Brea Will Give Competitors a Run for Shoppers’ Money : 12-Year-Old Mall to Be Renovated, Expanded

Brea Mall will give South Coast Plaza a run for shoppers’ money with a $125-million face lift that will add two major stores and make Brea one of Orange County’s biggest shopping centers.

The four-year plan announced Thursday will give Brea a bright new California mission look that could attract enough shoppers to increase its total sales from third to second in the county.

“Everybody who has money and wants to spend it isn’t living on the water in Newport Beach,” said Brea general manager Jim Charter in reference to the tony Newport Center Fashion Island, a perennial retail sales leader.

Charter and Martin Fell, an executive with Corporate Property Investors--owner of the Brea Mall--said that by 1992, the shopping center plans to add JW Robinson’s and move its Nordstrom store into a new 180,000-square-foot facility, almost double the store’s current size. Another major retailer--possibly Bullock’s--is also a prospect.

With six such tenants, Brea would have more big retail anchors than any mall in the county except C.J. Segerstrom & Sons’ sprawling South Coast Plaza, where eight major retailers have helped make the Costa Mesa center one of the nation’s highest sales-volume malls.

In plans unveiled in a splashy video presentation, Fell said the expansion and renovation of the 12-year-old Brea Mall should add about 500,000 square feet, bringing the total retail space to 1.4 million square feet.

Sales Increase Predicted

By 1990, “I think we could get sales up to $400 million,” Charter said.

Last year, Brea’s sales ranked third in the county at $178 million, a 4.1% jump from 1985. By comparison, South Coast Plaza, with 2.8 million square feet, recorded $489 million in sales for that year, an 18.4% increase over 1985.

With the recent expansions at South Coast Plaza, Fashion Island and Santa Ana / Main Place, Charter said Brea Mall officials thought they had to do something to keep shoppers in northern Orange County.

“We’re trying to make it much more attractive. . . . We want to serve our market without having our customers go down and see Henry,” said a spokesman for Brea Mall’s management company, in reference to Henry Segerstrom, managing partner of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons.

To start preparing for the face lift, Brea two weeks ago closed its money-losing ice-skating rink, part of which will become the site of Robinson’s, whose officials have signed a letter of intent, Charter said.

Work on the renovation should begin in the fall. The 95,000-square-foot space now occupied by Nordstrom will become a cluster of retail shops. Three new parking garages will add 4,000 spaces; there are 5,000 spaces now.

ORANGE COUNTY MALLS Top Ten in Gross Taxable Sales, Millions of Dollars

1986 1. South Coast Plaza $489 2. Westminster Mall 188 3. Brea Mall 178 4. Fashion Island 173 5. Laguna Hills Mall 130 6. Buena Park Mall 122 7. Mall of Orange 116 8. Mission Viejo Mall 112 9. Huntington Center 101 10. Anaheim Plaza 84

Source: State Board of Equalization.