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# Plenty in store for shopping mall
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/plenty-in-store-for-shopping-mall/
- Published: 2006-06-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T18:17:46.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Business, Downtown, #archive-import, Homeless

This past week, Q-Line asked: “What would you propose for the shopping complex in the heart of downtown?” Here are your responses: ✆ “Sixty years ago during World War II and before the Marina del Ray inlet was dredged along Pacific Ocean water to flow freely into the Marina Harbor, I would ride a Palamino stallion Apache style with just a hackamaw bridle with no bit along the Pacific Ocean’s water edge from Manhattan Beach to Venice Beach. I had to stop at Venice Beach due to traffic congestion that existed in Venice Beach and Santa Monica Beach even back then. I trust that the new Santa Monica Place developers will take into consideration the horrors of traffic congestion that now exist in Santa Monica and build a parking structure that will allow cars to enter and exit quickly and efficiently.” ✆ “They should build something like The Grove in Hollywood or something like that, but not have any type of chain stores; just have stores that are individually owned because we have enough chain stores in this town already. But it doesn’t really matter what they build because the bums will probably be allowed to take it over like they do everything else and stink that place up, too.” ✆ “For the proposed new shopping complex downtown I would propose a couple of things. Get rid of the tacky street performers and bring back peace and quiet. Secondly, strict enforcement and removal of all the cruddy bums, and maybe third definitely would be more restrooms for the visitors and shoppers and definitely have them with guards and people to keep cleanliness and law and order and all the rest within.” ✆ “To all the Dr. Evils, it should have a tribute to Musselini, that we had to spend all that money for rope to hang him by his heels, the champion of the evil — the Bush’s, the very rich, stingy capitalists, I’d like to dedicate a statue to them — the people with evils, where the evil people are.” ✆ “I would suggest that they put in eateries that are wheelchair-friendly for disabled people. Different kinds, like maybe a hamburger joint, maybe an Italian joint, maybe a Greek-joint, maybe even a pie joint. Pedestrian-friendly, wheelchair-friendly, with beautiful shrubbery like night-blooming jasmine and such, and maybe some pools with water lilies and swans, evocative of Monet.” ✆ “Can you spell taxpayer dummies? The Macerich Company made a bad real estate investment, so to make money they need to build condos. Twenty-one stories was their first choice. The fallback position will be eight stories because that’s the height the City Council will allow to be built downtown. I can see an architectural disaster like the $70 million library. What is badly needed is an architect — not Frank Gehry, but a Howard Roark, to fuse what’s left of a beach-town atmosphere with visionary planning and architecture. I have an idea for three big stores meshed with several smaller ones, open space, a supermarket, 40 condos, nothing over three stories, and a way to integrate this into the existing mall and the low-income housing rent area, plus Main Street. But it’s a fools dream — the City Hall’s unknown-to-residents downtown plan is already a done deal.” ✆ “I would love to see Santa Monica Place have a discount department store like Target or K-Mart or anything like that, or a Penny’s or a Mervin’s. I quit shopping in Santa Monica because all you have is a bunch of little bou-tique places, and most of the people I know don’t shop in Santa Monica; we just don’t. And we eat, we go to the restauraunts but we don’t shop here because you don’t have any discount department stores. I think it’s a big mistake. I know there’s a lot of pressure; I know the lobbyists of the Bayside District, you know all the little stores, they drove out the idea of a Target but I still think it would be a wonderful idea, and I know that it would be very well-supported. There’s a huge number of working-class people, senior citizens who are retired, single people, and families who would like a true discount department store in Santa Monica. We have enough beautiful things in Santa Monica. Why don’t you get something that’s realistic for the population?” ✆ “The parking structures downtown are depressing to walk past. They look like gloomy jails for cars — places to avoid, dangerous places. I would propose putting businesses at street level, maybe a big used bookstore like The Strand in New York. But of course, I would never get past the bookstore and shop in all the other places.” ✆ “What I’d like to see in downtown is a Mecca for homeless people so they could ask for more change and accost people, maybe fewer bathrooms and, wait a minute — we already have that in our downtown.” ✆ “What I propose for the shopping mall replacement is no replacement at all. What is the problem? Why do we have to rip off the roof and ‘modernize’ the shopping mall? It’s not broke — please don’t fix it.” ✆ “In terms of what is needed in the new Santa Monica Place Mall, we obviously require a Target store that the city denied; there would be sufficient parking for that. We require a new, state-of-the-art multiplex theater complex that the city of Santa Monica, for whatever reasons known best to people working within the city, can’t seem to get built. We certainly need the much in-demand Trader Joe’s market. The Santa Monica Place Mall now has to be more egalitarian — it cannot just simply be a series of clothing stores appealing to teenagers and people in their mid to late 20s.” ✆ “About your question of the shops downtown, I’d like to see something user-friendly for some of us older people, not just the stores for the youth and for tourists, but something useful like a JC Penny that we used to have downtown, maybe a drugstore, just some very useful kind of shops.” ✆ “I would like to see a Target or a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart come into Santa Monica Place. Last month I spent $300 at Target in Los Angeles, Culver City. I spend all of my tax dollars someplace else. I’d love to be able to do it here.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 10, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/061006.pdf?ref=smdp.com)