"Too Successful for Its Own Good"

"'They did not anticipate, and did not plan for the promenade to become the kind of economic juggernaut that it became by the late '90s,' Loomis says. 'What happened by the late '90s, early 2000s is that the promenade became so successful that the real estate prices just went skyrocketing, and at that point only national retailers could afford the rent that property owners were expecting. So, you end up losing a lot of the kind of local shops that gave the street a kind of local flavor.'"

In a 2020 Curbed Los Angeles article, Hadley Meares provides an overview of the recent history of Santa Monica's Third Street.