Fashion Island reaches 40-year mark despite rival competition, sales drop in the ‘80s, and changing times.

Forty years ago today, Fashion Island opened its doors.

The shopping center, now an integral part of Newport Beach, was a gamble at the time. Its makers sought to create a groundbreaking mall for a community that was still breaking ground.

Newport Center, the area that extends from Pacific Coast Highway through the middle of the city, barely existed in any developed form.

A popular quip over the years was that half the mall’s prospective shoppers were fish.

“It still marvels me to sit here and look out this window,” said Ray Watson, the Irvine Co.’s former planner and the guiding hand behind Fashion Island, gazing from a top-floor office at the center he helped build.

“Every tree you see here was planted by us.”

Things haven’t always gone smoothly for Newport Beach’s prime retail spot. Fashion Island, which opened the same year as nearby rival South Coast Plaza, has struggled at times to lure customers and to keep pace with changing demographics.

Two decades ago, some in the retail community wrote the mall off as a failed experiment.

The Irvine Co. stuck with its creation, however. As it approaches the half-century mark, Fashion Island is bigger, more diverse and better attended than ever — and like so much of Newport-Mesa, it’s ever-changing.

PLOT POTENTIAL

In the mid-1960s, Newport Beach hardly resembled the wide-ranging city it is today. San Joaquin Hills and Newport Coast had yet to be annexed. The stretch of land now occupied by Fashion Island boasted little beyond hills, crops and grazing cattle.

“I remember when it was just a mound of dirt,” said Steve Marowitz, the owner of the Newport Children’s Bootery, one of four original shops still at the mall.

“We used to ride our bikes on that hill and tear up big sheets of cardboard to ride down the hillside.”

The Irvine Co. saw potential in that plot, and in 1960 hired Watson, who worked for an architectural firm in Northern California, to oversee its planning. For the next few years, the company worked with the city to get approval for a shopping center that it insisted would change the face of the region.

The mall broke ground Aug. 20, 1965.

Fashion Island’s first batch of tenants included popular anchor stores such as J.C. Penney and the Broadway, but to appeal to an upscale crowd, the Irvine Co. also put an emphasis on clothing, beauty products and other soft goods. The mall had its inaugural gala Sept. 9, 1967, then opened for regular business two days later.

The name itself was Watson’s idea, inspired by the Fashion Square mall — later Main Place — in Santa Ana.

“We couldn’t come up with a better name,” he said. “I didn’t want to say Fashion Square Two, and it is an island — right in the middle of Newport Center.”

TURNING POINTS

The media in 1967 covered Fashion Island’s opening as a breakthrough for the region, but fewer than two decades later, some wondered if it was a flash in the pan.

In the early 1980s, the mall’s sales had slipped, and the owners sought more upscale merchants to help attract a wealthy clientele. It wasn’t until 1985, when the Irvine Co. embarked on a sweeping renovation known as the “Renaissance,” that Fashion Island began to turn around.

The Renaissance brought in Atrium Court, a three-story indoor shopping structure, as well as new landscaping, the Island Terrace food court and a seven-screen movie theater. The renovation, completed in 1989, cost more than $100 million, but escalating business quickly made up for it. Three years later, with the country mired in a recession, the mall did another about-face, bringing in discount retailers such as Bookstar and Circuit City to lure a less-affluent crowd, expanding their clientele even more.

MOVING FORWARD

Shopping, though, is only part of Fashion Island’s enterprise.

When Watson conceived the center half a century ago, he sought to make it a cultural hub where people lingered as well as shopped. The mall’s popular summer concert series, which has brought in major performers over the years, opened in 1967. In subsequent years, Fashion Island became famous for its annual holiday tree, which towers at more than 100 feet and has often been billed as the tallest in America.

With the mall entering its fifth decade today, the Irvine Co. has its eyes on expansion more than celebration. A new construction project, featuring a three-level parking structure and an Italian-style shopping piazza, is underway and expected to wrap next year.

According to Keith Eyrich, the Irvine Co.’s president of retail properties, Fashion Island will continue to move forward as it nears 50.

“Our work is not done,” he said. “There’s no part of the real estate business that’s more dynamic than retail. And you can never stop looking.”

THE FACTS ON FASHION ISLAND

Year opened: 1967

Owner: Irvine Co.

Original cost: $20 million

Total retail area: 909,000 square fee

Total current retail area: 1.3 million square feet

Number of original stores still in existence: 4

Number of stores with only one Orange County location: 30

Number of stores with only one Southern California location: 11

Number of stores with only one United States location: 11

Estimated number of visitors each year: More than 13 million