The Westside Pavilion as Neighbor : Is Mall a Case of Urban Progress or Overdevelopment?

The 33-month-old Westside Pavilion on Pico Boulevard will go down in history as a watershed in the way Angelenos see their city.

Many citizens view the Rancho Park shopping mall as a symbol of the kind of commercial overdevelopment that is disturbing the peace and quiet of residential neighborhoods, causing traffic congestion and an influx of outsiders.

Others see the colorful, block-long structure as a shining example of how a suburban community can cope with a more densely populated and affluent urban environment, without disturbing the fabric of the city.

One million people now live within a five-mile radius of the Pavilion, and average household incomes are high. In the jobs-rich, housing-poor Westside, the pressure for increased population densities is unlikely to let up.

Significant Reaction

In fact, negative reaction to its construction played a major role in generating the slow-growth Reasonable Limits Initiative, popularly known as Proposition U and passed by a large majority of the city’s voters in 1986.

Sponsored by Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky (in whose 5th District the Pavilion is located) and Marvin Braude, Proposition U drastically reduced building densities over large sectors of Los Angeles.

“The Pavilion has definitely not been a plus for the neighborhood,” Yaroslavsky said in a recent interview. “I feel it would have been better suited somewhere else. It is without doubt the worst case of commercial overdevelopment in my district.”

Because Pavilion developers were careful to build to code, the project did not come before the Los Angeles Planning Commission.

Now, Yaroslavsky said, “all projects over a certain size must undergo an Environmental Impact Report. In that process, both the city government and the neighborhood have a chance to pass judgment.”

Zelda Greentree, president of the Westwood (South of Santa Monica Boulevard) Homeowners Assn. and a 20-year resident of the area, objects to the traffic and parking problems, but above all resents the way the Pavilion has changed the neighborhood’s character.

‘We Predicted ... Havoc’

“We predicted the Pavilion would create havoc in the district and it has,” she said. “It was never intended that this stretch of Pico Boulevard would host a regional-type shopping mall similar to the Beverly Center. I hate the way our lovely, peaceful district has been forced to become a big commercial center.”

Pavilion architect Jon Jerde maintains the mall was designed to fit in with the community and compares the scale of its internal “street” to traditional urban malls in Europe and Japan, such as the Milan Galleria and the Tokyo Shinjuku.

His design strategy for the exterior, he adds, was to reduce the impact of the three-story, 675,000-square-foot structure by breaking it down into segments relating to the character of the one-story commercial strip across Pico Boulevard.

“We worked hard to reduce the scale of the Pavilion and make it more street-friendly,” he said. “For example, we curved the top edge of the Pico Boulevard frontage to bring the cornice line down closer to the roof line of the traditional stores in the area.”

Though its style might seem a little outrageous to some, architect Kurt Meyer said: “To me its vivid design gives a lift to the spirit, and signifies the surfacing of a new and vitally urban metropolis.”

In the city’s 1974 Concept Los Angeles land-use plan, three levels of commercial centers are defined in 42 urban locations. The community center, the least densely developed level, is defined as low- to mid-rise in scale, including “a greater diversity of activities than existing strip commercial areas.”

Community centers are to be “as self-contained as possible so that the need for travel outside the center would be lessened . . . (and they) will contain at least one focus of concentrated activity.”

One tenet of Jerde’s urban design philosophy is that major malls should be communal centers that focus and generate a sense of community. Thus, the Pavilion’s internal promenade was designed to be a meeting place for the neighborhood, as well as a place to shop and eat.

Great Variety of People

Observing the great variety of people who surge through the Pavilion every day, Jerde’s belief in the socializing impact of sophisticated shopping malls seems to be borne out. In a city where different kinds of people rarely rub shoulders, the Pavilion is a truly public place.

Three levels of shops and restaurants generate an average of $325 per square foot in annual sales. Yearly rents run $30 to $50 per square foot.

