Notes from the ULI Fall Meeting #1

Although I wasn't able to make Donald Bren's appearance at the ULI Fall Meeting in Los Angeles, the OC Register's Jon Lansner not only reviews this interview, but managed to snag a separate one-on-one interview with Bren at his Newport Beach offices:

It's no secret that construction is in a horrific slump nationwide. But look around Bren's land holdings and you'll see a rarity: extensive building of new homes, apartments – and even an office tower at Fashion Island.

This activity isn't any wild bet. It's largely the result of Bren's basic business mantra: "We can't predict, but we can plan."

He's leveraged the long-running homebuying appeal of Irvine – plus tax incentives for buyers in 2009 and 2010 – to get an early jump on a new homes rebound, selling 1,722 residences in north Irvine since the start of 2010. That's almost triple the budgeted pace.

His extensive apartment portfolio is nearly full with tenants, so he's aggressively adding new complexes in Irvine – plus in Silicon Valley. And he's constructing a new office tower around the bend from Irvine Co. headquarters only after he signed a world-class tenant to occupy the building: money management giant Pimco.

But Bren admits his overall business hasn't grown this year as fast as hoped. Rentals of his office space, for example, may be on the upswing – but the rents tenants will pay aren't acting in tandem. Then again, shopping increases at his malls are a pleasant surprise...

Bren notes that geography tells one a lot about economic opportunity these days. Especially, when he speaks of what he calls "two Californias."

His analysis essentially divides the state, down the middle, west to east. (He mentions this confused East Coast financial types, who tend to think of north-south divides. And it bemuses Bren that major financial players have yet to figure out a state that Bren boasts has the eighth largest economy in the world.)

Bren's "two Californias" comprise a reviving, even "vibrant" collection of coastal metropolitan areas – with 100,000 jobs added in a year, by his math. That's in harsh contrast to California's inland areas that are "devastated, maybe as bad as Nevada."

The state hot spot, in Bren's eyes, is clearly Silicon Valley. There, he says, some of this era's greatest artists – and Bren is a student of art – are creating innovative new products and services. Not to mention creating jobs and a thriving regional economy.

The industrial art discussion leads to brief talk about the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame. Bren says he'll soon be diving into a new biography of the technology visionary, part of what he's said is a lifelong pursuit of understanding other business giants' wisdom.

As for the state as whole, Bren's a touch optimistic, saying the trend line is "positive ... barely." California's economy, "has been jolted," Bren says, and clearly the recovery is at a pace "not what we're used to."

Click here for the entire article, which also includes videos of Bren's interviews.

L.A. Times architecture critic calls L.A. Live a bust

Just when many Angelenos were on the verge of clinching a potential icon that would represent downtown Los Angeles in the 21st century with L.A. Live, L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne considers the second phase a bust, offering us this:

Even by the rather forgiving standards of a city whose leaders -- and whose public, for that matter -- demand little from developers when it comes to civic-minded design, the project is relentlessly focused on creating its own wholly separate commercial universe: a brighter, more strategically frenzied place than the world outside its doors...

The trouble is that the new buildings -- designed by RTKL, a Baltimore-based firm that also created the master plan for L.A. Live -- have almost nothing to say to or about downtown Los Angeles. Clad in glass and panels of metal and limestone, they are adamant in their sleek placelessness.

Their primary concern is matching, in palette and spirit, the Staples Center next door (which, not coincidentally, is also an AEG property). When you get right down to it, their architecture is fundamentally not really architecture at all but an extensive series of armatures on which the developer and its tenants can hang logos, video screens and a sophisticated range of lighting effects.

"...not really architecture at all but an extensive series of armatures?" As my 7-year-old niece would say, "How rude!" But maybe he's trying to make a larger point:

For decades, we have largely built the city with a kind of all-or-nothing zeal, pouring money and architecture into stand-alone projects of increasingly massive scale and failing to coax developers to knit them into their neighborhoods with any real care.

For cities, the benefit of a gargantuan new development is not only the boost it gives to the tax base but also, in urban terms, its spillover effect -- energy and people flowing into the surrounding area. The entirety of the AEG development downtown -- Staples plus L.A. Live -- is designed like an airtight cruise ship, turning not a welcoming face but the architectural equivalent of a massive hull to the neighbors. Its spillover effect may be measured not in gallons but in drops...

Click here for entire article.