A Higher Calling?

In dress and in carriage, Rick Caruso seems an emissary from another era, like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age Jay Gatsby, a romantic contradiction of strength and insecurity. Here is a multimillionaire real estate developer who is paid a buck a year for serving as president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Here is a bottom-line guy who wants to experience life as an artist, to be a creative force free of convention and routine. Here is a Gatsby for our time--an insider who often feels like an outsider, a polished professional who operates as if he continually has something to prove.

At 44, Caruso is thin and fit, with piercing dark eyes and a preternatural year-round tan. He favors Brioni suits and shirts from Turnbull & Asser, while his drink of choice runs to Chivas Regal and his taste in cars to the opulent, with an armada that includes a Bentley and a Mercedes. Given Caruso's high-gloss image, he initially can come across as self-absorbed as well as self-assured.

This duality is evident when Caruso stops by his newest shopping dominion--the Grove at Farmers Market--and is royally received, the staff greeting him with awe and anxiety. Caruso, impeccably dressed, is ever polite, ever friendly. But he clearly expects to be treated deferentially, to be the focus of attention in his own Magic Kingdom.

While some critics hold that the Grove emits an eerie vibe redolent of "The Truman Show"--the American Dream locked on eternal replay--large crowds are packing this open-air consumer village of retro-Americana. The Grove reflects Caruso's ardent re-creation of Los Angeles as a safe, harmonious place where children frolic, families stroll arm in arm and the city runs with the smooth, clockwork efficiency of Disneyland.

You see, Caruso believes that he knows how to make Los Angeles a better place, and he is now seriously weighing whether he might best effect that change as mayor of the city. At this point, it is a private debate. Indeed, Caruso has the money and ambition to mount a serious campaign. But the struggle between the private family man and the emerging public figure is a volatile dynamic. Like Gatsby, Caruso often seeks solitude, looking to retreat to a place deep within himself. Yet, like Walt Disney, one of Caruso's personal heroes, he loves the big showy gesture, the over-the-top orchestrated public spectacle that generates a big bang and puts him at the center of things. It is this uneasy alliance--an urge to serve harnessed to a desire to control--that both drives Caruso and gives rise to self-doubt and skepticism.