WHEN KAMALA HARRIS ANNOUNCED she would not run for governor of California in late July, the pundit class was quick to appoint another possible candidate: Rick Caruso.
If you live in Los Angeles, Caruso is a familiar fixture, since the sixty-six-year-old billionaire real estate developer has inserted himself into just about every aspect of city life. He has served as board chair at the University of Southern California (LA’s largest private employer), president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, and a commissioner for the Department of Water and Power. Parsing his evolving political affiliations is a local parlor game: When the longtime Republican made his failed bid for mayor in 2022—at a personal cost of $104 million—he did so as a registered Democrat. But beyond his status as political gadfly, Caruso is perhaps best known as a mall-maker, the builder of perpetually popular “lifestyle centers” such as the Grove in Los Angeles and the Americana at Brand in Glendale. One of his newer developments, Palisades Village, which opened in 2018 in Pacific Palisades, grabbed headlines after surviving the devastating January fires thanks to the efforts of private firefighters (more on that later).
As Caruso mulls a gubernatorial run—an anonymous “confidante” recently told Politico that Harris’s announcement had clicked things up “maybe two notches”—it’s a good time to have a look at his malls and how they both embody and contradict his vision of civic life. Over the summer, I sipped a lavender matcha latte at the Commons at Calabasas (aka Kardashian Country), watched a comically elaborate fashion shoot with waterlogged models in the fountain at the Americana, and devoured gelato at the Waterside at Marina del Rey, a strip mall that is not, as the name advertises, on the water but a block away from it—tucked between a traffic-clogged artery and a boat launch parking lot.
The Commons at Calabasas. Min Heo
Much of Caruso’s handiwork revels in an idealized vision of urban life, replete with cozy lanes, columned arcades, picturesque plazas, and clutches of storefronts that evoke the sensation of a walkable city. The architecture frequently swings from unconvincing Tuscan villa to cut-rate hôtel particulier, a mongrel style the Los Angeles Times once described as “neither French nor Spanish but a low-volume Every Europe.” A piped-in Boomer-friendly soundtrack generally occupies the bandwidth between Frank Sinatra and Diana Krall. These places are rigidly controlled simulacra, which is probably what has earned Caruso the moniker “the Walt Disney of Retail,” in honor of another renowned Southern California control freak. Collectively, these cloyingly tantalizing spaces offer an insightful read on his vision for real cities and the political points he likes to make about them.
THERE ARE GENERALLY two types of Caruso mall. The first are rather ordinary strip malls, like the Waterside at Marina del Rey and the Village at Moorpark in Thousand Oaks, where the sum of excitement might be hitting a supermarket or grabbing a chain bagel. But also included in his portfolio are splashier lifestyle centers such as the $160 million Grove and the $400 million Americana, which are more immersive in their design and include generous plaza areas, movie theaters, and department stores. (The Americana, moreover, has an adjacent luxury apartment complex, also by Caruso, where a 765-square-foot studio might set you back $3,400 a month.)
Whatever the scale, his properties are united by a signature feature: a fountain—ideally surrounded by dining areas that invite lingering (and spending). At the strip malls, it is usually the sort of tiered, ornamental fountain you might find in a Spanish plaza, a design flourish that offers a break from the austere nature of these retail environments, where “landscape” translates to a few limp trees between parking spaces. At Caruso’s more extravagant malls, you’ll find gurgling brooks as well as large ponds with dancing waters engineered by WET, the company behind the display at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The Americana has the added bonus of a golden sculpture of a man emerging from the waters with his arms raised, an incongruous tribute to a 1950s work by Donald De Lue that honors World War II dead at Normandy.
The architecture frequently swings from unconvincing Tuscan villa to cut-rate hôtel particulier, a mongrel style the Los Angeles Times once described as “neither French nor Spanish but a low-volume Every Europe.”
