The Men of La Mancha : Sam Bachner and Marvin Levine Build Mini-Malls for Your Convenience. They Don’t Understand Why You Think Their Creations Are So Ugly.

The pod-mall kings had been out quite late. So before leaving their respective homes for work this morn ing, they had forgotten to call each other for a consultation on the day’s attire. Now they are slightly embarrassed. They have arrived at their Brentwood office in nearly identical outfits. It happens when they don’t check first.

Sam Bachner, the 51-year-old president of La Mancha Development Co., and Marvin Levine, the 51-year-old executive vice president, are both wearing light-blue dress shirts. They are both wearing solid red ties. Both are wearing Italian white loafers, the same brand and style. Both have set aside dark, double-breasted blazers for the day’s formal moments.

Neither is wearing socks.

“We look like we’re wearing uniforms. We’re in costume,” Bachner says, abashed. Levine stares at his friend and partner. “You wore gray pants,” he says in a mock-accusatory voice. Levine’s slacks are white linen.

Sam Bachner and Marvin Levine have the same taste in clothes, and in nearly everything else. They like the same movies. They both like exotic locales; they took their wives to Shanghai together and plan to visit Tahiti. They both like deli breakfasts and eat them regularly with the same circle of longtime pals.

Do they always agree? “Yes,” says Bachner. “Ninety percent,” Levine says. “The other 10% Sam talks me into.”

Perhaps all this reinforcement is the reason for their genuine surprise at the increasingly vocal and angry reaction to the projects of which they are so proud: pod malls--also known as mini-malls or convenience centers, the term preferred by Bachner and Levine. These are the ubiquitous stucco buildings, rectangular or L-shaped, that house five to 15 shops on a small corner lot, with parking spaces out front so shoppers can wheel in quickly from the street and dash in and out.

As more and more of them spring up--about 5,000 pod malls have been constructed in California--almost every new center is greeted by protests from the neighbors and derision from the architectural establishment. Although the malls have already transformed the Southern California landscape, Los Angeles has passed an ordinance requiring outdoor lighting, exterior foliage and more parking than the city’s usual standard. Culver City has enacted a similar measure.

The men of La Mancha have heard all the usual complaints about convenience centers: They cause traffic congestion. They don’t have enough parking. They all have a frozen yogurt store and a video store and a 7-Eleven and, really, how many of those do we need? Most of all, though, the pod malls are ugly. Ugly .

Bachner and Levine get defensive in the face of such criticism. They concede that they are making a fortune from pod malls but they say the centers also have a social value. They say their creations provide easy access to shopping for two-worker families with limited time. And they say their developments give breaks to immigrants who can’t get spaces to rent in large suburban malls without a track record in retailing. Many of the small stores opened by Asians and Latinos have blossomed into pod-mall chains.

“We’re a little bit of Americana, if you ask me,” Bachner says. “We’re a little bit of opportunity.”

They are particularly galled by the charge that pod malls are eyesores. Bachner and Levine would rather describe the buildings as utilitarian. They say they work hard to make their developments attractive.

Attractive, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s difficult to doubt their sincerity while watching Bachner gaze fondly at a streamlined, two-story pod mall. Built of white tile and blue stucco about 18 months ago, the center stands at Ventura Boulevard and Stern Avenue in Sherman Oaks. “You should see it at night,” Bachner says. “It’s beautiful all lit up.”

It was Bachner, Levine and their late partner, Alan Riseman, who first started building the pod malls in great quantities more than a decade ago, usually on corners where neighborhood gas stations had been abandoned--victims of the ‘70s energy crunch--or where free-standing grocery stores had closed--victims of rising rents in dense urban communities.

Rivals, impressed by the low cost and high return on investment, have started their own pod-mall fiefdoms. But La Mancha, with 333 centers constructed and 64 under way, is the biggest in the state and, the partners claim, in the nation.

The firm has built centers in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Arizona, but in recent years, it has focused exclusively on its home base, California--especially on Southern California, where it has built about 300.

In one of the company’s annual reports, a map of the Los Angeles Basin, studded with blue dots marking the firm’s pod-mall locations, is grandly titled “Land of La Mancha.” The company may be on its way to following Kleenex, Jell-O and Xerox into the ranks of the generic, at least in this part of the country. The partners say they have overheard people referring to any old convenience center as “one of those La Mancha malls.”

