for everyone. Some people do not like the loud music blaring from some shops. Walking down the street is like turning the knob on the radio from left to right while driving in Mexico; catching mostly Spanish stations with occasional English music pumping away. The clothing is mostly geared towards women and small women at that. Few places have fitting rooms and if you are lucky to exchange something, it is usually limited to a couple of days from the date of purchase. The merchandise is not always cheap, contrary to the environment. Regardless of where you go or what you buy, cash is king and will usually guarantee you a better deal.
The Business Improvement District cleans the streets daily, provides maps and other brochures highlighting the various elements of the downtown area and any other assistance a visitor may need. The BID has been instrumental in making the corridor safer and more attractive to greater populations, and Latinos still predominantly visit it.
The Broadway Initiative was developed to revitalize the street. The ultimate goal is a lively pedestrian shopping experience similar to Old Town in Pasadena, Third Street in Santa Monica, or even Pine Avenue in Long Beach. As new housing opportunities evolve in Downtown, surely the retail mix is bound to change to reflect the changing demographics. Or will it? Only time will tell.
What happens when the currency of the late twentieth century and now the burgeoning twenty-first, the "real" telescopes back in on itself? When the all the Osbornes and Survivors and Anna Nicole Smiths lose the sardonic smirk and implode in a morbid feedback loop?
This is what I wonder as I wander in and out of galleries, plastic glass in hand (half-full with cheap Chardonnay) on Chung King Road, Chinatown. A pleasant art-filled Saturday evening in Downtown Los Angeles; just me and a hundred grungy socialites.
At least, this is what I wish I was wondering. It's what comes to mind now that the sweetly sour taste has faded some months after the fact. What was really on my mind was "Why is their hair so greasy and messy, yet so artfully arranged?" But now I've given up taking pot shots at the jaded, Fred Segal shoppers and it's time to reflect. I'm disturbed by the ease with which these tableaus nest. One ironic reality fits snug inside another, and another and another ad infinitum, as if you are staring at your image in the funhouse mirrors of the Prada men's shoe department. (Location: Prada Store, New York City, Rem Koolhaas/OMA; in the basement behind Kazuyo Sejima's packaging installation.)
Chinatown is a place with multiple historic layers dating back a century. For Los Angeles, it is simply ancient. Also, it proves to be the perfect case study to illustrate my line of questioning. One earnestly ironical "real" moment in time tucked within another.
With a nod to the Eames' film, Powers of Ten, there's an equation to graft the exponential growth or decay curve (the warped space, the geographic projections) of these realities. First establish the variables. C equals Chinatown, our case study. "Real" equals a wry, disposition in which the everyday is worn as a sarcastic badge of honor.
C=C0 Rx
C= Chinatown, a function of the original Chinatown multiplied by the real, or where we are at a given time
C0= original Chinatown
R= real
X= the exponent of reality in time
So, where does the curve end?
-
EQUATION 1:
C=C0 R1
To find the end of the rainbow, we need to track the development of Old Chinatown. Located in downtown Los Angeles, Chinatown was built in the 1870s along a short alley, Calle de Los Negros, block long between El Pueblo Plaza and Old Arcadia Street. It's presumptuous to label the jumble of buildings occupied by Chinese agricultural workers, laundry men and hired hands anything but a moment in itself. An immigrant culture, plunked down in a potential Arcadia, does not build in an attempt to create an "old-world lifestyle." The decorative motif ape what is brought from the motherland producing a life just cobbled together. The self-conscious nostalgia comes later when it becomes part of the cultural production. When we start to consume and reconsume its image.
It is the rise and fall of Old Chinatown as a fin-de-siecle tourist destination that determines the first degree on the Reality Curve. The exotic restaurants, shops full of oriental bric-a-brac and eastern temptation conspire around 1900 to lure thrill-seeking white Angelinos. Opium dens, perhaps real, perhaps a fabrication set up for American chiniose visions, marks the crest between the apex and nadir of Chinatown. Questioning whether the scene in front of you is actual or forged anticipates demise and locks in cynicism. When the guise of authenticity slipped from the shop windows and onto the unpaved streets of Old Chinatown, what had seemed alluring to Western eyes was now seedy and corrupt. By 1910 the area was abandoned by all but immigrants and considered worthless. In 1913, property was sold for development to Southern Pacific trackways. In 1931, the California Supreme Court approved the construction of Union Station on the site of Old Chinatown.
-
EQUATION 2:
C=C0 R2
So here we stand in the second creation of Chinatown. New Chinatown, 1938. One part pagoda, one part Portland cement. Reality is squared.
New Chinatown didn't rise phoenix-like from the ashes of its own demise. It wallowed for years as one developer's speculation after another failed to light a flame. Two years passed after the Supreme Court authorized Old Chinatown as the site of the new Union Station before the thought of a new "Old Chinatown" was bandied about.
But why a New Chinatown as such? Couldn't the Chinese community just settle into the great American melting pot like the rest? The reasons for autonomy are as much about economics as about heritage. Built into the architecture is an appeal to the American tourist. "The buildings would be most modern and airy, correctly engineered for earthquake, fire safety, and sanitation. The streets would be wide for an open, safe look. Thus the area would be palatable to the casual American tourist as well as fellow Chinese. The new community would eliminate potential houses of vice, such as gambling," write Suellen Cheng and Munson Kwok in the Los Angeles Chinatown Fiftieth Year Guidebook.
