Every pair of shoes Tom Gazsi wore until he reached high school, his parents bought at Dick Marowitz’s Newport Children’s Bootery at Fashion Island—“Adidas, saddle shoes, dress shoes, everything!”
“He had this little tiny carousel with four horses in his store—a pedal carousel—and we’d go around and around as fast as we could until he would yell, ‘Slow down!’ That was a lot of fun,” reminisced Gazsi, now chief of police at the Port of Los Angeles.
The two reunited at a recent event at the Fig & Olive restaurant, part of a yearlong celebration of the shopping center’s 50th anniversary that will peak on Sept. 9—Customer Appreciation Day—when “at every corner, there will be some type of entertainment or food,” said Easther Liu, chief marketing officer for retail properties at Irvine Co., the center’s owner.
The festivities also include 50 days of discounts and in-store events offered by the center’s merchants that kicked off on July 29 and will run through Sept. 16. Among perks are a drawing for a Prada bag by Neiman Marcus, signature drinks by the center’s eateries, and collaborations with designers on exclusive, Fashion Island-inspired products.
“We wanted to thank everyone who helped us get to where we are today,” Liu said.
Growth
Marowitz, who was among the inaugural merchants at the shopping center, also reconnected with Al Trevino—prior to joining Irvine Co. he worked with architect Victor Gruen, the designer of the first mall in the U.S.
“When Al came on board as a planner, the intention was that Fashion Island would become an enclosed shopping center—that’s the way you did it,” mall Vice President and General Manager Tanya Thomas said while introducing Trevino to other guests. “Al said, ‘Absolutely not—we’ve got this piece of land on a hill overlooking the ocean, on the coast of Newport Beach and you want to do what?’”
About 250,000 people called the area home when Fashion Island opened as Newport Town Center in 1967, according to Trevino, and for today’s population count, “you just add a zero. You had to dream a lot and believe that Orange County was going to grow.”
The shopping center also grew—it opened with Buffums, Broadway-Hale Stores Inc., JCPenney and J.W. Robinson Co. department stores as anchors and about 54 specialty shops and restaurants. Its 2016 taxable sales added up to $765 million generated by about 16 million visitors to its 184 stores and restaurants. Notables include GARYS, Bonobos, Vince, Joie, Trina Turk, AG, Rodd & Gunn, Urban Decay and Robert Talbott.
Fashion Island, No. 2 on last year’s Business Journal list of OC’s largest shopping centers, follows South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, which reported $1.7 billion in taxable sales. The nearby shopping center also marked its 50th anniversary this year, albeit in a different fashion—the yearlong festivities there kicked off with a world premiere of American Ballet Theatre’s “Whipped Cream” at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Both also reflected on their roots—Fashion Island with an “Aerial Photography Retrospective” at its Atrium Court, while South Coast Plaza tenant Assouline Publishing—which specializes in $200 coffee table photography books—will soon unveil a “collectible retrospective” featuring “never-before-seen photographs that illustrate the evolution of South Coast Plaza.” The center also recently hosted a photo exhibit, “Segerstrom Pioneering Spirit: An American Dream,” at its Jewel Court.
Reflections
Trevino has mixed feelings about Fashion Island’s $100 million renovation, which in 2010 transformed the center’s outdoor spaces, along with other upgrades.
“They took the large plaza out … you can’t have any events anymore,” he said as Bill Watt, founder and president of Baywood Development Group, the principal builder of Fashion Island, countered with, “It’s way more interesting and fun now.”
Marowitz, who was president of Fashion Island’s merchants association before handing over the Newport Children’s Bootery reins to his son, Steve, in the 1990s, said the center’s “lovely.”
“Donald Bren has done a great job.”
Other dignitaries at the anniversary event included actress Leslie Mann, a Newport Beach native who’s featured in the current issue of Los Angeles Confidential; the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Spencer Beck; Newport Beach Mayor Kevin Muldoon; Irvine Co. President of Retail Properties Dave Moore; and John Braeger, whose father, Dick Braeger, partnered with Gary Wasserman to open GARYS—one of the center’s inaugural tenants.
