Lights, Cameras, Santa: Rick Caruso Kicks Off Holiday Shopping Season in Los Angeles
New York has the Rockefeller Center tree lighting; the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Bergdorf Goodman’s holiday windows.
But in L.A., the city without a city center, holiday retail traditions have been more elusive. Until real estate developer Rick Caruso made The Grove the de facto center of Christmas with a 100-foot white fir tree lit for the first time this holiday season on Monday night, in a Hollywood-worthy spectacular with its own drone show, fireworks and “first snow.”
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Now in its 23rd year, the Christmas at The Grove Tree Lighting Celebration has grown from a small-scale community event into a made-for-TV spectacle (literally; it will air several times on the local Fox station) with large-scale sets, Santa’s arrival and such top-tier musical acts as Justin Bieber, Gloria Estefan, and David Foster.
This year’s event was hosted by NSYNC singer Lance Bass in the “town square” of the outdoor mall, leaning heavily into Caruso’s love of the wholesome with a Christmas kitsch set featuring a neon “Grove” sign, an opening Presenting of the Colors and a closing choir performance backed by fireworks and Santa emerging from a giant grandfather clock.
In between were live performances of holiday standards (Dean Martin and Nat King Cole) and pop hits from Rachel Platten (“Fight Song”), OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder (“Counting Stars”), as well as an impressive drone light show that beamed the names of the event’s corporate partners Acura, Chase Freedom and Revolve, as well as images of Santa’s sleigh, a wreath and an American flag into the sky.
And yes, snow did fall — in Southern California — and it will every night through the holidays at The Grove.
The evening drew Caruso’s VIP friends and family, who sat stage front with guests from charity partner Para Los Ni?os, as well as the general public who watched from the mall’s cobblestone streets, storefronts and parking garage.
“I’ve always been creating spaces so the community can come together, families can come together, and people can just enjoy life. That’s always been the premise of everything we do,” former mayoral candidate Caruso told WWD of the mission for his privately held real estate company, which spans retail, residential and hospitality projects in California.
The idea to do holiday tree lightings at his properties actually came from listening to the community, he said, recalling how when he was building The Promenade at Westlake 30 years ago, he was in the construction trailer late one night and heard a knock on the door. “I opened it up and it was this guy Vito. And he introduced himself and said, ‘I sell Christmas trees . . . I just started my business.’ He was the one who said listen, put a bigger Christmas tree out here and then you can have a beautiful holiday party around it for the community,” said Caruso.
“We were his second customer at the time and we’ve grown together for 30 years. He does all the trees for all our properties, bringing them down from the Sierras, decorating and putting them up. It’s one of the things that’s always reminded me, you know, figuratively and literally, to answer the door, right? Because someone might have a good idea.”
Opened in 2002 on 20 acres adjacent to the Original Farmers Market in L.A., The Grove has $2,460 average sales per square foot, and 90 percent of visitors to the property make a purchase, according to its website.
The outdoor mall and gathering place has cemented Caruso’s company as the gold standard of L.A. area retail that has, along with its other marquee shopping destinations (Palisades Village, Americana at Brand and Miramar Resort), attracted an increasing number of luxury tenants, and is tracking double-digit growth in foot traffic and sales this holiday season.
“Our total revenue is up 10 percent to date, we’re gonna have our best year ever. We are hitting record numbers of attendance on our properties. Across the board, we have demand for retail space that we can’t meet, and we are 100 percent leased,” Caruso said, before musing on the retail environment. “I think there’s definitely two worlds out there. If you own an indoor mall, you’re probably challenged. Our properties are very different. As you know, the forecast is to have about a 3 percent increase in [retail] sales during the holidays. And more people are gravitating back to physical stores versus online to shop. So we feel well positioned.”
Another reason? Caruso said his team has been focused strategically on Gen Z.