"Erle Webster and Adrian Wilson were the architects who worked successfully to combine the elements of Chinese designs on essentially modern buildings. Economy and a limited budget dictated that the structures be kept simple rather than exactly authentic," they continue. Is the architecture American posing Chinese or is it Chinese posing American? Simple concrete construction delineates a hutong, the historical city alley or lane typical in Beijing. Chinese characters announcing each store and restaurant are rimmed with neon, translated into English with matching brush strokes.
The nostalgia is not yet dripping from the eaves, but there is a celebration of otherness - of the Far East - and a celebration of California's precarious position balanced on the Western edge of the continent. It's Nathaniel West territory: a collision of dreams, forms and cultures. As he writes in The Day of the Locust (1939), "But not even the soft wash of dusk could help the houses. Only dynamite would be of any use against the Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, and every possible combination of these styles that lined the slopes of the canyon. Their desire to startle was so eager and guileless. It's hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that are. But it is easy to sigh."
With a sigh, New Chinatown is exactly what one would expect from Los Angeles: commodity, fantasy, Forbidden City storefronts and imported baubles next to the imported authenticity of oddly-perfumed herb shops and grocery stores. It's a projection of the Orient made palatable to Western eyes.
And where Old Chinatown stood? Union Station. The building, designed by architects John Parkinson & Donald B. Parkinson and finished in 1939, is as much of a visionary view of the American West as Chinatown is a Western view of the East. To the degree that Chinatown is decorative and marginalized, Union Station is majestic. Rancho Supreme, mission moderne describes the vast courtyards, tile roofs and faux wood-beamed ceilings. A three-storey tall archway spills out promise across the LA Basin. It is dust bowl sublime built to accommodate the migration from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas that preceded its construction.
EQUATION 3:
C=C0 R3
Equation 3 takes us back to quasi-real-time Chung King Road. Saturday night gallery hopping. Back to an opening sponsored by the movie Dogtown and Z Boys, drinks hosted by Absolut. Lit by strings of faded paper lanterns, the crowd is beautiful. It's a happening.
And why is it a happening? Perhaps it's because the crusty storefronts make cool justification for mediocre art and fashion? In Los Angeles, anything that gives the semblance of history has value, especially if it gives just that - a semblance. Not much is actually for sale. The art is more display than commerce - galleries set up to win cred, to win authenticity. The R cubed is the paradox between knowing one's own shallow roots are grounded in hyperreality and the need for something deeper. The depth found in or a Parisian cold water flat is coveted. So it is re-created into a New Urbanist Citywalk for hipsters.
"Unreality no longer resides in the dream or fantasy or in the beyond, but in the real's hallucinatory resemblance to itself," writes French theorist Jean Baudrillard, in his 1976 essay, "The Symbolic Exchange and Death." Following Baudrillard's thought, this Chung King Road happening and, by extension, much of Chinatown's ad hoc gentrification, is not a dreamy recreation of bohemian cafe society, but a parody of itself. The trust-fund galleries (and gallery owners), hawking more attitude than art, establish their "realness" by carrying over the names of now defunct establishments. Black Dragon Society, China Art Objects, Fong's the signage reads with a smirk. The clever recycling leads not to a happy-go-lucky bricolage, but to something darker.
"Reality itself flounders in, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably though another, reproductive medium, such as photography. >From medium to medium, the real is volatilized, becoming an allegory of death. But it is also, in a sense, reinforced thought its own destruction. It becomes reality for its own sake, the fetishism of the lost object: no longer the object of representation, but the ecstasy of denial and of its own ritual extermination: the hyperreal," again writes Baudrillard. Hence, retail architecture is the medium of reduplication. This changes how to read the Chinese shopkeepers pulling down the rolling metal shutters over the display windows at dusk and scurrying past the arriving jet set. Perhaps it's not because of a lack of business acumen that they abandon their territory, but because they catch a whiff of the smell of death and are fleeing ghosts.
-
EQUATION 4:
C=C0 R4
The chatter and drum-and-bass co-mingle and it seems that all the equations, variables and integers map out a grim path towards destruction - reality implodes, one layer of visibility pancaking on top of another like the dual towers at the tip of Manhattan. Does all matter turn to toxic pixie dust?
Searching for the art space, C-Level, it looks like Baudrillard's prophecy is true. Sketchy directions taken from their website take me down an alley just behind Chung Kind Road. Chinese restaurants that face Hill Street also share the alley. Their engorged dumpsters aren't quaint, although the stink is damn authentic.
C-Level is about ten yards down the alley, identified by a left-hand stoop with an open red door. Steps lead down to the basement. This is the space; it's under Chung King Road, a literal representation of the "underground."
Although I brace myself for more of the aboveground underground attitude, what I find is a hodgepodge of computer equipment and threadbare couches. A couple members of the cooperative are playing video games and another is programming something. The seven members (Christina Ulke, Cyril Kuhn, Eddo Stern, Jason Brown, Mark Allen, Michael Wilson and Peter Brinson) are self-proclaimed on www.c-level.cc to be "artists, programmers, writers, designers, agit-propers, filmmakers and reverse-engineers." The space is a studio and lab for virtual explorations.
It's here, where subterranean rompus room meets high tech, that Baudrillard's endless reproduction comes back into play and, in turn, is questioned. He writes, "Thus art entered the phase of its own indefinite reproduction; everything that redoubles in itself, even ordinary, everyday reality, falls in the same stroke under the sign of art, and becomes aesthetic. The same goes for production, of which one can say that today it is commencing this aesthetic doubling at the point where, having expelled all content and finality, it becomes, in a way, abstract and nonfigurative. It begins to express the pure form of production; it takes itself, like art, as its own teleological value."