“We take the rap for convenience centers,” says Bachner, “but we take the glory, too.”

None of this happened by accident. Bachner and Levine are almost always kidding around, but they’re almost always working also. They are compulsive gatherers of information--especially information that will help them decide where to put a pod mall and what type of tenants to court to make the center successful.

They have a dozen copies of the Thomas Bros. map book, each filled with colored dots representing one chain of stores or another. Every Trak Auto is a light brown dot, every Winchell’s a yellow dot, every Chief Auto Parts a green dot. The result: La Mancha knows where each chain needs another link.

The map books represent years of work. They are kept locked away. “God forbid one of our competitors should get a look,” Bachner says.

The partners have counted the number of sushi bars on Wilshire Boulevard west of Westwood (42). Bachner claims to be able to describe all four corners of any signalized intersection in Los Angeles County. (Try Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards, it is suggested. Bachner answers, accurately. How about Atlantic Avenue and 2nd Street in Long Beach--a trick question. He hesitates. Then, “There’s no signal there!” he shouts in triumph. In fact, the two streets do not even cross.)

“Last night,” Levine is explaining, “we went to see a movie with our wives. Afterward, we said, we’re going for coffee. They said, why are you heading for downtown Los Angeles? We were at the Plitt Theatre in Century City. We said, there’s a great place down there. We knew there wasn’t.”

Their real purpose was to sneak a look at a competitor’s new center, a move not likely to be popular with the women, who think their spouses are mall-obsessed.

“When we got to the center, it hadn’t opened,” Levine says.

“Were they cranky,” he says of the wives. He is smiling.

“Of course,” he adds, “I said it was all Sam’s idea.”

THE ORIGINAL PARTNERS WERE MARVIN LEvine and Alan Riseman. They met while they were in high school, Marvin at Hamilton and Alan at Los Angeles. Both were climbing over the fence at Hollywood Park, sneaking into the races because neither had enough money for admission. Their common predicament cemented a friendship that would last for more than 30 years.

Levine went on to UCLA, Riseman to USC. Hanging out at the library, Levine met Bachner, another UCLA student. All three graduated in 1958.

Levine and Riseman started building homes and apartments. They called their company Tower Construction because, Levine says, “it sounded big.”

Those were boom times in Southern California, and the two of them got rich. But the Tower tycoons spent a lot of money. Then they made more. Then they spent a lot of money again.

One day in 1972, the partners were driving through the San Fernando Valley on their way to one of their construction sites. They noticed a run-down, closed-up Atlantic Richfield gas station at Woodman Avenue and Osborne Street in Panorama City.

At dinner, they had the same idea: There’s got to be a need for something on that corner. They came up with a plan for five stores, a cluster of specialists that neighbors could visit without spending hours at a large mall or driving from one street to another.

They made a bid, went into escrow, and drew up a set of plans in 90 days. Within a year, stores were open and occupied.

“We said, ‘My God, this is better than building apartments and houses,’ ” Levine says. He doesn’t claim credit for being first with the concept; no one is quite sure who was. “We didn’t invent the light bulb,” he says. “What we did do was decide we should build lots of them.”

They would put Tower Construction behind them. They would form a new company to specialize in these mini-malls. It was Riseman who came up with the name, from the Broadway musical “Man of La Mancha,” based on the Cervantes hero, Don Quixote--the deluded knight who tilted at windmills in the belief that they were giants.

That was hardly the image the partners thought they’d appropriated, though. Riseman and Levine had been drawn instead by the play’s famous song, “The Impossible Dream (The Quest).” The impossible dream, for them, was to make another fortune and keep it. Because of the song’s lyrics, Levine says, “We thought la mancha was Spanish for ‘impossible dream.’

“Later,” he says, “we found out it’s Spanish for ‘the spot.’ ”

No matter. The name still seemed to work its charm. La Mancha was building 10 convenience centers a year, and all of them were successful. The partners kept some of them; others were sold to finance still more projects. Today, La Mancha owns about 70 mini-malls.

In 1976, Riseman and Levine invited their old friend, Sam Bachner, who had spent 20 years marketing dairy products, to join them.

