Mini-Malls Aren’t All Eyesores

Stirring controversy ever since their introduction into the Los Angeles cityscape about a decade ago have been the small shopping centers known as mini-malls.

Most of the malls containing small businesses and modest restaurants certainly are a convenience, being well located at busy intersections and providing accessible parking. This is what has made the malls so popular and, according to a Grubb & Ellis real estate survey, has spurred the construction of 400 of them since 1980.

They have, in effect, become the mom-and-pop stores of the automotive age, offering, in a variety of establishments, small, carry-away items--ranging from beer to books--and familiar services such as laundry and dry cleaning. Also usually featured are a range of fast-food outlets and ethnic eateries.

The problem is that many of the malls are insensitively designed and garishly decorated to catch the eye of the passing motorist. The result has been a damaged streetscape of out-of-scale buildings, curb cuts dangerously slicing across sidewalks and ugly walls edging raw asphalt parking lots. Mini-malls tend not to make very good neighbors.

Viewing some of these malls, such as a cluster of them on South Vermont Avenue in Little Korea, and on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood or scattered the length of Sepulveda Boulevard from the South Bay to San Fernando, you can understand why their design and development has come under increasingly strict local controls and reviews.

Happily, there are exceptions, thanks in part to more public reviews, a rising design consciousness among select developers and a heightened sensitivity by the architecture profession.

Among those that have caught my eye recently is Olympic Square, which was created out of an old Porsche auto shop at the northeast corner of Oakhurst Drive and Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The nicely scaled one-story complex of distinctive storefronts framed in wood, stucco and aluminum was designed by the firm of Kanner & Associates.

And while the complex was sited in an L-shape corner configuration typical of mini-malls, with the parking provided in the front of the stores, the planters, bollards and subdued signs lend it a scale and tone consistent with the residential neighborhood. Helping are the street trees for which Beverly Hills is famed.

Also maintaining a neighborhood tone is the mini-mall strip of stores on the south side of Montana Avenue between 7th and 8th streets in Santa Monica, designed by the firm of Rothenberg Sawasy Architects. And though the excess of neon and festive coloring is not to my taste, the scale and individualized storefronts respecting the sidewalk edge are welcomed.

Another mini-mall deserving praise is a two-story, brick-clad, Mansard-metal-roofed complex set back behind a well-landscaped parking lot at the southeast corner of San Vicente Boulevard and Granville Avenue in Brentwood. What I find particularly attractive about this design by the firm of Clark and Hedrick Architect is the arcaded ground floor incorporating outdoor seating, and the second-floor balcony looking down on it all. The mood is very Mediterranean.

More dense and exposed but nicely styled in a Neo-streamline Moderne mode of curved corners and horizontal detailing is the Robertson Pavilion at the northeast corner of Robertson and Olympic boulevards, just beyond the borders of Beverly Hills. It was designed by architect Kai Chan.

For a Moderne delight that also respects the sidewalk edge, there is the mall featuring the Pink Cadillac at the northeast corner of 3rd Street and Harper Avenue. Though I commented on the design by Munselle-Brown Partnership in a column last year on architecture in the Fairfax District, I feel it also deserves mention as an inventively styled mini-mall.

Well styled in a trendy Postmodern mode is Plaza Cienega, at the southwest corner of La Cienega Boulevard and 3rd Street, designed by the Architecture Studio. The coloring and playful detailing in the mock gate at the corner and in the two-story tower in the center of the complex, lend visual interest to the mall, and the particularly raw intersection there.

Mini-malls may not be the stuff of great architecture, but as pervasive structures in our increasingly cluttered city, it is nice to note that a few can be attractive as well as convenient.