Retail Sales Up 21% in 1985 at Fashion Island

Although still lagging far behind rival South Coast Plaza in annual sales, Newport Beach’s posh Fashion Island mall--energized by an expensive face-lift--posted a 21% increase in retail sales last year, outpacing other large shopping centers in the Southland.

Barbara Roppolo, manager of the 100-store center, attributed the sharp sales jump to $193 million from $160 million in 1984 to the interest generated by a $34-million construction program that was completed last November.

A new addition, called Atrium Court, offers 35 new stores and a branch of the Irvine Ranch Farmers Market with a casual dining area served by a large collection of international food counters.

However, some Atrium Court retailers say that while food sales may be booming, the more costly merchandise, such as high-fashion clothing, sells much slower. Merchants on the second and third floors of the three-story structure generally say that sales are below expectations.

“The truth is, no one comes up here,� said Yannick Lubiato, managing partner of Fiorucci, a fashionable men’s store. “Most people just come to the Atrium to eat.�

New Interest

Roppolo, however, said that the addition “created a lot of new interest and renewed a lot of interest among customers who hadn’t visited the center in a while.�

Excluding the sales from stores in the new Atrium Court, Fashion Island would have posted a 12% retail sales increase over the prior year, Roppolo said.

That figure is slightly less than the 12.5% increase posted by Costa Mesa’s huge South Coast Plaza, but about three percentage points higher than most of Fashion Island’s other competitors.

At the 132-store Mission Viejo Mall, general manager Richard Sundt said that sales revenue rose by 8.2% in 1985 to $46.7 million. His sales figures exclude the revenue from the mall’s major department stores which, Sundt said, are not required to report revenues to mall management.

Expansion Plans

Fashion Island’s 21% increase, Sundt said, is “amazing for a mall, any mall.� It “takes something new like total renovation or remodeling to make your sales jump like that.�

At South Coast Plaza, Southern California’s top-grossing mall, merchants in the sprawling, 200-store complex reported gross revenues of close to $450 million in 1985, up from $400 million in 1984, according to Maura Eggan, the center’s marketing director. For the first quarter of 1986, Eggan said, South Coast Plaza is showing a 15% increase over the same period last year.

South Coast Plaza currently is expanding, and Eggan said an independent researcher has estimated that by the end of 1987, when the expansion is completed and the new space leased, the shopping center will have sales “in the neighborhood of $735 million,� which would make it the largest single concentration of retailing in the state.

Fashion Island has plans before Newport Beach city officials, Roppolo said, to add 70 more stores to the mall by 1987.