Postscript : ‘Rather Be Shopping’ Fans Pack Newest Mall

One year after its much-heralded opening, merchants and city officials are buzzing over skyrocketing profits at Escondido’s picturesque North County Fair shopping mall, which, they say, has met the pent-up shopping needs of regional consumers who previously had to leave the area for serious shopping.

Despite being without two of its six major stores for most of the year, about $170 million passed through the cash registers of North County Fair’s 176 stores, far surpassing initial estimates of $130 million in first-year sales.

The mall, whose construction had to be approved by Escondido voters because it was built on what was once a regional park, will celebrate its first anniversary Friday.

At Miller’s Outpost, manager Jim Solo recalled that when his store first opened, he and his staff were hard-pressed to keep enough merchandise on the shelves for shopping-mad customers.

“This year has been beyond belief,” Solo said. “When we opened the store, we just took off and blew our budget away. . . . Our sales goal is 90% over what the company expected. It’s been phenomenal.”

Broadway department store manager Tom Beale said the store had one of the most successful first years of any in the Broadway chain.

Sales tax records are not yet available, but city officials estimate that the mall, off Interstate 15 at Bear Valley Parkway, may bring in as much as $2.5 million in first-year revenues to Escondido. In addition, it has created 3,200 jobs.

Escondido Assistant City Manager Rod Wood noted that North County Fair has attracted people to Escondido who never before had reason to visit the city--and they are bringing their wallets with them.

“If you want to hold on to sales activities in your area, you have to have a mall (like North County Fair). . . . The convenience and selection will bring people to the mall,” he said.

Mall manager Frank Daly said more than 112,000 people visited the mall on the Saturday before Christmas, surpassing the opening-day throng of about 100,000. And the Christmas crowd was more serious about shopping.

Daly and others agree that the reason for the boom in patronage is inland North County’s long-standing need for the quality and convenience of a major shopping mall.

“We filled a void in this area because before people had to travel somewhere else to buy what they needed,” Daly said.

Large Market Area

Beale said research has shown that customers at the Broadway have been coming from more than 20 miles away, suggesting that the mall had a greater market area than initially expected.

Though shoppers have been coming from far and wide to North County Fair, representatives from other major centers in the county have not been fretting outwardly about the new mall’s ability to draw customers.

At the smaller Escondido Village Mall, officials say North County Fair has hurt some stores but not others.

Among those hurt have been jewelry stores that now go head-to-head with eight jewelry stores at North County Fair, said Sandra Holley, marketing director of Escondido Village Mall.

However, the 23-year-old mall is not in a position to compete with the much larger North County Fair, Holley said.

“We’re not trying to be a regional shopping center,” said Holley, who added that Escondido Village Mall’s emphasis is on small specialty stores.

Rob O’Sullivan, operations manager for Fashion Valley Shopping Center, said business dropped last year because of North County Fair but not as much as was expected.

“We were expecting an 8% decrease, but actual sales only went down 6%,” O’Sullivan said.

O’Sullivan said profits at Fashion Valley were up last month and merchants expect to do better this year than last year.

Business at Plaza Camino Real in Carlsbad stayed level last year despite the presence of North County Fair, said Rosemarie Bell, president of the Plaza Camino Real merchants association.

“The mall showed slight increases last year. . . . This area is growing so rapidly that there are enough customers to go around,” Bell said.

North County Fair was developed by Ernest W. Hahn Inc., which developed downtown San Diego’s Horton Plaza.

North County Fair is one of only 17 shopping malls in the United States to feature six major department stores, officials note. They are Nordstrom’s, The Broadway, Sears, J.C. Penney, Robinson’s and May Co.

Though traffic around the mall has been a problem at times, Wood said it has not been as bad as expected.

“During peak hours we still get bottleneck traffic on Bear Valley Parkway near Highway 78,” Wood said, adding that a traffic light is scheduled to be placed at the intersection this summer to help ease traffic congestion.

But despite occasional problems, the future for the mall looks very bright, Daly said.

“We were expecting to be 100% leased by 1990. . . . We’re 100% leased now and expect to be 100% occupied by June,” he said.

He and other mall executives noted that some merchants have left the mall. “We may lose a few tenants, but we have merchants waiting in line to get into the shopping center,” Daly said.