While the work could fall under the above definition, an understanding of what constitutes the "art" is slippery. C-level is more about creating a social network through lectures, screenings and performances than about autonomous art production. Events are produced, and cynicism aside, there is hope here in the basement gloom. A community of sorts is formed around production without the added "real" aesthetic.
Communal art projects tend manifest in interactive events. For example, the following Cockfight Arena and Tekken Torture Tournament happenings are described with all the gusto of a World Wresting Federation referee:
"A one-night parade of sweat and adrenaline pitting viewer against viewer in brutal virtual cockfighting theatre. Audience volunteers will don custom-made game controllers with full sized wings and feathered helmets. Combatants will step into an arena to control their life size game avatars through vigorous flapping and pecking, competing for blood and birdfeed while rapaciously inflicting onscreen bodily harm. Cockfight Arena is free and open to the public. Gambling and smoking will be permitted. No animals or humans were injured in the production of this event.
"Tekken Torture Tournament is a one-night event combining the latest video game technology, untapped public aggression and painful electric shock. Willing participants are wired into a custom fighting system - a modified Playstation (running Tekken III) which converts virtual on screen damage into bracing, non-lethal, electric shocks."
Eddo notes that the "lack of slickness is deliberate." There's an odd logic to their oppositional stance against the gentrified art scene going on above them: it actually helps them to create community. Peter, from his musty couch, raises his voice if not his fist in solidarity. "Decide what kind of culture you are interested in and then manufacture it. We don't need those galleries to validate what we do."
So, it is where you least expect to find reality - in a virtual reality, net art, digital space - the most hyperreal places on the planet, that the Real is able to re-emerge from the staticy feedback. C-level authenticates the unreal. Production, in this case the production of community alongside the technological, is not subsumed by its own self-consciousness. Instead, it sidesteps notions of authenticity. The work may not look great. It may not be slick or pretty. It shows each pixel, every puppet string of production. The "shock of the real" is real and the sarcasm is left in the alley. The shocks dealt in the Tekken Torture Tournament underscore that the goal is to reiterate life, rather than wallow in Baudrillard's fascination with decay.
As a child, my first experience visiting downtown Long Beach was filled with danger and excitement. My mother was taking me to the YMCA building for my first swimming lesson. This structure, even from a child's perspective, was a beautiful four-story brick edifice directly fronting Long Beach Boulevard, the City's main north-south thoroughfare. While standing at the pool with my class listening to the instructor, I became bored and decided to jump in the deep end to start swimming on my own.
Located directly across from the old YMCA, CityPlace is a mixed-use development and a jump-start for Long Beach Plaza. Long Beach Plaza was an attempt to revitalize a declining downtown, and seized the typical modern planning cues by consolidating several existing blocks into one super block, internalizing most retail shops and transforming the exterior elevations into windowless facades. Completed approximately twenty years ago, "The Plaza" gobbled up some of the City's best quality buildings, which were comparable to popular Old Pasadena, and was virtually an immediate failure. During the same time period, the YMCA building I remembered followed similar cues, and was demolished to make way for a new modern structure tucked behind a bermed suburban landscape and a surface parking lot.
CityPlace straddles both sides of Long Beach Boulevard, with the bulk of the project located on the west side, and is bounded by Pine Avenue to the west, Elm Avenue to the east, Sixth Street to the north and Third Street to the south. Currently a significant amount of the retail component, comprising close to 450,000 square feet, has been leased and is open to the public. Of 341 housing units, a large number have completed framing, and a few sites are still awaiting construction. Developers Diversified Realty or DDR is the developer of the eight-block CityPlace. In addition, DDR is the developer for The Pike at Rainbow Harbor, a 369,000 square foot retail waterfront development located just a few blocks south of CityPlace. At over 800,000 square feet of new downtown retail, the City is clamoring for precious retail sales tax dollars.
CityPlace is worthy of review from both an urban design and architectural perspective, not only for its attempt to re-urbanize the site but also for its effort to integrate conventional suburban retail tenants, such as Wal-Mart, Albertsons, Nordstrom Rack and Sav-on into an urban setting. This tenant mix is clearly not focused on the 3000-plus high-end residential units currently under construction downtown, but towards the middle-class that comprises most communities throughout the nation, including Long Beach.
Reintroducing streets and defining a block structure has been one of project's strongest attempts to urbanize the site and stitch it back into the traditional street grid. These new streets, with broad sidewalks and consistent street amenities, such as trees and light standards, tie together the variety of buildings that border and define the public realm. They make for more walkable-scaled blocks for pedestrians and also assist in dispersing vehicles.
However, the site is only linked to areas that benefit the project: some streets run through the site while others do not. Fifth Street links to the west, then shifts south solely to accommodate the ground floor area prescribed by a major tenant. Wal-Mart, in this case, is unnecessarily driving urban design, though the store's footprint neatly fits in a 350' x 400' traditional downtown block. If more floor area was required, then a multi-level store similar to one recently opened in Baldwin Hills should have been executed. Multi-level big box stores do attract shoppers - a two-story Target in Pasadena is one of the chain's top grossing stores. Similarly, the Promenade extension does not align with the existing street south of Third Street, which draws thousands of people to its Farmer's Market, amphitheater and access to the Convention Center and shoreline.
Regrettably no alleys were reintroduced into CityPlace, even though an intricate alley network exists throughout downtown. Without alleys, service access for retail buildings is forced to front public streets. The west side of Long Beach Boulevard is primarily designated for back-of-house activities, thus generating hundreds of linear feet of screened loading zones, killing any pedestrian interest along the sidewalk and creating a terrible first impression for passengers disembarking the BlueLine. A much better solution is utilized within the project itself, just east of the Albertsons Grocery store, where loading is virtually concealed from view.
