Fashion Island prepares for gourmet chain

Dean & DeLuca, a New York-based gourmet food chain, announced plans Tuesday to open a store at Fashion Island in 2009.

The chain, which was founded in 1977 and operates 15 retail stores and cafes nationwide, offers prepared foods, produce, cheese, wine, coffee and more.

Irvine Co. spokesman Bill Rams said the store would reside at Fashion Island in a new 85,000-square-foot building to be constructed next year near Atrium Court.

The store would be Dean & DeLuca’s first location in Southern California and would serve as a “flagship store” — one featuring every service the chain has to offer — for the West Coast.

The chain’s only other California store is in Napa Valley.

“It kind of emphasizes a point about Fashion Island’s place in the universe as far as food, fashion, luxury and great dining,” said Keith Eyrich, the Irvine Co.’s president of retail properties. “Dean & DeLuca is just about as big a name as you can get in those areas.”

Eyrich said the new building would house other tenants as well, but the Irvine Co. had not settled on them yet.

Fashion Island, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this month, is seeking to expand in the coming years.

The mall recently embarked on a construction project that will add new parking and an Italian piazza-style shopping area.

Ellen Hunt, the executive director of the Rudd Group, which owns Dean & DeLuca, said the company settled on Fashion Island after a long search.

“We’ve looked at quite a few properties in Southern California and the Fashion Island extension they’re doing right now allows us to take an anchor position in a very established location,” she said.

“It was one of those wonderful opportunities where you have a proven shopping center, and we get to take a prominent position in it. It was really the best of all possible worlds.”