> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Towers to teeter over Santa Monica Place
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/towers-to-teeter-over-santa-monica-place/
- Published: 2006-04-01T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T17:26:10.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: local, Downtown, #archive-import, Homeless

*Babel on: Towers are two tickets to ‘paradise’*

*By MONEY T. LAROK Daily Mess Maker*

In an 11th hour decision sure to send both shock and awe throughout the region, elected officials struck a deal with mall owners to raze Santa Monica Place and erect a pair of skyscrapers there instead.

With promises of ground-level open space, partially maintained skyline views and a clear walkway from the Third Street Promenade to Main Street, the tentatively titled “Bloom Buildings” are being hailed as a triumph by both sides.

On Friday, Santa Monica Mayor Rob Holemilk was joined by Macerich senior vice president Randy Brandy outside the Freddy’s Fetishes storefront in the mall for a photo-op to unveil the city’s lofty intentions to construct the 88-story monstrosities. The two clasped hands and raised their arms in triumph, striking a pose strikingly similar to that of the projected downtown towers, based loosely on the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Architects reason the towers’ designs will feel completely original taking into account most Santa Monicans’ ignorance of things located outside of the Southland.

“Finally, an engineering marvel that will put the Westside on the map, and doesn’t look like a pair of binoculars or something,” boasted a proud mayor, as he placed his Freddy’s purchase on the ground to use his hands for speaking. “Residents can walk from Wilshire to Main Street and enjoy picturesque sky views framed by phallic steel structures.”

Macerich’s Brandy added that a set of three 26-square-foot parks located at the base of the buildings will satisfy people wanting parks, open space or “any of that shit.”

The three modest green expanses represent earth, wind & fire — one of Brandy’s favorite afro-centric bands from the 1970s, his formative years spent in suburban malaise.

While the towers would appear to represent everything most Santa Monicans rejected in earlier proposals — 36,000 tons of beams, trusses and reinforcement; and 4 million square feet of office space — officials contend the towers represent the ultimate in compromise.

“I’m not crazy about blocking so much of the city’s view, and as an architect am unsure if skyscrapers so close to the ocean are even feasible, but look at this … it’s really neat-o,” said Councilman Ferb Feline.

Each of the Bloom Buildings will stretch some 1,500 feet into the sky, but the design of the structures will allow for a breezy, open-air Promenade to expand from Wilshire Boulevard, through the towers, along the Civic Center and proposed village area, and connect the entire throughway with Main Street. Such a shopping strip has been envisioned for the area for at least a few weeks.

The decision was made by the City Council early Wednesday during its regular meeting after most of the public had gone to sleep.

“If anyone is upset about the height of these buildings, it’s nobody’s fault but their own,” said Gen Kenser. “It’s not our fault if people can’t stay up until 3 a.m. for the important items on the agenda. But since no one was there to tell us what they thought, we went with it. Plus, the kickback from the developer was nothing to shake a stick at.”

The project should also satisfy “those pesky” affordable housing advocates as well, says Brandy, with several floors set aside for section 8 housing. Tenants will also be able to make their way across the Skybridge — connecting the towers at the 41st and 42nd floors — where they will be able to shop the day away at such mid-tower retailers as Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Diedrich’s, Peet’s Coffee and British costume rentals.

Even still, the size and scope of the project doesn’t sit well with all Santa Monicans, many of whom worry about increased traffic, shortage of parking and overdevelopment.

“It’s a godforsaken, modern-day Tower of Babel,” said an irate Flo Moser, a parishioner at the Rollers Most Holy church in Sunset Park, “only with our city officials, it’s a Tower of Babble. Get it? Tower of Babble.”

Moser and company were mollified somewhat when developers agreed not to complete the first tower before starting on the second, lest one tower alone appear too phallic.

“I’ll tell you one thing, this would never happen north of Montana,” she added.

An interesting footnote, another proposal for the site would have seen a wholly new kind of construction take hold at the former Santa Monica Place mall — the “mantle-scraper,” a new Frank Gehry concept of building deep into the earth in efforts to preserve above-ground open space.

An early plastic model, complete with little plastic people figurines of homeless people mulling about, depicted a 68-story subterranean structure that might have provided office dwellers and tenants with exclusive window views of the earth’s liquid core of nickel iron, but city officials worried about the lowest floors being spontaneously incinerated.

“That really could have been something special,” noted Feline, “but this is nice.”

Even so, the rent on a studio apartment in Santa Monica is $1,500, even south of the 10\. Street parking is not included.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/040106-04_01.jpg)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/040106.pdf?ref=smdp.com)