Plenty of new seasons for Fashion Island
Shawbong Fok
Since opening in 1967, Fashion Island, the Newport Beach shopping
center with views of the glittering Pacific, has undergone change in
its infrastructure, reflecting the need to adapt to a dynamic
business climate.
The rationale behind such change was to remain competitive in the
Los Angeles metropolitan area, one of the world’s great shopping
destinations akin to London, Paris, New York and Tokyo.
Fashion Island, faced with stiff competition, has transformed from
a conventional, relatively homogenous mall in 1967 to become a vibrant shopping mecca. It has specialty stores such as Via Spiga and
NIKEGoddess and luxury department stores like Bloomingdale’s and
Neiman Marcus found no where else in Orange County.
It has become a mall serving a diverse clientele, with its
children-themed stores like This Little Piggy Wears Cotton, amid
luxury stores like Hugo Boss at Gary’s. It has also become the core
of an urban-village complex known as Newport Center, ringed with
high-rises home to 800 firms and with 418 surrounding palm trees.
As a result of the change, Fashion Island provides an eclectic
shopping environment and the entertainment machine of Newport Center.
Today, Fashion Island has digital sound movie theaters, gurgling
fountains, lushly landscaped paseos, intricate Spanish-inspired tile
work and a food court, all added in 1989 during a $100 million-plus spending blitz that attempted to boost profit during a time of
lagging sales. It provides a Mediterranean lunchtime retreat for
workers in the surrounding offices and an outdoor, theme park-like
place for families on the weekends.
“We get a lot of families on the weekends and mostly office
workers with a suit and tie during lunchtime on the weekdays,” said
Ryan Hunter, a host at the California Pizza Kitchen in Fashion
Island.
Fashion Island isa central organ to Newport Center’s function as
an edge city, according to author Joel Garreau. He describes the Los
Angeles metropolis as multinucleated, with each nucleus having
clusters of retail, entertainment, commercial and residential
activity amid low-density residential spaces. Newport Center didn’t
become that nucleus until Fashion Island became an entertainment
haven starting in the late 1980s.
Much of the nuclei are on the fringes of the Los Angeles urban
galaxy far from its downtown core -- hence the term edge city.
Newport Center, more than 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles, is one
of them, along with Irvine Spectrum and South Coast Plaza.
Although Newport Center had its towering offices and its mall
throughout the 1970s and 1980s -- all in proximity to residential
areas -- the community activities and movie theaters that form the
family-oriented part of Fashion Island today were absent.
Fashion Island added those in the late 1980s to win clients and
catch up with South Coast Plaza, the jewel of shopping centers in
Orange County.
“Newport Center is self-functioning. It is utopia. Fashion Island
is a manufactured paradise with all the palm trees, specialty stores,
fountains, and movie theaters. Things are close together so that you
don’t have to drive. It is a dream,” said Ashley Nemeth, who has
lived in Newport Beach for 20 years.
The edge city concept certainly works for some people.
“I come to Fashion Island to eat and shop because it is close to
my work,” said Jeff Collins, who works at Pacific Life, one of the
800 firms encircling Fashion Island. “That is the main reason why I
come here.”
The mall is family oriented, said Beatrice Marshal, a Corona
resident and a longtime fan of Fashion Island.
“You see a lot of kids’ places here like the carousel. There is a
kid’s haircut place. It makes you feel young.”
Fashion Island in Newport Beach, where the median family income is
$111,166, has several exclusive, high-end stores that have
traditionally been a part of the mall since 1978, when Neiman Marcus
moved in, making it the Rodeo Drive of the South.
Teuscher is one such store, based in Switzerland and serving
chocolate. Its truffles, jet-flown from Switzerland every week,
typically cost $1.71 apiece.
“Our customers are rich and high-class,” said Jamie Johnson, a
sales associate.
Yet Fashion Island retains its family atmosphere in spite of the
upscale shops. There are community events such as the Summer Concert
Series, the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony and the Menorah Lighting
Ceremony, said Nina B. Robinson, vice president of marketing at the
Irvine Company, retail properties division.
By the late 1990s, Fashion Island became the second-highest
grossing mall in Orange County, with 14-million visitors annually. “I
come to the mall because of specialty stores,” Anaheim resident Tanya
Briley said. “There are stores you can’t find anywhere else.”
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