Most of the existing multi-level parking structures were salvaged from the previous enclosed mall. This created numerous challenges, such as concealing the structures from the sidewalk and street. This challenge is best met on Pine Avenue, once downtown's premier retail destination, where the garages are behind ground floor retail with housing above. It is a tragedy that this approach was not consistently utilized throughout the project. Portions of the east-west streets (Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth) have hundreds of feet of exposed parking structure deterring a sense of urban vitality and safety for pedestrians. Parking garage stalls facing sidewalks could be replaced at the ground level with neighborhood related retail, as has been done in Old Pasadena. On the east side of Long Beach Boulevard a surface parking lot is fairly well concealed from the street by twenty-five foot deep retail buildings.
The worst atrocity is the public plaza located at the southwest corner of Fifth Street and the Promenade extension, which has surface parking to its south side and an exposed parking garage on the west. As Fifth curves, the terminating element for westbound travelers is the parking structure. The plaza itself is a leftover crumb of land, hard, cold and void of any water features. Since it is on soil, this space should be filled with ardent landscaping. In its current configuration, the plaza appears to be an incomplete building site rather than a public space and development may ultimately be the best use of this void. Equally troubling, CityPlace fronts Sixth Street with two blocks of blank big box walls and a multi-level parking garage. The project has turned its vitality away from the northern portion of downtown, an area desperately in need of a catalyst to initiate capital investment and revitalization.
Traditional blocks in downtown Long Beach have various parcel widths at 25' multiples, such as 25', 50', 75' and 100', with consistent depths defined by the mid-block alley network. These varying parcel sizes have generated buildings of assorted widths and heights, creating a variety of scale along the street edge. CityPlace has best executed this building pattern on Pine Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets, where new construction is integrated between two existing buildings: the eleven-story Farmers and Merchants Bank and a two-story former bank building completed in the 1960's. This block is most representative of the eclectic structures located along the retail portion of Pine Avenue.
In contrast, the massing further north on Pine Avenue is far too consistent. The building between Fourth and Fifth Streets is literally a "crew cut" structure, a redundant four-story monolith with only minor variations in parapet heights. Presuming this is a response to City regulations of a four-story maximum height, a more successful approach would have been to vary the building heights, based on the City's traditional 25' platting module, with certain areas two or three stories high and others four or five stories, to average a four-story height.
CityPlace is a stucco behemoth, due to a lack of diversity in finish materials. A tremendous opportunity was overlooked by not introducing other materials to articulate and vary the scale of the project, and to provide greater identity to individual retail stores. A successful infill retail project is located directly south on the eastern side of Pine Avenue. Here the buildings are clad in smooth trowel plaster, glass, and metal siding accented with wood and metal storefronts. Human scaled materials such as tile and brick veneer should have been sparingly used, particularly at retail entries. The use of various signage such as blade, window, awning and cut letter signs is an improvement to the common generic Plexiglas box signs. Successful lighting types and techniques have contributed to the variety and provided an overall perception of safety. Paint, the most economical means of identifying individual storefronts has also been carefully utilized. Other affordable applicable materials that could have been used include cementitious siding to create horizontal, vertical, board and batten and panelized patterns.
The conventional method to locating openings, particularly those in wood frame construction, is to stack them. This is the simplest approach to solve shear wall and exterior ventilation issues. Regrettably, on a development of CityPlace's magnitude, the relentless piling of same size and type of windows augments the appearance of a monotonous project executed by a single hand. A few key buildings should have had staggered and varied window openings to increase the sense of diversity.
In the retail component of the project, buildings at street intersections have been executed reasonably by locating detailed entrances at corners. As the housing continues to complete the framing stages, there is no indication, other than minor parapet pop-ups, of elements such as towers or other architectural devices to accent corner conditions. This is another lost opportunity to vary the appearance of buildings.
Downtown Long Beach is composed of an eclectic mix of historic and modern buildings spanning every decade of the last century. Architectural styles include Spanish Revival, Craftsman, Victorian, Streamline Moderne, Art Deco and Modern. Sadly the retail component of CityPlace has adopted an abstract Deco design motif throughout, and though the residential component is still under construction, deco details are also emerging. This continuous repetition of style is out of character with the rest of downtown and not only detaches itself from adjacent urban fabric but also identifies CityPlace as an isolated mega project.
The downtown is in dire need of ownership opportunities to increase a populace of stakeholders dedicated to improving the entire urban core, which is currently experiencing an urban renaissance. Coupled with the thousands of office workers already within walking distance, the introduction of housing into this vast area will support retail, especially during the evenings and on the weekends, by activating and providing a sense of security at the street level for pedestrians, ultimately transforming this neighborhood into a 24/7 environment. CityPlace will have 341 units of housing, with approximately eighty percent dedicated as rental and the remainder "for sale". However, the single-loaded stacked flat appears to be the only housing type currently utilized for the project. Though the density of the project is reasonable for downtown, greater density could have easily been absorbed into the site. This could have been achieved by continuing the housing form used to conceal parking garages and blank big box retail walls. These liners could have fronted sidewalks, with direct access to the ground floor units via stoops, similar in approach to the brownstones that permeate cities located in the eastern portion of the United States. The introduction of thirty-eight lofts, a typology already popular downtown, should have been implemented at a much greater scale, particularly at the street level where it can accommodate live/work opportunities with the potential for ground floor retail. Other downtowns have buildings with expansive ground floors that are temporarily partitioned for lofts and later converted to retail. Other housing typologies such as town homes and courtyard housing should have been integrated into CityPlace to entice a variety of urban dwellers.
