Making Things Happen with SM Place

By Jorge Casuso

June 2 -- Imagine strolling down the Third Street Promenade and not noticing that you're suddenly in the middle of Santa Monica Place. Or is it still the Promenade? There's no roof above, only sky and the outlines of more than 100 housing units atop the rows of stores, and up ahead the green of the Civic Center. Imagine.

That's what City officials and local residents will be asked to do during a special meeting Monday night to unveil a vision for the 22-year-old indoor mall hammered out by representatives of the City and the Macerich Corp., which owns the structure originally designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry.

City officials caution that what will be unveiled during a joint meeting of the City Council, the Promenade Uses Task Force and the Civic Center Working Group is still far from a set plan. Still, there will be drawings displayed and numbers bandied about and plenty of room for the imagination to roam.

"It's a concept, a plan to get discussion going," said Jeff Mathieu, who heads the City's Division of Resource Management. "It's not a proposal. It will create some parameters for the future. It's an opportunity to see what's being contemplated."

"We want to get enough sense that we're in agreement with the general concept," said Mayor Michael Feinstein. "We'll see how far they (Macerich officials) are willing to go."

City officials appear to be willing to go pretty far. The concept they support -- which took between 40 and 60 hours of work to develop -- calls for tearing down all but the two department stores that anchor the 570,000-square-foot mall and extending the Promenade an extra block to Colorado Avenue, Mathieu said.

"At the southern edge would be a major pathway connecting the Civic Center to the Promenade," Mathieu said. "We're thinking about keeping the major department stores in place and virtually everything coming down. Whether it will all come down at once or in stages is still very much up in the air."

The two parking structures would come down one at a time, and most of the 2,000 spaces would be moved underground. The preliminary concept also calls for building anywhere from 150 to 300 housing units above the retail stores. Macerich officials, who could not be reached for comment, are said to be pushing for in inclusion of movie theaters.

"It's still all up in the air," said Mathieu. "We're looking at the next 100 years, not 10. Macerich is also looking at it for the very, very long haul."

But Bayside District officials fear that if the concept becomes reality and theaters are included the Promenade will quickly feel the fallout.

"Putting major theaters could be the death of the Promenade," said Kathleen Rawson, executive director of the Bayside District Corp., which runs Downtown, including the Promenade. The roles could once again be reversed. It needs is to be complimentary."

Ever since Santa Monica Place opened its doors in 1980, it has been engaged in a balancing act with Third Street. The indoor mall, which was built to compete with the new Fox Hills Mall and Century City, soon became the cornerstone of the Downtown Santa Monica's shopping district.

But the advent of open-air malls and the wild success of the Third Street Promenade -- with its movie theaters and restaurants -- siphoned business from the in-door mall and its 140 shops, services and eateries. September 11 was an especially hard blow for Santa Monica Place, which counts on tourists for 30 percent of its business.

According to the City's sales tax figure, sales at Santa Monica Place were off by 12.9 percent last year and 16.1 percent for the final quarter, with vacancies contributing to the drop.

If the concept for Santa Monica Place is turned into a concrete plan, it will take years before its transformation into an outdoor mall takes shape. Mathieu notes that it took developers in Pasadena four years to tear down the fortress-like Plaza Pasadena and replace it with the outdoor Paseo Colorado. If the Santa Monica Place comes down in phases, it could take even longer.

Whatever its future, the old mall will not be erased from the popular imagination. It's tri-level sky-lit galleria will live on as long as Terminator II is shown or reruns of the hit TV series Beverly Hills 90210 aired.