Segerstrom Announcement : Eastern Retailers Coming to South Coast Plaza Mall

A quartet of tony Eastern Seaboard retailers will set up shop in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza mall in late October, a move by developer Henry Segerstrom to bolster his dream of making the huge center the focal point of a “downtown” for Orange County.

It will be the first Southern California venture for each of the retailers, who will be joined in the 685,000-square-foot mall expansion now under construction by South Coast Plaza’s second Ralph Lauren/Polo store. New York-based Lauren already has a large shop in the existing center.

Collectively, the four will occupy about 23,400 square feet, or less than 4% of the total square footage in the new addition. It was not immediately clear how much space the new Ralph Lauren store would lease.

Segerstrom, head of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, announced the new stores at a press conference at the Helmsley Palace hotel here Wednesday.

The new stores, he said, will be Scribner Book Store, the New York bookstore’s second branch outside of Manhattan; the Coach Store, a scaled-down leather goods and accessories boutique owned by Coach Leatherware of New York; Alcott & Andrews, an apparel store for businesswomen, and Talbot’s, a Massachusetts-based women’s classic apparel chain.

Segerstrom, who in the past aggressively courted European designer boutiques for the mall, said he has turned to the East Coast for new tenants because he believes that “traditional American clothing is destined to have a great resurgence.”

Representatives from all the new stores said they view Orange County as one of the country’s top areas for retail sales.

Times staff writer Michael Feibus in Orange County contributed to this article.