“I didn’t want to come in and disrupt the relationship,” Bachner says. “But I was able to bring to two entrepreneurs some organization and marketing. We became a real machine.”

The machine was soon running at high speed.

At the same time, political unrest abroad began to push waves of immigrants--from Vietnam and Cambodia, from Korea and the Philippines--to Southern California. “They were doctors, lawyers--very educated, willing to work hard,” Levine says.

“They couldn’t practice their professions, so they wanted to open stores. The big malls wanted chain tenants. They asked, ‘How many stores do you have?’ They didn’t see that these people would die before they would fail.”

La Mancha’s partners didn’t see it either, at first. But Levine’s father, Jack, who came to this country from Russia, told his son: “Give these people a chance. I was an immigrant, too, and I know how they feel.”

So the partners began to listen to the immigrants. They realized that the newcomers knew better than anyone else what type of merchandise would be most popular at mini-malls in ethnic neighborhoods.

“They want what they had in the old country,” Bachner says. “How does a little Jewish man be a herbologist? Little Jewish men don’t know from herbs. Herbs is Herbie, the guy I’m looking for from the Burger King commercial. These Orientals, they know from herbs.”

They also learned that immigrant is not always synonymous with poor .

“What did my mother used to call it? Case money. In case. It was pressed in a book nobody read,” Bachner says. “These people come here, and they all have the case money of a lifetime. Four baubles passed down through the family worth $400,000 that the guy smuggled out.”

“Bullion gold,” Levine interjects.

“I’ve had guys come to me with money, thousands of dollars, strapped to their bodies under their clothes,” Bachner says.

Some of the immigrants were told to spend time working at someone else’s retail operation before trying to go out on their own.

Others were granted the right to rent space. La Mancha even sought out immigrants, persuading owners of a Japanese market in Gardena to try opening mini-mall restaurants. “They gave us demographic data and other information that we needed,” says Ryuji Ishii, vice president of the company that resulted: New Meiji Franchise Corp.

In the past five years, New Meiji has opened 30 sushi and Oriental-food takeout stores, all in convenience centers. Other pod-mall chains formed with La Mancha’s help include Bif Korea contemporary furniture (21 showrooms since 1981) and Beef Bowl Oriental fast food (19 stores since 1979).

Of course, when tenants were successful, La Mancha benefited, too. Less time was needed for scouting replacements for the failures. When the chains added franchises, that created more demand for pod malls. And, says Takeshi Kojima, president of the company that owns Beef Bowl, “the La Mancha people tend to charge higher rent. They are taking a higher risk, and they want a higher return.”

Now, Kojima says, “we are getting attention from the big malls. But we stay with the mini-malls. There, we are considered a key tenant.”

These days, once again, the men of La Mancha are two. Last November, Riseman died during heart bypass sur gery. He was 51.

Riseman may have been the wackiest personality of the three. It was Riseman who hired a hay wagon and horses for a ride down Beverly Drive and onto Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. His guests sipped champagne while tuxedoed fiddlers played country tunes. Police stopped the wagon; Riseman persuaded them to escort the party to Rancho Park.

It was Riseman who told his two buddies that he would costume himself as the Sugar Plum Fairy for Halloween. He telephoned as Bachner and Levine were preparing for a business conference. “You gotta cancel the meeting,” Riseman said. “I’m having a terrible time with my wings.”

The other two miss him.

In their latest annual report, they dedicate the firm’s future to their friend--at a time when the business is getting tougher.

No longer do oil companies telephone La Mancha to announce that they’ve got another gas-station plot to sell; no longer do entrepreneurs locate only in La Mancha malls. There are too many other convenience-center builders around.

But Bachner and Levine say they enjoy having legions of imitators.

“If you make a nice dress, someone’s going to copy it,” Bachner says. “If you make a nice Toyota, the Americans will copy it. Flattery . . .”

”. . . is the mother of invention,” Levine chimes in.

“Competition is healthy,” Levine says. “It forces us to keep on top.”

They aren’t nearly so quick to dismiss the attacks on pod malls in general--and their pod malls specifically--from civic groups and city officials. Mention any one of the common complaints and Bachner immediately starts a loud, lengthy rebuttal--voice, eyebrows and shoulders all rising and falling. Levine sits back, murmuring his assent.

