Face-Lift Time : Mall of Orange to Announce Big Two-Year, $5-Million Overhaul

The Mall of Orange is going gray.

And black and rose and burgundy.

The 17-year-old shopping center plans next week to announce a two-year, $5-million overhaul, the Times has learned.

The renovation will do away with the mall’s dated and dowdy orange tile interior.

Instead, the center plans to re-do corridors with granite-gray tile highlighted by black marble. A domed atrium will be added to spruce-up the main entrance, flanked by two restaurants with outdoor seating under burgundy awnings.

The 830,000-square-foot mall is also considering the eventual addition--within two to five years--of a big-name, upscale department store at the north end of the mall, said Marc Birenbaum, a mall spokesman. “We have an option on an old school that’s behind us off Meat Street. We could expand that way or on the Broadway side” to the north, he said.

Mall of Orange now has the Broadway, J.C. Penney, Sears Roebuck & Co., a six-theater movie complex and almost 100 smaller retailers.

The renovation plans will make Mall of Orange the latest in a series of Orange County shopping centers that are sprucing up to attract more shoppers.

Two years ago, South Coast Plaza, Newport Center/Fashion Island and the Huntington Center all underwent multimillion-dollar expansions and remodeling. Brea Mall, Westminster Mall and MainPlace/Santa Ana announced or completed face-lifts last year. And La Habra Fashion Square, the poorest performing mall in Orange County, is being eyed by developers as the possible site of a high-volume, promotional center.

“You need to do something every 10 to 15 years at a minimum to keep up in the marketplace,” explained Jim Charter, general manager of Brea Mall. “It’s just a fact of life.”

For the Mall of Orange, it may be even more of a necessity. The shopping center is within shoppers’ easy reach of MainPlace and the City Shopping Center (each about 10 to 15 miles away), as well as Brea Mall and South Coast Plaza (each about 20 miles away.)

“We hope to add a new aesthetic direction to the mall,” said Harry Newman Jr., chairman and chief executive of Long Beach-based Newman Properties, which owns the mall. “We’re taking the mall into the 21st Century, but 12 years in advance.”

Birenbaum added: “It’s simply a remodeling . . . to break up the long corridors visually, give better use of natural and artificial lights and (make the mall) look more like an interior street. . . . We’re trying to make it more interesting visually.”

The spokesman said the renovation plans are “totally unrelated” to last September’s opening of nearby MainPlace, which was transformed from a lackluster center into one of the county’s glitziest malls.

The $1-million first phase of Mall of Orange’s transformation will start in mid-July and extend through October.

During that time, the food court will be upgraded, landscaping will be added and portions of the mall’s interior will be changed from orange to a neutral color.

The biggest changes will be during Phase II, which begins in January, 1989.

At the main entrance, a translucent, fiberglass dome--similar to the one at Fashion Island’s Atrium Court--will be added. La Fiesta, the Mexican restaurant to the right of the entrance, will be transformed with outdoor seating and awnings, as will as an as-yet-unnamed restaurant on the opposite site. Glass domes and skylights will be added in the center of the mall and the Sears and Broadway corridors to give the mall an airy, bright look.

The second phase is scheduled to be finished in the summer of 1989.