Converting the Long Beach Plaza Mall into a mixed-use project consisting of retail and housing is a dramatic improvement. Regrettably many opportunities have been lost, sadly with solutions clearly executed in other portions of the project. Who is to blame? The developer and team of consultants ultimately respond to market forces and at times prefer to proceed with the least common denominator. Concern should be focused on the City of Long Beach, for its failure to understand the downtown's fundamental and complex characteristics and to apply appropriate solutions consistently throughout the project. Municipalities must serve as visionaries and guardians of the overall quality and nature of downtown, while still spurring economic development. Where and how the process failed are questions that remain unanswered.
Excellent urban form is about cogent public open space structure comprising of streets, parks and plazas, and serves as a constant as building use and form evolves over time. When such urbanism is established, as in downtown Long Beach, its pattern must unequivocally be reintegrated to best serve the public and it's future. This process of integration has started to occur at CityPlace but unfortunately is not complete. Good urbanism is also about a diverse architecture with a multilingual approach to building style and a strong sense of permanence that can allow quality structures to adapt into many uses over it's lifetime. CityPlace has from this perspective been the most disappointing. The majority of the project has been executed by a single firm, which has contributed to tremendous monotony.
Fortunately, the opportunity also exists to surgically improve sections in the future. Urbanism is not static but evolves over time. However change should not take the unsustainable approach of scrape and build every twenty years. As the downtown continues to develop and mature as a 24/7 environment, the community and market forces will hopefully drive incremental improvements to CityPlace. Opportunity exists to incorporate additional retail and housing, not only to conceal parking and bland facades, but also over some of the big box stores. If executed by different design hands these changes will add a needed layer of diversity, breaking the project into a smaller scale. The next evolution will need not be as dramatic, and hopefully, when the time arises, City officials will get it right.
The original YMCA brick structure remains only a fond childhood memory; subsequently, the YMCA has recently retreated to a significantly smaller facility on the north side of Sixth Street fronting directly on to CityPlace. Sadly it is facing a dead two-block long blank wall and exposed multilevel parking garage. I wonder what impressions my four-year-old son will formulate while walking with me through CityPlace.
Image Credits
Photographs by author. Graphics by Juan Gomez-Novy.
Near the end of 2001 no fewer than three urban malls opened their doors to the shoppers of greater Los Angeles. These malls - and at least another three are in the final stages of construction or planning - represent a prodigious production of retail space, over 4 million square feet of shopping. Moreover, their scale, density, and architectural typology is also stunning, and unprecedented since the opening of the notorious Beverly Center in 1982. [1] As perceived by the popular press and consumers, these malls represent a reinvestment in the city as a social and economic site - Hollywood & Highland is the keystone for the LA Community Redevelopment Agency's revitalization of Hollywood Boulevard, and a civic center plan commissioned by the City of Pasadena dictated the urban configuration of Paseo Colorado. For others, these malls signal the final capitulation of the city to suburban cultural and economic norms. These critics attack the homogenous mixture of national and global retail chains typical of any high-rent, centralized management structure. Yet beyond the proliferation of Baby Gap and Banana Republic, the creeping suburbanization of urban malls indicates a shift of a more systemic nature - one that significantly diminishes the palette of urban design tools and, more disturbingly, reduces our understanding of urban life.
Of the three malls, The Grove most clearly illustrates these issues, particularly because its adjacency to the venerable Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax amplifies the history and future of the urban shopping mall. A visit to both the Market and The Grove reveals strikingly different spatial experiences. The former is a semi-enclosed, claustrophobic labyrinth of small shops, housed in anonymous agricultural shacks and set on an asphalt parking lot. The newer mall is more like Main Street Disneyland or the Forum Shops at Caesar's Place in Las Vegas, albeit without an artificial sky or animatronic fantasy figures. The Grove's medium and big box stores and multiplex cinema face a central open-air walk and are housed in vigorous reproductions of historic commercial architecture, detailed throughout in materials luxurious for a shopping mall. Only a set of mid-sized buildings by the Market's architectural stewards of twenty years, Koning Eizenberg, mediates between its one-story casualness and the three-story deliberations of The Grove and its massive, computer-monitored parking garage. [2]
Yet the gap between the two is bridged with a straight line - for the Market is essentially the prototype for the suburban shopping mall and The Grove is its most current incarnation. Although its relaxed attitude suggests the Market was an outgrowth of ad-hoc gatherings, its rural aesthetic was a calculated marketing strategy not so different from the Mexican stylism of its contemporary at Olvera Street. The unique environment of the Market was designed to encourage leisure shopping. "With little outlay, a bazaar-like atmosphere was cultivated to enhance the experience so that shopping for food would seem more akin to a leisure than a routine pursuit. Fueled by an aggressive advertising campaign, the Farmers Market began to attract an affluent trade of movie stars and others who sought the unusual goods sold there and took pleasure in the novel ambience." [3] The historicist imagery of The Grove engages in the same manipulative choreography, albeit updated by seventy years of market research and with architect Jon Jerde as mediator. Less skillfully executed than a Jerde Partnership "experience", such as San Diego's Horton Plaza or Universal CityWalk, The Grove's narrative architecture and programming clearly owes much to their innovations. [4]
Yet the fundamental innovation of the Farmers Market is that unlike the shopping courts of its day it has no retail street frontage, but is an internalized court located in the middle of a parking lot. This typology, of course, would become the dominant model of late twentieth century shopping malls. In Los Angeles, Lakewood Center was the first mall to conform to this now-classic model, firmly established by earlier structures such as Seattle's Northgate and Boston's Shoppers World. [5] The juggernaut of this type is now the 4.2 million square foot Mall of America outside of Minneapolis, although the title of world's largest mall once belonged to 3+ million square foot Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance. In the transition from the Farmers Market to the Mall of America stands late modern architect Victor Gruen, the father of the modern shopping mall. Gruen organized the parking strategy and pedestrian-only environment of the Market with economic proformas of department stores and the technical innovations of modern architecture and transportation planning into a codified formula for producing suburban shopping malls. [6] Over the next twenty-five years, the regional mall quickly became one of the most recognizable architectural and marketing typologies in America suburbia. [7] Inevitably, as retailers rediscovered the city, the suburban mall was imported to the city. Although surface parking generally does not surround urban malls - cars are located under the mall as at Century City or next door in gigantic parking garages as at The Grove - the spatial organization remains decidedly suburban. Even if the roof has been removed, opening the mall interior to the sky, shops and pedestrian passages remain focused inward towards privately controlled "public" space, disconnected from the street life of sidewalks.
