"The chains aren't interested yet," said Warren Cooley, project director of the Historic Downtown Retail Project, a city-funded endeavor to attract businesses downtown. "There's not enough population and critical mass. There are still challenges. The homeless issue on the street is a concern when real estate investigators from big chains look. That's sometimes something that concerns them." Rick Caruso, the developer behind the Grove and several other highly successful shopping centers in Southern California, said he is taking a wait-and-see approach to downtown. "We've looked at downtown a lot, and I have not been able to answer the primary question of who is my customer on evenings and weekends," he said.