Rest assured that William Shakespeare is alive and kicking in coronavirus-stricken California.
To the question of “what’s in a name?,” one qualifier matters most—“essential,” as in a commercial service necessary to keep society from unraveling (as you’ll see in a moment, it’s a very elastic definition in some parts of the Golden State).
And there’s the puzzler of “to be, or not to be”—in California, “whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune . . .” so long as home construction continues unabated.
About that particular industry: one might have assumed that construction came to a screeching halt when the Golden State went into lockdown a month ago—America’s most populous state doing the same as New York, which has a ban in effect for all construction with the exception of hospitals, infrastructure, and affordable housing.
But that’s not the case out west.
California governor Gavin Newsom’s March 19 executive order was very clear as to who doesn’t have to abide by cease-work, stay-at-home restrictions (you’ll find it on page 11 of the amended version of governor’s 14-page definition of the new “essential” workforce—amended after the urging to do so by a Sacramento-based construction trade group): “Construction workers who support the construction, operation, inspection, and maintenance of construction sites and construction projects (including housing construction).”
And just to make sure he got the point across, Newsom earlier this month reminded reporters that California is “not New York . . . and we’re going to do everything we can do bend our curve,” while also noting that “there are very different conditions in California” that account for the construction contrast.
Why did Newsom see the need for the public reminder? Because the six counties encompassing the San Francisco Bay Area considered the governor’s edict . . . and then opted to march in a different direction—a regional ban that limits construction to projects “that provide services to vulnerable populations” plus those “required to maintain safety, sanitation, and habitability of residences and commercial buildings.” Translation: say goodbye, for now, to office, hotel, and market-rate residential projects.
There are two things worth noting about the gulf between the government in Sacramento and the local governments closer to the sea.
First, there’s an irony that’s hard to ignore: Newsom and California’s statewide leadership, so fond of its “resistance” to the Trump administration and federal policy this past year, now discovers the joys of dealing with noncompliant governments a rung lower on the power ladder.
Second, we once again see a big difference between the powers that be in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County.
About Los Angeles: Eric Garcetti, the second-term mayor, followed the state’s lead in issuing a March 19 “safer at home” lockdown for all but nonessential activities. In his words, “We are all safer at home. Staying in our residences, being aggressive about hygiene, and practicing safe social distancing are the most effective ways to protect ourselves, the people we love, and everyone in our community.” Garcetti added, “This isn’t forever—and we’ll get through it together.”
And, like the state, Los Angeles trotted out its own exhaustive list of “essential activities” exemptions. What one finds if they make it all the way to Section V, Subsection IX and “Essential Infrastructure”: “Individuals may leave their residences to provide any services or goods or perform any work necessary to build, operate, maintain or manufacture essential infrastructure, including without limitation construction of commercial, office and institutional buildings, residential buildings and housing; airport operations, food supply, concessions and construction.”
So let’s take a look at what qualifies for “essential activities” in Los Angeles.
Work goes on at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (seven years ago, the museum decided to replace four separate structures with one building). Fair enough. Art is beauty and knowledge—a public treasure and resource.
Ten miles to the south, in Inglewood, construction also continues at SoFi Stadium, the home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers NFL franchises once the new season commences. Is the new stadium “essential”? Perhaps. A return to fall football will come as a welcome relief and a way to differentiate the weekend from weekdays, even if access to the new stadium (Rams “season seat licenses” range from $15,000 to $80,000) is hardly an exercise in middle-class economics.
Now, let’s head 15 miles north to Holmby Hills—near UCLA and the Los Angeles Country Club—and one of more famous/notorious structures on the West Coast: the former Playboy Mansion (the since deceased Hugh Hefner sold it in 2016, reportedly for $100 million).
Renovation goes on at the one-time bunny hive as long as laborers “maintain safety, sanitation and essential operation.”
Ah, there’s the word again: “essential.”
Finally, one last stop on our Los Angeles sojourn: an otherwise quiet street in exclusive Pacific Palisades and adjacent to the even more exclusive Riviera Country Club (where you’ll find Mark Wahlberg golfing, Adam Sandler lunching by the tennis courts, and Larry David filming scenes for Curb Your Enthusiasm).
That street’s home to a bevy of construction—homes being razed, torn down to their foundations and turned into much larger mansions, or simply renovated. Among those with the resources to do so: the actress Michelle Pfeiffer, of The Fabulous Baker Boys and Batman Returns fame (she’s one of several actresses to slip into a Catwoman suit).
Pfeiffer and her husband, television writer and producer David E. Kelley, are real estate bulls. In December, they sold a $22 million estate in Woodside (the northern end of Silicon Valley); in January, they sold a $9.1 million Palisades home to the owner of the Houston Astros; in February, they purchased a $22.5 million, six-bedroom, 10,300-square-foot home on the aforementioned Palisades street alongside the Riviera Club.
There’s not much of that home to see from the street, other than shrouded chain-link fences and trash bins. But take a walk around the neighborhood and, judging by the crowded food truck, it’s evident that social distancing is not being enforced.
And that raises two questions.
First, although city government says it intends to enforce COVID-19 safety rules at construction sites, does it have the resources to do so, much less the temerity to nanny-government its way into Pacific Palisades and complicate a celebrity’s construction plans?
The other question: is such residential upgrading really all that “essential,” or is it just another symptom of a different virus that afflicts Los Angeles: gentrification?
It’s not so much an issue in Pacific Palisades, where a quaint 1940s home giving way to an unaesthetic megamansion is a symbol of status and wealth in an already privileged community. But in other corners of greater Los Angeles—Arlington Heights, Highland Park, Playa Vista, Venice—it’s a tale of buying houses in the lower six-figures, doubling the price after renovation, and in doing so changing neighborhoods’ residential and commercial makeup (mom-and-pop stores supplanted by more upscale operations).
Call it “business as usual” in Los Angeles—even if what passes for “essential” construction seems contrived.
