WHEN HALF-ASSED INCOMPETENTS RULE
You've probably read in the Daily Pilot that the Gap has now closed at Triangle Square. That's no surprise to anyone who knows a little about retail real estate.
Look, this isn't brain surgery. Triangle Square is designed wrong. It was functionally obsolete as a shopping center when it was still in the concept stage. It shouldn't have been built. Not the way it was built.
Here's what probably went on in the discussions back then. The developer tried to maximize the leasable square footage and his profits by putting the parking underground. His proforma projections that he took to the bank probably showed maximum rents and a very low vacancy factor (they always do).
The developer probably also had a handful of letters of interest from national and regional credit tenants and these letters of interest became part of the developer's pitch to the bank. The way it works in retail real estate is that many of these national and regional credit tenants will take a flyer on every new center that opens so long as certain minimum demographic figures support it and if certain other national credit tenants have also sent in letters of interest.
That's why when new centers first open they often look successful. However, the national and regional credit tenants always have performance clauses in their leases that let them bail out if their sales projections aren't reached by a certain time or if sales fall below certain levels or if certain other tenants go dark. That's why you'll see some centers that looked successful when they first opened (such as Triangle Square), suddenly starting to look less so as years go on.
On paper, and before it was built, Triangle Square probably looked like a winner. Paper isn't reality, folks. The problem is that in our climate and with our open space life style, it was a lousy idea. People have too many other choices in shopping and they prefer not to park in a damp and dreary cavern below a shopping center if they can help it. The psychology is all wrong. Also, it should have been clear that you couldn't get the right tenant mix at Triangle Square that would allow all merchants to prosper.
And, speaking of psychology, a slight digression might be instructive. There is a field where psychology and engineering/designing/development come together, called "human factors engineering." This is a field that started because engineers and others often design very efficient things including machines, but don't always factor in the human element.
Take a car, for example. To get the weight down, you, Mr. Engineer, may have designed the seats to be too hard. Or, you may have designed the radio knobs that are out of reach of the average human. Or you may have chosen interior colors that are psychologically upsetting, or put in gauges that are the wrong shape or color. Or, maybe, the materials you wanted for the interior you designed just smell wrong. To avoid costly mistakes, major automobile manufacturers usually have human factors engineers as part of their design teams. Same with airplane manufacturers. Your machine may be very efficient, but if people don't like it, you'll go broke.
Here's another example and another digression. Years ago, an old style chain of coffee shops in New York had a problem. Some customers would come in and sit at the counter for hours on end nursing a cup of coffee and thus keeping other paying customers from taking their seats. A human factors engineer was called in and he designed seats that were perfectly comfortable...for about ten minutes. Problem solved.
A team of competent uninvolved retail retail estate professionals would have served the function of human factors engineers for Triangle Square and would probably have advised the developer and the City that such a structure at that location might work as a government building or a college or for some similar use where people "had" to go. They would have told the developer and the City that it wouldn't work as a shopping center unless some changes were made.
And, today, even those who don't know much about retail real estate realize that Triangle Square is not working, despite all the happy face talk we've heard over the years from every new leasing team that takes over from the past failing leasing team.
Again, Triangle Square is designed wrong and is functionally obsolete. And, part of the problem is the stupid 55 Freeway causing major traffic problems right at its doorstep. You can't design a building without taking into account what's around that building. You have to look over the fence to see what's there and you have to realize your lot isn't in a vacuum.
How could Triangle Square be made to work and be an asset?
There are two alternatives that I've written about before:
1. The 55 could be put in a covered trench down to about 15th Street and the area above and near Triangle Square would become a pedestrian friendly open air shopping area with Triangle Square as the hub--think downtown Huntington Beach or the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. To be successful, Triangle Square would have to be opened up so that it became part of the outside.
2. Triangle Square could become a new City Hall or other government building or a college.
That's it. Those are the only two options besides tearing the place down that I see as viable.
But, here's the scary thing about the Triangle Square experience. We still have incompetents on the City Council making similar decisions for our city. In fact, we have an election every two years where we elect more incompetents who, for the most part, don't know much about City planning and who don't seem to be able to discern between good ideas and bad ones.
Today, we have incompetents on the City Council screwing up the Westside because they seem to bow to every little puff of smoke blown up their shorts by out of town industrialists who want to keep the Westside as slum central so they can continue to live the high life in Newport Beach upwind of the pollution that is going into the lungs of our kids from their massive industrial area on the Westside Bluffs.
And, what do our latter day incompetents tell us? "Oh, we're going to fix potholes and plant flowers in front of slums to fix the Westside." And, they mumble that they sure don't like eminent domain (having Councilmembers say this makes the out of town industrialist millionaires very happy), even though most of them don't understand that when properly used, eminent domain is a tool that can work to break the stranglehold of out of town money interests that won't let the Westside bloom.
Meanwhile, our present incompetents let big developers put in upscale condos and apartments all around South Coast Plaza without any state required low income units. What that does is force the city to keep rotting, overcrowded slums in our middle class neighborhoods to fulfill state mandated low income housing requirements.
Some of these incompetents have a childish view of what a free market economy really requires and they promote a laissez-faire system as though they're reading a class paper in their sixth grade class.
They fail to realize that the free market can't work unless everyone starts at the same time or until the playing field is truly leveled. In Costa Mesa, the out of town industrialists have had their 60 acres of industrial buildings on our view Westside Bluffs for many years and the City and other government entities including taxing entities have been protecting them.
So, our City Council put in a residential overlay on the Westside Bluffs. Big deal. Without doing more, things are not going to happen fast enough to turn things around, plus, and speaking of looking over the fence, Newport Beach is moving forward on the other side of those Bluffs to take all of Banning Ranch. And, they'll succeed. Why? Because Costa Mesa's half-assed politicians haven't done the right things over the years to make Costa Mesa desirable.
It's all connected, folks. If Costa Mesa were made more upscale instead of remaining an illegal alien sanctuary, many good things would start happening. To make it more upscale requires that we build upscale homes on land that is rare and desirable--such as view lots on the Westside Bluffs. And, some of our Westside Bluffs land is as desirable for homes as similar bluffs in Newport Beach where homes regularly sell for many millions of dollars.
Here's another example of what our half-assed politicians have done: They got rid of the job center but failed to put in a proper city ordinance to prevent day workers from congregating in parking lots and on street corners. Again, this isn't brain surgery. All these half-assed incompetents have to do is copy the ordinance recently enacted by the City of Orange.
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Those are our opinions about our half-assed politicians. Thanks for reading them.