But as the penultimate evolution of the mall, The Grove is neither innovative nor particularly imaginative. For architects, the dilemma of The Grove is not its postmodern pastiche of architectural styles, but its failure to expand the mall's range of typological or urban performance. More troubling, The Grove's popular success also reinforces entertainment retail (retail-tainment) as the only legitimate activity for creating urban places. The dominance of shopping - exacerbated in California's sales tax addicted cities - establishes retail centers as the only tool of urban design, to the exclusion of production (the workplace) and living (housing), and at the expense of a sustainable urban economy founded in a physical form that balances land uses with transit needs.
For a divorce between consumption (represented by shopping / entertainment) and the productive, domestic, or civic / political life has occurred during the evolution of the Farmers Market to The Grove. At The Grove, shopping has no connection to the surrounding Fairfax neighborhood, or even to greater Los Angeles. Whereas the Farmers Market married rural agricultural production with urban life at the local scale, the corporate enclave of The Grove, like most malls, is occupied by branch stores of national retail / entertainment corporations, with little relationship to the industry of the city. Shopping at The Grove does not prime the economic engine of Los Angeles manufacturers or retail companies. [8]
Although the Market's connection with local production was quickly lost as its architectural typology was applied to regional shopping malls, malls briefly retained elements of local civic culture. Gruen viewed the shopping mall as the suburbs' social center, and the inclusion of local cultural and political establishments was integral to his early mall formulas. Yet for the most part, even storefront post offices are absent from major shopping centers. In its place, The Grove features two European-feeling pedestrian streetscapes that converge on centralized park, with a small pond and actual grass. Although it is essentially an outdoor version of the atrium typical of suburban malls, including its set-to-music water fountain created by WET Design of Bellagio Vegas fame, this park nonetheless is immensely popular. Yet this very popularity makes The Grove that much more problematic. In one corner of the park is a collection of bronze sculptures, representing a gaggle of (white) children in 50's attire selling lemonade. At Christmas, the park features a gigantic fir tree - which signage proudly explains is taller than the Rockefeller Center tree. The references to the Rockefeller Center and mid-century Americana symbolically equate The Grove with the archetypal public green of New England villages and the democratic, urban civic culture such archetypes carry. But The Grove is entirely private space, created, owned and governed by Caruso Affiliated Holdings. Its primary and only purpose is shopping and entertainment: public facilities and institutions associated with democratic government are absent; offices and workshops of middle-class and working-class labor are not to be found; and the products of regional businesses are not sold here. The congested popularity of The Grove and its architectural and decorative symbolism gives it the appearance of a vibrant, rich urban place - yet it is ultimately a place where urban life is rendered in one-dimension, reduced to consumption only. The simulated city is just a marketing tool to amplify sales-per-square-foot numbers. This concentration of hyper-consumerism is not a problem per se - after all, commerce constitutes a certain kind of "publicness" and is one of the city's primary functional reasons to exist. Rather, the problem is that within popular perception The Grove's success quietly and insidiously eliminates other possible definitions of urban life, leaving architects and developers only one option for activating the city - shopping.
Meanwhile, The Grove is hidden from Pan Pacific Park by its massive parking garage and presents a blank wall to the real public face of Third Street. The architectural cinema of The Grove's interior is not directed towards the sidewalk and none of its storefronts open on the street. The urban design of The Grove does nothing to positively contribute to the pedestrian life of Fairfax's streets - it merely increases traffic. One suspects Byzantine conventions and the machinations of retail real estate played a greater role in shaping the disposition of The Grove than LA City planners, who should have rejected its "Berlin Wall" as a matter of course.
