Rick Caruso Needs to Be Hollywood’s Prime Cheerleader as L.A. Mayor

Rick Caruso is assured that he’s going to be the following mayor of Los Angeles. 

“I’m getting the job,” he says with a smile earlier than sitting right down to element his imaginative and prescient for the way forward for the leisure business in Los Angeles in an interview with Selection‘s “Strictly Business.” 

The actual property developer who’s behind such retail locations because the Grove and Glendale’s the Americana is vying towards Congresswoman Karen Bass for the job of main the nation’s second largest metropolis at a time when L.A. is beset with crises — most acutely, the rising ranks of the unhoused.

Caruso spoke from his company places of work overlooking the Grove within the Fairfax district. (Bass has an open invitation to seem on “Strictly Enterprise.”) The L.A. native was keen to handle his views on how town can turn out to be extra hospitable to not solely the largest gamers in content material but in addition the artistic neighborhood’s many freelance staff. 

“The way forward for L.A. is tied to the way forward for the leisure business. And I’m going to work arduous to verify we deliver it again right here, deliver it dwelling,” Caruso says. He added that he sees being a “cheerleader” for the business outdoors of California as “one of many enjoyable components of the job” that he hopes to safe within the Nov. 8 election.

In an Oct. 2 Los Angeles Instances/UC Berkeley Institute of Authorities Research ballot, Bass leads Caruso amongst registered voters with a slim margin of 34% to Caruso’s 31%, which marks an enormous shift from the broader lead that Bass loved in August. Nevertheless, amongst possible voters, Bass nonetheless leads by a powerful margin, 46% to 31%.

In Caruso’s view, “a vibrant Hollywood is extremely essential to the vibrancy of the financial system of Los Angeles. It’s additionally extremely essential to the branding of Los Angeles. This can be a land the place goals come true,” he says. “We have to do a greater job within the metropolis. And I’m dedicated, as mayor, to protecting content material creation within the metropolis of Los Angeles. We’re shedding means an excessive amount of outdoors of town. It’s additionally creating the roles right here within the metropolis of Los Angeles and never shedding that to neighboring cities or cities throughout the nation.” 

Caruso cites former Disney CEO Bob Iger, CAA’s Bryan Lourd and former 20^th Century Fox and Paramount Footage chief Jim Gianopulos as amongst his longstanding friendships with Hollywood leaders. He additionally now has household ties to the business, with two of his 4 youngsters lively in leisure. Caruso’s son Gregory is a writer-director, and his son Justin is a musician and DJ.

“We do speak about this. It’s loopy to me what Los Angeles has completed as a result of we now have over-regulated and overtaxed individuals to the purpose that they’ve moved out of Los Angeles,” he says. “And all they need to do is transfer subsequent door to Culver Metropolis, or go to Glendale, they don’t need to go far-off. The Metropolis of Los Angeles and any metropolis is a aggressive enterprise. And we now have to be aggressive. We will’t be unduly taxed right here and anticipate individuals to need to keep.” 

On the query of the place to begin to handle L.A.’s homelessness downside, Caruso acknowledged that there aren’t any straightforward options or pithy 10-point plans to shortly alleviate the humanitarian nightmare. However he has sturdy opinions on the coverage choices that led to the proliferation of encampments throughout town. 

“This metropolis alone is spending a billion a 12 months and the (homeless) downside continues to worsen. You reallocate the {dollars} to applications that work. You do an audit. We’re spending taxpayer {dollars} on common of $700,000 per unit to construct a housing unit for the homeless. They are often constructed for $60,000,” he stated, citing improvements in reasonably priced housing completed by design companies reminiscent of Boxabl in Las Vegas. 

Caruso factors out that he’s no stranger to the inner-workings of L.A. politics, having helped to overtake the Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy within the Nineties and the Los Angeles Police Division within the 2000s within the wake of the Rampart police brutality scandal.  

Bass has represented Los Angeles in Congress for 10 years, and earlier than that she was on the L.A. Metropolis Council and served within the state Meeting. Caruso’s detractors say he doesn’t have the depth of relationships or data of public coverage points to be an efficient mayor at such a fraught time. (Exhibit A: the mushrooming racism scandal across the L.A. Metropolis Council that spurred the resignation of council president Nury Martinez this week.) 

Caruso asserts that his expertise as a enterprise proprietor and native philanthropist offers him the attitude to power radical change. With out that, he says, “the system is damaged, and the individuals throughout the system will proceed to do the identical previous factor and the issues will proceed to worsen.”