At the Grove one hot July afternoon, as I watched plumes of spray rise and fall to the tune of Kenny Loggins’s “Celebrate Me Home,” I could feel myself becoming enamored by the idea of having an Aperol spritz at the Fountain Bar in the name of “research.” Landscape designer Lawrence Halprin once said that the sound of water “talks to the life of a place.” And Caruso’s malls have a lot of life. But in drought-plagued California, his profligate use of water is an indulgence. (The fountain at the Grove alone consumes 50,000 gallons.)
In the wake of the fires, Caruso took to just about any available airwave, not least among them Joe Rogan’s podcast, to criticize the ways LA mismanages its water, including a lack of rainwater capture. It’s a subject that is absolutely worthy of critique—and as a former municipal water commissioner, Caruso knows how the system works. But in his comments, he conveniently overlooked the fact that many city parks are designed to capture runoff and rain. His malls, which collectively occupy some forty-eight acres of land, do not appear to be as well conceived. Sure, the fountains at the Grove and the Americana recirculate water. But a representative for Caruso refused to answer any questions about the source of that water. Is it reclaimed? Captured rainwater? They won’t say. However, a report published by the City of Glendale in 2012, which detailed sustainability practices at the Americana, such as the use of low-flow toilets and reclaimed water for irrigation, does not note any kind of rain capture program.
Water management makes for a good political talking point in thirsty California. So does an issue like affordable housing, which Caruso vocally supported in his run for mayor—though, as a developer, he has yet to contribute a single unit of affordable housing to LA. (The few residential projects he has built have been of the luxury variety.) Actual city building, it turns out, is a much more formidable task than playing pundit on a podcast.
ONE OF THE LONG-RUNNING CRITICISMS of Caruso’s malls is that they operate like fortresses within the city. The Grove and the Americana, designed by the Boston firm Elkus Manfredi, both bind a tepid Mediterraneanizing aesthetic to the nostalgia of a mythical Main Street, USA. Pedestrian lanes are hugged by shops (some designed by other architects) in compounds no more than a few stories high. Jovial trolleys add to the quaintness. It is beyond attractive, a dense urban enclave with every imaginable risk drained out: There are no unhoused people, no visible garbage, no honking traffic, no shirtless hippies playing bongos. Which is probably what makes Caruso’s environments so popular. (For a time, the Grove claimed greater annual visitation than Disneyland, the entertainment complex to which it is often compared, though in 2024 Disneyland bested the mall by about ten million visitors.) This sensation of order and safety is a boon if, say, you’re a parent of wandering children, since an SUV is never going to come barreling down these faux streets at fifty miles an hour. As a Pasadena architect told the Los Angeles Daily News back in 2002, when the Grove first opened, “People feel comfy in those environments—it’s the right scale, the right details and everything.”
Except for the ways in which this facsimile of the city meets the actual city around it. The Grove, though an outdoor mall, is inward facing. It offers impenetrable blank walls to busy West Third Street to the south, and its behemoth parking garage fronts Pan Pacific Park to the east. The Americana, which opened in 2008, is more conscientious, with the east side of the development sporting businesses that open onto Brand Avenue, a walkable commercial thoroughfare. But go to the west side of the complex and you’ll find more blank walls. It’s an approach writer Sam Lubell has described as “anti-civic.”
If Caruso’s malls are a simulacrum of urban density, then the trolleys are a simulacrum of public transit.
Caruso’s malls are sold as popular gathering areas—a gesture toward publicness in space that is private. And this extends beyond the design. Palisades Village (also by Elkus Manfredi) is the rare Caruso mall to architecturally engage the surrounding community, offering low-rise shops that spill out onto a pedestrian-friendly stretch of Sunset Boulevard—rendered in a style I’ll call New England Villagecore. But the fires highlighted the fact that Palisades Village is less a part of the community than an island unto itself.
