Rick Caruso has spent three decades building wildly popular outdoor malls with dancing fountains and high-end retailers. To get an idea of what kind of leader the Los Angeles mayoral candidate might be, take a walk through the Grove. awalkerinLA reports
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer. Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images The people of Los Angeles cannot escape Rick Caruso’s face. The billionaire mayoral candidate has plastered the city in his likeness, a grinning visage so astonishingly tan it glows like the burnished leather of his Gucci loafers. He stares back at us from our mailboxes, flashes a smile as we scroll past headlines on our phones, and pops in for a quick chat before every YouTube video we watch.
Most of L.A.’s likely voters have probably been to the Grove — Caruso says the property sees 20 million annual visits, more than Disneyland — or to the Americana, or to Palisades Village, a more upscale version of the Grove near Caruso’s own home in tony Brentwood. In campaign ads, the Grove makes a cameo with a shot of the queue in front of the Cheesecake Factory — the voice-over identifies Caruso as the creator of L.A.
What Caruso is proposing for L.A. is not as much a departure from current policy as it is a doubling down. His platform lays out three problems, all of which he promises to sweep away: encampments, crime, and corruption. Caruso’s formula is shrewd: 30,000 shelter beds built in 300 days, which, added to the existing 14,000 beds, will be enough to make 44,000 homeless Angelenos disappear.
Last November, a series of high-profile robberies at the Grove received national attention — not necessarily because of what was stolen, but because they led Caruso to secure the Grove’s perimeter with coiled wire that many outlets reported was barbed wire . “This crime wave feels different,” Caruso told Los Angeles just before he declared his run. “There’s a brazenness to the criminals.