The Grove's defiant rejection of Los Angeles' streets is all the more distressing because of the latent transformative effect LA's commercial corridors could have in solving the region's planning challenges. Beginning with Doug Suisman's 1989 Los Angeles Boulevard pamphlet, the under-performing commercial mileage of Los Angeles boulevards has been viewed in the context of a cataclysmic housing shortage, no-growth single-family neighborhoods, and the prospect of transportation gridlock. Suisman and others have argued that LA's boulevards are the optimum site for mixed-use corridors combining high-density housing, sidewalk pedestrian-oriented retail, and, critically, either bus-way or fixed-rail transit lines. [9] From this ideological perspective, it is sadly ironic that The Grove's "streets" feature a double-decker, state-of-the-art electric-powered trolley to transport shoppers from the parking garage to the Farmers Market. Meanwhile, a mid-density residential development, similar to many others appearing across the city, is nearing completion across Third Street, yet the relationship between housing and retail seems to have been given no thought by either the designers of The Grove, of the housing development, or the planners charged with imagining the City's future. [10]
Yet there are alternatives to The Grove - commercial projects by mainstream developers that incorporate ground level, street-facing retail with upper-level condos or apartments - Paseo Colorado in Pasadena, Hollywood/Western in Hollywood, and CityPlace in Long Beach. Of course, none of these three projects represent an ideal model. Half of CityPlace's sidewalk frontage is service yards and parking garages, including that facing the adjacent Blue Line light rail stop; the clunky brown and orange stucco detailing of Hollywood/Western is simply ugly and garish, even by Hollywood standards; and Paseo Colorado retains internalized shopping courts while its architecture is deadly flat and uniform, as if it were a full-scale enlargement of a cardboard model. [11] Nonetheless, each of these three malls has partially turned the conventional typology of the mall inside-out and upside-down: storefronts face the sidewalk and the airspace above the stores is occupied by housing. As architectural prototypes, they inject new imagination into the standards of large-scale urban shopping centers. As urban design, they are part of broader strategies to increase the residential density of traditional office/commercial cores with an aim towards creating the proverbial 24/7 city. [12] As financial propositions, they also seem to be meeting early success: Paseo Colorado was recently sold at a considerable profit to its original developer. [13] Certainly the mythical days of shop owners living above their wares are over, but neither do these recent projects promote that myth. Rather they suggest that, although just opened, The Grove is already an obsolete model for the mall. For The Grove is nothing more than Fairfax's version of CityWalk, incorporating its spatial choreography, but also its isolation as a destination. When exhausted as an entertainment destination (for assuredly something "newer" will come along), its single-purpose architecture will be obsolete, like its "dead mall" predecessors on the suburban fringe. Although the Pasadena, Hollywood and Long Beach projects share many of The Grove's stores and therefore engage in the same consumerist fantasies, they are constructed in an architectural form that responds to the city's present social dilemmas, yet is adaptable to incremental change, where storefront tenants will reflect the evolving nature of the city's street life. As such, they represent a more sustainable investment of city's resources and its long-term future. With their mix of residential and commercial uses oriented towards the city's sidewalks and suggestion of transit corridors on boulevards, these projects are the first gestures towards the future of the mall in Southern California.
[1] The three malls are, of course, Hollywood & Highland at 640,000 sq ft (www.hollywoodandhighland.com), The Grove at 575,000 sq ft (www.thegrovela.com), and Pasadena's Paseo Colorado at 565,000 sq ft (www.paseocolorado.com). Also open or in development at the beginning of 2003 is West Hollywood Gateway at 245,000 sq ft (www.jhsnyder.net/...), Long Beach's Pike at Rainbow Harbor at 369,000 sq ft (http://198.83.9.35/index.html), The Promenade at Howard Hughes Center at 250,000 sq ft (www.hhpromenade.com), Sunset Millennium in Hollywood at 200,000 sq ft (www.maefield.com/...), Pasadena's The Shops on South Lake Avenue at 150,000 sq ft, and the reconstruction of Long Beach CityPlace at 450,000 sq ft (www.longbeachcityplace.com), Sherman Oaks Galleria at 300,000 sq ft (www.shermanoaksgalleria.com), and Santa Monica Place at 278,000 sq ft. The Beverly Center is a whopping 876,000 sq ft (www.beverlycenter.com).
[2] Carolyn Ramsay, "A Market Fresh Look", Los Angeles Times, 03 Jan 2002 (www.latimes.com/...) and Koning Eizenberg Architects (www.kearch.com).
[3] Roger Dahlhjelm established The Farmers Market in 1934. Olvera Street (formerly Olivera Street) opened in 1930, thanks to the efforts of Christine Sterling. (Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, MIT Press, 1997, pp 279-283.)
[4] The rooftops and HVAC equipment of The Grove can be seen from the upper levels of its parking garage, a lapse in the coherency of the design/fantasy narrative that one would not expect of the Jerde Partnership. For more on Jerde, see Frances Anderton, editor, You Are Here: The Jerde Partnership International, Phaidon Press, 1999 or www.jerde.com. For more on the narrative design of The Grove, see Morris Newman, "The Grove's Groove" in Grid, May 2002.
[5] Lakewood Center opened in 1952, Shopper's World in 1951 and Northgate in 1950. (Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, MIT Press, 1997, pp 332-333.)
[6] Victor Gruen and Larry Smith, Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1960.
[7] Peter Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape, MIT Press, 1991, pp 109-147.
[8] The Farmers Market was established to sell local produce. (Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, MIT Press, 1997, p 282.) Some might argue that the cinemas at The Grove are outposts of the local film industry. Considering that marketing and finances of cinema makes little variation for local circumstance, I do not find this convincing.
[9] Doug Suisman, Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public, Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, 1989. Also see John Kaliski, "The Form of Los Angeles's Quotidian Millennium" in The Edge of the Millennium: An International Critique of Architecture, Urban Planning, Product and Communication Design edited by Susan Yelavich (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1993), pp 106-119. Research by the Planning Center in Orange County studied the viability of converting commercial corridors into housing sites from a design perspective (www.planningcenter.com/...), and a 14 June 2002 Solimar Research Group brief authored by William Fulton confirms that this conversion is in fact taking place (www.solimar.org/...). The City of LA's General Plan Framework (www.lacity.org/...), adopted in 1996/2001, promotes mixed-use corridors (see, for example, this drawing: www.lacity.org/...), but it is only recently that zoning codes have caught up with policy. See Ordinance No. 174999 Residential/Accessory Services Zone (www.lacity.org/...), reported by Jocelyn Stewart, "The Sky's the Limit with New Zoning," Los Angeles Times, 29 Nov 2002 and Howard Fine, "City to Ease Way for Residences in Business Districts," Los Angeles Business Journal, 2 Sept 2002.
