There is a scene in the 1986 film Pretty In Pink where Ducky, (Jon Cryer) professes his love for Andie (Molly Ringwald), by lip syncing Otis Redding. It’s a bittersweet moment, one that encapsulates the longing and rejection of young infatuation. Set in a cute little record shop (remember those) called ‘Trax’ on the corner of Broadway and Third Street, it is a time capsule of a long-ago forgotten place we all once knew: The Third Street Promenade.
Indeed, the Promenade seems like a shadow of the place that was once the hub of the city’s retail world. A place where people would come from all over the Westside, if not the world to congregate, to buy things and to go watch movies.
The promenade didn’t just happen organically. It was a scheme that developed over many years, starting with the advent of pedestrian only access in 1965 and growing into a place that locals and tourists from around the world alike visited.
When I walk around the promenade these days, which I will admit is rare, I find a retail center that hardly resembles the famous Third Street Promenade of my youth.
I see lots of empty storefronts, with an estimated 20%-30% retail vacancy. Along the cobbled path, the line of cute Adirondack chairs, are mostly filled with sleeping unhoused people. Used needles occupy dark corners between buildings and it seems that the majority of patrons are international tourists — the locals have moved on.
The promenade’s fall from grace is complicated. It coincides with a litany of issues: brick and mortar retail undergoing a huge transformation, the opioid epidemics’ arrival on our preverbal shores, declining movie theatre patronage, the connecting of downtown LA and downtown SM via the Expo line, and other crosstown retail options that are newer, shinier, cleaner… just to name a few.
But there are also clear issues created by the city. Highly restrictive zoning made the natural evolution of the street, which might’ve become a place with nightclubs and bars or at the very least more restaurants, impossible. These rules made it very dependent on retail that for now just isn’t there like it used to be.
Some folks have decried the needle exchange at Reed Park and the county’s shrouding of its existence, suggesting that it attracts users. Like so many national issues, it seemed like the opioid crisis might not touch us. With our variety of industries and rise in affluence over the past few decades, we weren’t like those rust-belt towns where young people seemingly had few opportunities — where older Americans were dying deaths of despair. No, we were different.
Not this time. We didn’t escape dystopia. We’re overdosing too.
Some have suggested harsh measures to rid downtown of its ever-present mentally ill population, who episodically act out in ways that are disturbing to those around them. Police in local communities used to just drop unhoused people off on skid row and walk away. Problem solved. Nearly 20 years ago the ACLU sued Santa Monica for using police to arrest or harass unhoused people in order to get them to go elsewhere, so that option is legally off the table, not to mention reprehensible.
Over 40 years ago, Reagan successfully deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and while there’s a lot to unpack there, it effectively put mentally ill people who needed help onto the streets. While we spend millions of dollars trying to help these ill people, what’s evolved since then is not working.
What are businesses supposed to do? It’s hard to attract patrons when there is someone screaming nearby or violently throwing up in a public trash can, as was recently witnessed. The Santa Monica Place has been put in “Special Servicing,” which is an alternative to default, receiving its final loan extension after several failed attempts at new financing.
Store owners complain of an unprecedented uptick in shoplifting, and the powerlessness that they experience when the police don’t or can’t do anything about it even when thieves are caught.
What percentage of the unhoused in Santa Monica are mentally ill? What percentage are addicted to drugs? How does increased homelessness effect the crime rate? How many are coming here because they’ve heard we have great homeless services? These aren’t pleasant questions, but they’re things many of us think about.
My aim over the next few months is to explore these and many more questions. I have reached out to the Santa Monica Housing and Human Services Director and Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. in hopes that they can shed light on what Santa Monica is doing and plans to do to tackle these issues.
Our days with Ducky in the Trax record store will likely never return, but I’m certain there is a way forward for the promenade and for our humanitarian desire to help those without homes. It may be like so many times before, where Santa Monica has to lead the way forward for the rest of the state and the nation. Or it may be that we need greater societal changes. But something’s gotta give.
Miles Warner is a Santa Monica parent and resident.