David O'Malley: developer catches flak but hangs tough over plans for Playa Vista.

David O'Malley:

Developer catches flak but hangs tough over plans for Playa Vista

David O'Malley has a gift for understatement. "I'm just an employee," says the man who is in charge of developing the 957-acre Playa Vista area south of Marina del Rey. "I could get a phone call any time" saying he's fired. But O'Malley, 50, an elegantly tailored architect with patrician good looks, does not underplay the scope of Playa Vista. "It's the largest undeveloped piece of land in a major American city," he says.

If O'Malley is "just an employee" as executive vice president of Howard Hughes Properties, he is also the the driving force behind Playa Vista, the sandy finger of land that Howard Hughes bought in 1940 as a runway for experimental aircraft which has now become a $1 billion launchpad for real estate development.

Howard Hughes Properties is the development division of Las Vegas-based Summa Corp., a company controlled by the heirs of the late billionaire.

In an interview, O'Malley comes across as bland, laconic and aloof. But for all his reserve, the Malibu resident has one of the highest profiles in Los Angeles development. Like his former employer, Maryland-based developer James Rouse, O'Malley is a city builder on a scale a megalomaniac might envy. When completed in the year 2000, Playa Vista is expected to contain up to 6 million square feet of office space, 800,000 square feet of shopping centers and other retail use, 2,400 hotel rooms, 8,800 residences and a 600-to 900-slip marina.

Even the undramatic O'Malley says he has "a broad mandate." But his lofty perch as a city builder is also a hot seat.

Since its inception, Playa Vista has arguably been the single most controversial development in Southern California, alarming or enraging environmentalists, neighborhood groups, and local governments alike. The Santa Monica City Council, for instance, voted unanimously to condemn the project in 1985, saying it would choke local roads, not build enough housing and pollute the air. And last year, Playa Vista was a chief plank in the slow-growth platform that Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter rode into office.

O'Malley appears unperturbed by critics. "If they knew what I know, they wouldn't be against (Playa Vista)," he says.

For instance, Playa Vista's road-building will improve traffic in the Marina-Venice-Santa Monica area, according to O'Malley. Hughes Properties has agreed to expand a portion of Lincoln Boulevard from six to eight lanes, rebuild a portion of Culver Boulevard and create a new street called Bay Street to connect Lincoln and Centinela boulevards. According to company projections, traffic in the Playa Vista area will circulate better after new lanes and streets are constructed, he says.

He also disputes that Playa Vista will burden the housing stock in surrounding areas. "Half the (construction approvals) for the project are residential," he says.

O'Malley also disputes that Hughes intends to build a miniature Manhattan on the marshy shores of the Ballona flood control channel. Because Playa Vista had to pass muster with the California Coastal Commission, which jealously guards access to public beaches, the density of development is low, he says. Hughes is restricted to putting up an average of only one square foot of building for every two square feet of dirt on most of the property. In comparison, downtown developers can build up to 26 times that density. Growth-limiting Proposition U, the 1986 ballot measure that affects the majority of commercial areas in Los Angeles, allows three times the density of Playa Vista.

If flak-catching is fairly new to O'Malley, city design has been a life work. Born in 1938 in Chicago, O'Malley attended Illinois Institute of Technology in the same city, taking a bachelor's of architecture degree in 1959. Moving to Baltimore in the early 1960s, he worked for a while in the local office of Gruen Architects. Later, he would open his own office with the famed avant-garde architect Frank O. Gehry.

O'Malley "has always had that business instinct. He's very good with people," says Gehry. "He has a calming `bedside manner' with clients that works well."

Within three weeks of opening the office, "we had more work than I could handle," Gehry recalls. "That's why we split up."

Despite differences in style, the two have remained friends. "Compared to me, he's very conservative in style and in his work -- I suspect he's a Republican. He's less interested than I am in idiosyncratic architecture."

In 1968, O'Malley's interest in city-building manifested itself when he became involved in Baltimore's Neighborhood Design Corp., helping create a pedestrian mall in a depressed area. He also contributed to the design of Columbia, Md., the Rouse Co.'s historic experiment in ready-made suburbia.

After a brief stint of teaching at Harvard University in 1972 as a Loeb Fellow of Advanced Environmental Studies, he continued in private practice in Baltimore until 1979, when he came to Los Angeles to be vice president of Welton Becket Associates (now Ellerbe Becket Associates).

He became Becket's president and CEO in 1981, when the veteran design firm became a developer, building the first phase of the 2 million-square-foot Colorado Place office complex in Santa Monica.

Like a CEO, O'Malley says his role at Playa Vista is to delegate. "I think it's a mistake to wave your arms and shout that you know more than anyone else," he says.

To set policy for Playa Vista, he has assembled a team of three designers, a lawyer and an "urbanologist." Team members include architect Harry Cobb, a principal with I.M. Pei & Associates in Cambridge and former San Francisco Planning Director Allan Jacobs. "They're our brain trust," he says of the team.

Building a "city" like Playa Vista is unique, he says, because the area is surrounded on four sides by established communities: Marina del Rey to the north, Playa Del Rey to the west, Westchester to the south and to the west, Los Angeles. "You have to find a way to add to the existing city," he says.

Old ideas in city planning don't apply, according to O'Malley. "We really haven't done city building since the turn of the century, as in (architect Daniel) Burnham's plan for Chicago. We're starting with a clean slate. This project is three-and-a-half miles long and a mile wide. That's the distance from Westwood to Santa Monica, and Playa Vista will have the same richness and variety."

To achieve that richness, however, O'Malley says he is making sure Playa Vista invites good architecture. Says O'Malley: "You can't do large-scale development guided just by what looks nice. Places are memorable because of the character of the public realm. Think of the most memorable shopping areas you've been in -- Fifth Avenue in Manhattan's upper east side, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or Michigan Avenue in Chicago. They're all outdoor, public areas."

He adds, "The basic principle, I guess, is the notion of the public realm... If the public area is very `legible' and elegant, then the development areas can be filled in with individual projects...That's what city building is really about, the public realm."

And he remains unmoved by the vitriol surrounding Playa Vista. "I don't think I'd be doing this if I didn't believe in it," he says. "The important thing is that the people who own Playa Vista want to do it right."