[10] The proliferation of housing without street-facing retail is an equal failure of urban imagination, but that is the topic of yet another essay.
[11] For a more extended critique of CityPlace, see Michael Bohn, "The Good, the Bad, and the Monotony" in this edition of the LA Forum newsletter. For Paseo Colorado, see Nicolai Ouroussoff, "Pasadena's Paseo Colorado: Shopping for Reality, in Vain," Los Angeles Times, 9 Nov 2001. For a general critique of new pedestrian malls, see Nicolai Ouroussoff, "No Sale in a Faux Town," Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan 2002.
[12] Jesus Sanchez, "An Upscale Urban Village Emerges in Genteel Pasadena," Los Angeles Times, 30 Nov 2002 and Marshall Allen, "Living Large in Pasadena," Pasadena Star News, 16 Sept 2002. Both articles note the significant dollar premium paid for such "urbane" living and the affordable housing gap this presents. Recent plans for Santa Monica Place also propose to "invert" the mall and top it with housing: see Carolanne Sudderth, "One Little Shopping Mall and How it Grew and Grew and Grew," Ocean Park Gazette, 5 June 2002.
[13] Danny King "Trizec Said Near Sale of Successful Pasadena Project," Los Angeles Business Journal, 2 Sept 2002 and "Developers Diversified Realty Announces Acquisition of Paseo Colorado Shopping Center," 16 Jan 2003 (www.ddr.com/Paseo.pdf). DDR, curiously, is also the developer/owner of CityPlace and The Pike in Long Beach. The housing component of Paseo Colorado is owned by Post Properties and was not part of the sale. TrizecHahn developed both Paseo Colorado and Hollywood&Highland - the latter project, with an exclusive focus on tourist-oriented entertainment/retail, has been a financial loss.
Image Credits
Historic Farmers Market photographs from the Whittington Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Southern California, published in Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, MIT Press, 1997. Contemporary photographs by author.
The best chicken on the east side of Los Angeles is at the Glendale Galleria, a dish of the Bulgarian variety that I have come to call "Mall Chicken". The International Grill is located in the food court in the Galleria, and has the most prominent spot: on the right side as one enters, next to the only retail shop in the eating area, Helzberg Diamonds. I frequently eat Mall Chicken, and as a result have analyzed mall restaurant and store locations, building design, and dÈcor. It's weird that a food court in Glendale would have an ocean motif. There are blue neon waves above all points of entry, and hobie cats, kites, and windsurf boards hanging from the ceiling... but this is, after all, Southern California. It may take a bit of effort - the tide is non-existent in landlocked Glendale - but the connection can be made.
Truth be told, the dècor of the food court is not the only disconcerting element in the Galleria. It is the old folks that sit on the benches and people watch in front of JC Penney, and the more fit ones that walk briskly past you with their New Balance sneakers on, getting in their exercise for the day. Why aren't these people outside? Over the past few years, Glendale has redeveloped an area on Brand that boasts a movie theatre, new restaurants, bookstores, cafes, sitting areas, and the like. Yet it appears that many still prefer the air conditioning and artificial lighting provided by an enclosed shopping center.
The Galleria also provides a backdrop for activities geared toward children. Teen fashion shows, (my former hairdresser worked one), Magic the Gathering competitions, (today's equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons - my friend's son participated a few months ago), and of course your all-around Disneyesque entertainment catering to children up to 8 years of age (I don't know anyone who was involved in that). When I think about my own childhood, the mall was never a place where I went to be entertained. It was simply where I bought music, and first got my ears pierced. Entertainment came in the form of looking across the street from the mall at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium at Emmy time, and being lucky enough to get a glimpse of the girl who played Rudy on "The Cosby Show."
Much has changed since 1983, and the opportunities are now far greater for me to be entertained at the mall than when I was a child. I recently went to the Northridge mall to buy a computer, and as soon as I walked in I saw a ten-year-old in a body tube getting water massaged. Now that's entertainment. Apparently I missed the really great installation, the oxygen bar, by just a couple of weeks. A friend emailed me the following day:
Too bad you missed it on your visit to the mall, but a few weeks earlier the place with the water massage had an actual OXYGEN BAR attachment to it. People, young, old, whatever, would be leaning against this bar with oxygen masks over their faces whiffing in colorful gases named à la Ben & Jerry's flavors. Oh man.... Talk about surreal.
Surreal, indeed, a scene that recalls Don De Lillo's "White Noise". Jack Gladney, the novel's protagonist, describes the Mid-Village mall as a "ten-story building arranged around a center court of waterfalls, promenades and gardens." As the narrative unfolds, a fictionalization of the Gruen Transfer comes into focus: "When I could not decide between two shirts they encouraged me to buy both. When I was hungry they fed me pretzels, beer, souvlaki... I kept seeing myself unexpectedly in some reflecting surface... We moved from store to store, rejecting not only items in certain departments, not only entire departments but whole stores, mammoth corporations that did not strike our fancy for one reason or another. There was always another store, three floors, eight floors... I shopped for immediate needs and distant contingencies. I shopped for its own sake, looking and touching, inspecting merchandise I had no intention of buying, then buying it... I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I'd forgotten existed."
Turning Old Strip Malls into Housing
by Evan Halper / Los Angeles Times, courtesy the Planning Center
http://www.planningcenter.com/pdf/timesarticle.pdf
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