Caruso deployed private firefighters armed with tankers of water to protect his mall (which is currently closed but expected to reopen in 2026). He later told the Los Angeles Times that this “freed up LA fire resources to go protect other properties.” A nice idea in theory, except that it has played out more like apocalyptic capitalism to the max, in which private rescue workers labored to protect not schools or shared community spaces like temples or churches, but a mall that is mostly chain stores. It’s a stunning vision of our inequitable, climate-challenged future: Wander around the area today and you’ll find a neighborhood reduced to ashes as Lululemon still stands.
BOTH THE GROVE and the Americana have trolley cars that circle their respective properties—a journey seemingly without a destination, because you’re liable to end up where you started. If Caruso’s malls are a simulacrum of urban density, then the trolleys are a simulacrum of public transit. Which is exactly how Caruso has historically approached actual public transit—not as a practical means to an end, but as picturesque set dressing.
He has repeatedly voiced the opinion that LA’s Metro system should run on street surfaces rather than underground. “I never understood why we put people in tunnels in this city,” he groused in a 2016 interview. In a conversation with The New York Times three years later, he reiterated the idea—perhaps unaware that surface rail can slice a neighborhood to pieces. He also suggested putting Metro lines in the middle of freeways, something that is not only already done in parts of LA (along with express buses that run on dedicated freeway lanes) but ignores the fact that what Angelenos really need is an expansive transit system that reliably reaches all corners of the city, not just the no-man’s-land under the 10.
Much of Caruso’s handiwork revels in an idealized vision of urban life, replete with cozy lanes, columned arcades, picturesque plazas, and clutches of storefronts that evoke the sensation of a walkable city.
Though his malls fetishize walking, to arrive at one of Caruso’s retail centers generally requires an automobile. The Commons at Calabasas and the Promenade at Westlake are located deep in well-to-do suburbs where public transportation options are limited in the extreme. Even his more urban malls, like the Grove and the Americana, which can be easily reached by bus, are laughably car-centric. In fact, making fun of the traffic snarls at these places is the bread and butter of the popular Instagram meme account @americanaatbrandmemes. One running gag features a March Madness–style bracket for the worst parking lots in LA; Caruso’s malls figure prominently.
“The perfect opportunity to break up with your phone.”
The most public support Caruso has given to a transit project was in 2013, when he suggested extending the trolley at the Grove to the Beverly Center to the west. This plan would have required tearing up the streets to lay track, because rubber-wheeled trolleys didn’t have the same folksy appeal. The plan died a quick death. It would have made infinitely more sense for him to advocate for increased municipal bus service and dedicated bus lanes in these congested areas. But neither has the charm of a dinging trolley, and they can’t be used as a branding opportunity. And if there’s one thing Caruso loves more than a water feature, it’s putting his name on things—from the streets that mark the entrances of his largest malls to the branded water refill stations.
PLENTY HAS BEEN WRITTEN about Caruso’s conception of an urban life “stripped of the unpleasant parts,” to borrow the words of former Los Angeles Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg. Beyond that, it’s a relentlessly static vision. Going to one Caruso mall is much like going to another. His many repeat tenants include Barnes & Noble, Lululemon, Brandy Melville, and the absurdly minimalist matcha emporium La La Land. Somewhere in between, you’ll find anodyne Italian and New American restaurants that serve chardonnay in very large glasses. None of it feels particularly like LA—or anywhere else for that matter. A Caruso mall is not a place to seek out mochi dogs, K-Pop, glow-in-the-dark cannabis decals, or Tostilocos. Instead, it offers a similar vibe to hanging out at a pleasing airport terminal—a placeless environment that won’t thrill but also won’t offend.
One evening at the Americana, I parked myself on the outdoor terrace at the Cheesecake Factory (another repeat Caruso tenant) with a drink and the famed egg roll sampler, which boasts fillings like avocado, cheeseburger, and something the menu calls “Tex Mex.” Everything was crispy and salty and greasy, and it all tasted slightly the same. It’s the sort of snack that sets off the dopamine receptors in your brain but fails to leave an impression beyond “That was nice.” Much like the mall around it.