“We brought in retailers that really speak to them. You take a look at Edikted, Alo Yoga, Brandy Melville, Aritzia, those stores have exploded. Edikted is doing over $4,000 a square foot,” he said of the nascent trend-and tech-driven L.A. fast-fashion brand that started just three years ago. “We just opened them at Americana at Brand because of the success we’ve had here.”
At The Grove, other Gen Z attractions include La La Land Kind Cafe, a highly Instagrammable L.A.-born coffee chain dedicated to hiring foster youth, and the online brand Revolve’s Holiday Shop open through Jan. 5.
“But we’ve really done this three-prong approach. One was to focus on Gen Z. The second is to focus on upscale luxury, and then fill in with aspirational. Because we want the mom and the daughter to come shop . . . And the great thing about the Gen Z shopper, they shop with friends, with family, they go out in a group, and you’ll see it outside of Edikted or outside of Brandy Melville. It’s a scene,” he said.
In 2025, Caruso is continuing to add residential to his retail properties, starting construction on residential towers at The Commons at Calabasas and the Lakes in Thousand Oaks. “We’re also adding residential to the Miramar where people can live full-time and workforce housing up there for our workers,” he said of the additions to his Rosewood Miramar hotel, which will include some additional retail as well.
For the first time in the company’s history, he’s entertaining opportunities outside of California. “We’ve got teams looking” said Caruso, who is also” thinking about” running for office again.
In the last two years, even as luxury groups have poured money into one-upping each other on Rodeo Drive, Caruso properties, including the Miramar in monied Santa Barbara suburb Montecito, Palisades Village in that tony enclave of L.A., and Americana at Brand in Glendale, have also become preferred destinations for luxury brands.
“We understand that luxury is having a moment of underperforming sales, but we’ve not seen that on our properties, where 30 percent of our new tenants has been in the luxury category,” said Corinne Verdery, chief executive officer of the Caruso real estate firm, who manages every aspect of the business — from retail to residential to hospitality.
There are new Gucci and David Yurman stores at the Grove; Bottega Veneta, Louis Vuitton, David Yurman and Tiffany & Co. stores at Americana; Aerin and Toteme stores at Palisades Village; Bottega Veneta, Zegna and Loro Piana stores at the Miramar.
“What we’ve seen is they’re deferring projects all over their portfolio, but on our properties, we’ve seen the opposite. We’ve seen them push to get open faster,” Verdery said. “I think people just want to not have to drive, not have to travel so far.”
Unlike large swaths of Los Angeles and many other major cities, there are not any empty storefronts at Caruso properties. And while many movie theaters are in the doldrums thanks to the glut of streaming entertainment, the AMC theater at the Grove is one of the top five performers in the country, Verdery said.
“I hate saying this because it sounds arrogant but we’re constantly focused on de-leasing . . . so that we can make room and space and capacity for new tenants.”
What’s attracting brands and customers?
“We focus on building heart share. It’s a term that we’ve coined inside the company,” Verdery said. “We talk about length of stay and repeat visits a lot, and how do we get people coming back over and over again. And we firmly believe that will drive sales. We don’t focus so much on the economics of exactly how,” she said.
“It goes back to experience. We create an engaging, safe environment for folks to come and shop, dine and enjoy our entertainment. We’re constantly programming new and different activities. We have mommy-and-me and kids’ clubs. You can see mommies and the strollers and the babies out there doing different exercises. And then we have a kids’ club for children . . . so you can always find something fun on our properties. And we spend a lot of time and money creating those activities.”
She also touted the Caruso Signature program, which lets residents at Americana at Brand or Palisades Village earn loyalty points when they pay their rent. “And you get benefits across the portfolio. You can have a hotel stay up at Miramar,” she said.
The retail, the residential and the hospitality pieces all inform each other.
“When I need to go Christmas shopping, I also think about where do I want to eat? They all go hand in hand.,” said Verdery. “And the more that you can bring them together into shop, dine, stay, the more successful each of the different businesses are.”
Inside the Christmas at The Grove 2024 Tree Lighting [PHOTOS]
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