Take traffic, for example. “They’re trying to put the blame on an element that doesn’t exist,” Bachner says. “Isn’t traffic bad on Wilshire between Doheny and Barrington? Isn’t it? No mini-malls. It’s impossible to shift and put that blame on the developer.”

The amount of parking: “We don’t deviate, we don’t get variances, we’re in conformity with the zoning laws,” Bachner says.

The proliferation of certain types of stores: “Would you like to drive a mile to pick up your video?” Bachner says. “It takes time; it takes trouble. With the resurgence of the city, the dense urban areas, and the two people working in a family, there are enough customers to go around.”

And the architecture: The pod malls’ stark appearance has inspired the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects to sponsor a design competition for more attractive centers. And civic groups cite the pod-mall look as a major problem.

Doug Uhler, president of the Pacific Palisades Civic League, speaks of the “very cheap-looking paste-on brick, rather than real brick” that La Mancha hopes to use on a pod mall at Sunset Boulevard and Marquez Drive. Restrictions on the lot require approval from the homeowners’ group, and La Mancha is negotiating with the league.

Bachner sees little reason for fuss. “We’re putting up a beautiful building, brick veneer,” he says. “It’s going to be as nice as any house in the Palisades.”

The civic league’s complaints set him off: “They say our centers don’t fit in with the neighborhood. But when we build in an Oriental neighborhood,we build in an Oriental motif. When we build in an office-building area, it’s high-tech. When we build in a suburban area, it’s Spanish.

“Let’s look at it practically. Each architect wants to build a monument to himself. The marketplace doesn’t call for a statement. It calls for practical.

“It’s a mobile society. When was the last time you saw stores without big windows? Some guy in a neighborhood says the front windows should be little panes of glass. You could find the store with a treasure map, but you couldn’t see where it is from your car.

“Why do we put a concrete driveway there? You can sweep it, one-two-three. You have landscaping; you gotta have a little man with a little stick, with a prong” to pick up litter. “We provide receptacles. Do they get used?” He shrugs.

“You put the parking in the back, someone can walk right in the back, rob you and walk out. (“More rapes, burglaries,” Levine is saying in the background.)

“All of our points are common sense and practical. Where does it stop?”

Bachner leans forward across a wide expanse of desk. “If they’re the first ones who protested beer and wine, they’re the first to buy beer and wine when (the liquor store) opens. If they protested the video store, they’re the first to buy a tape. It’s simple. If they don’t want convenience centers, they shouldn’t shop at them. We’d sure stop building them then.”

IN THE RECEPTION AREA OFLA MANCHAheadquarters (in a three-story office building, not a convenience center), a print of Picasso’s “Don Quixote” hangs across the hall from a framed watercolor of a pod mall.

Bachner’s office holds four Don Quixote sculptures and one of Sancho Panza. Levine’s adjoining office houses three figures of Don Quixote. Both men often wear matching golden rectangles, with a Don Quixote bas-relief, on chains around their necks.

They don’t get around to the centers as often as they used to. Leasing agents, part of their staff of 74, make the regular visits now.

So Bachner doesn’t expect to be recognized when he wheels his Jaguar into the garage of a high-rise building next to a 2-year-old La Mancha mall in West Los Angeles. He is happy to pay 75 cents to park; the free lot at the center, he notes with satisfaction, is jammed.

This is the “food court,” La Mancha’s first center rented only to fast-food outlets. Workers from surrounding offices can walk over for lunch; commuters on the way to home, job or gym can drive in for a quick snack.

Bachner rushes up to a customer who is licking a cone behind the wheel of her parked car. “Isn’t that the best yogurt you ever had in your life?” he asks and beams when she nods.

He falls into step beside a woman walking out of the corner store. “Aren’t those Mrs. Fields cookies good?” he asks.

The thought of cookies is so tempting, in fact, that he and Levine decide to buy some. They make their selections, then head for a sidewalk bench.

“It’s come to this,” Bachner says to his friend. “Two old men on a bench.”

They grin at each other. Each man takes another bite of cookie. They have both chosen oatmeal-raisin.