“The community uses the heck out of the place,” said Richard Green, president of Westfield Inc., the Pavilion’s developer and owner. “We generate around $225 million in sales a year, drawing over 80% of our customers from people who live within a three-mile radius of the Pavilion. Our third-floor food court is the most successful in Southern California.”

Said Bill Hunt, manager of the Electronics Boutique, a home computer store on the mall’s third level: “We’ve had a great year. Since we moved in around 15 months ago, there’s been plenty of action.”

Indeed, the Pavilion is popular with many of its patrons.

“I come here at least once a week,” said Bertelle Berry, strolling through the mall with his daughter Akilah. “I prefer its prices to the Beverly Center, which is actually closer to where I live, in the Pico-Robertson area a couple of miles east of here. I like the Pavilion’s mix of trendy boutiques, such as Benetton and Alex Sebastian, alongside down-home stores, like Mrs. Field’s Cookies. It’s a fun place.”

Business has remained constant for neighborhood shops on the Pico Boulevard strip opposite the Pavilion’s vivid post-modern frontage, according to store owners.

“Parking is hell, though,” said Alan Baker, owner of the Apple Pan restaurant, echoing a widespread complaint.

“It’s true the rents are rising faster than they used to,” said Bill Katz, manager of Dinters Cleaners, “but so is business. It balances out, I guess.”

David Staretz, whose family lives on Cushdon Street behind the Pavilion, thinks the shopping center is “terrific. Sure, the parking is a drag, and the weekend traffic can be heavy, but with the (parking) permits that problem’s eased a lot.

“My feeling,” he continued, “is that peoples’ attitudes toward the mall are changing from outright opposition to tolerance and even appreciation.”

As a city planner and 8-year resident of the area, Jim Fawcett has been aware of the neighborhood’s evolution from a suburban to a more urban character.

The evolution, he said, “is a generational thing. A lot of the older people bought into this place 20 to 30 years ago when it was still a quiet suburban enclave. They resent the change, but it is inevitable. It has to happen all over the Westside, if the city is to grow up.”

Ginny Kruger, Yaroslavsky’s planning deputy, said home prices in the area generally have not suffered. “My sense of it is that the rise in district property values has kept pace with the general Westside increase. The introduction of parking permits has helped homeowners, if not the merchants.”

Parking Expansion Sought

For the last 18 months Westfield Inc. has been seeking permission to add 1,000 parking spaces by building a bridge over Westwood Boulevard to connect the Pavilion and its property to the west. The company hopes that in March the City Council will adopt an Environmental Impact Report allowing the 160,000-square-foot expansion.

“We are trying to be fair with the bridge issue,” Green said. “Community objections have held us up for a year and a half, but we think the extra parking will ease the problems we inherited with the old May Co. garage on Overland.”

Some of the extra parking spaces will be available to local retailers on Pico Boulevard, he added.

The proposed bridge would create an urban gateway for the southern edge of Westwood, Jerde said. “This kind of gateway helps define the boundaries of districts in the urban sprawl. It provides a stronger sense of place.”

Area residents maintain the proposed bridge is alien to the neighborhood. Any increase in the size of the already bulky mall, they say, will overwhelm the scale and character of the area and intensify rather than ease local traffic congestion.

“I do not feel the Pavilion is overscaled in relation to its surroundings,” said architect Meyer, a past chairman of the Los Angeles Comunity Redevelopment Agency board. “If it were any smaller, it would not serve to focus the district in its unavoidable change from a suburban scene to one that is more urban, and urbane.”

Meyer said the Pavilion is responding “to a growing need a new generation of Angelenos has for socializing in a public place. Older and more privacy-oriented citizens might resist, but in California entrenched ways have always had to concede the stage to new ones.

“It is a most curious and significant fact,” he added, “that the most animated, popular and successful new people-places in the city, such as the Pavilion and the Beverly Center, are also the most controversial.”