By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief
Rick Caruso will not campaign to become the mayor of Los Angeles over the next 18 months.
Instead, the Village developer will focus on perfecting the Swarthmore development, down to relocating every last Ficus tree that can be saved.
And then, he revealed in an exclusive interview with the Palisadian-Post, the Brentwood developer credited with transforming retail habits in LA, may be looking to run for mayor in 2021.
“I would not run next time against Eric [Garcetti, who is running for re-election in 2017] because he is a friend and doing a good job.
“But the election after that, because my children will be the right age and it would feel like the right time, I would be ready to run.”
Photo by Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer
Caruso supported Republican moderate John Kasich during the early rounds of the presidential election. The Ohio governor appointed Caruso co-chairman of his California fundraising campaign, one that scored more highly in the state than Hillary Clinton’s.
Caruso, a University of Southern California and Pepperdine University alum, has balanced his real estate career building a fortune pegged at $3.5 billion by Forbes magazine with public service since his early years.
At the age of 25, Caruso was appointed by LA Mayor Tom Bradley to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the youngest DWP commissioner in LA history.
“Since then it’s been politicized, which makes it more difficult to get things done,” he recalled last week.
In 2001 he was elected president of the LA Board of Police Commissioners, where he tried to block the appointment of Bill Bratton as LAPD chief.
Caruso was wary of Bratton’s “showbizzy” campaign to win the job, but regrets his opposition.
“Bill was a very effective chief and we are still friends. We ate together a few days ago.”
Caruso has a vision of a more urban Los Angeles, with clusters of high-rise city centers alleviating some of the need to travel on congested freeways.
And one simple reform?
“Get rid of over-regulation. Businesses are more regulated here than most other cities, and it works against smaller businesses in particular. We can change that.”
He said that, despite taking many years, the road to building the Palisades Village project was relatively smooth because Caruso Affiliated built up local support and knew its way through the city regulatory environment.
But many start-ups get tangled up and fail at that point.
Caruso Affiliated, which changed the LA landscape with projects such as The Grove and Americana in Glendale, is working on the 333, a mixed-use residential building in Beverly Hills, due to open in 2019.
Despite this, Caruso said he will be visiting Swarthmore every day over the next two years of reconstruction.
He described himself as a “little obsessional” with Swarthmore task lists in his head, keeping an eye on every detail to finish the project in two years’ time.
“We did look at saving the Ficus on Sunset, but its roots were bound into gas and power lines running along Sunset. If we had tried to remove the tree [intact], we would black out the entire Palisades. But we are preserving every tree we can.”
He has pledged that the new development will answer one long-standing Palisadian prayer: It will offer high-speed internet across the entire project, like a safari park or refuge for net-starved Wi-Fi users. “And people will probably buy a coffee when they are checking their emails.”
Caruso is still negotiating for a lead grocer to anchor the development, with local voices demanding a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s or Erewhon Natural Foods—a decision likely to be made soon.
He said he was especially looking forward to opening the theater. His choice of premiere movie? The 1946 fable, “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Can that match his political ambitions?
It could be tough, but Caruso remains a Californian optimist.
He said that although local politics has become more straight-laced since his DWP days, when he buzzed his wife Tina at home from inside a DWP helicopter, he still feels a lot can be done in LA and life improved.
We may have to wait another five years for Caruso to take on his greatest rebuilding challenge: the city of Los Angeles itself.
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