Fashion Square Hopes Shoppers Ignore the Dust
Rita Beneliaan could barely hear the question over the jackhammer ripping through the concrete sidewalk in front of her clothing shop.
“How’s business?” she shouted over the din. “It’s terrible. Business is down the drain. Customers are going to the Galleria.”
Beneliaan is manager of the Casual Corner clothing store at Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, a 26-year-old shopping center that is virtually being rebuilt in a 1 1/2-year construction project now getting under way.
The two workmen using the jackhammer outside her shop were digging a hole for a post that will eventually help support new second-story shops.
Her customers, Beneliaan feared, were spending their money a few miles away at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. That newer, rival mall is air conditioned, dust-free--and covered-over.
More Waiting
In another year and a half, Fashion Square will be the same way. Until then, Fashion Square’s 50 shopkeepers are hoping their customers can keep a lid on frustrations caused by the $20 million in remodeling and expansion.
“We want people to know we’re staying open,” said David Sauers, executive vice president of City Freeholds (USA) Inc., the mall’s owner. “We want them to feel it’s fun to come see what we’re doing.”
City Freeholds engineers planned the remodeling, which will increase the number of shops from 55 to 120. City Freeholds construction crews are doing the work.
That allows his company to schedule the work and keep disruption, dust and dirt to a minimum, Sauers said.
Still, shoppers are being forced to step over plywood-covered holes in front of shops. They must walk around equipment and hunt for familiar stores in temporary storefront locations.
The smaller stores in the mall must occasionally close for a day at a time. Beneliaan’s was shuttered Wednesday so workmen could use heavy equipment in front.
Work crews launched the project last month by digging up stately old trees that shaded the center of the mall. Seventeen of them--about two-thirds of the grove--were saved and now sit in wooden boxes in the mall’s rear parking lot. They will be transplanted around Fashion Square’s perimeter.
Instead of trees, a tall crane now sits in the mall.
“I loved it the way it was before,” said shopper Ginger Liberman of Sherman Oaks. “To me, they’re overdoing it. I liked the earthiness of the old mall. We don’t need 120 stores.”
Yellow warning tape was stretched across the front of a boutique that Liberman had come to visit. A construction worker shouted out to her that the store was closed for the day. “This is terrible,” Liberman said, hurrying away.
“This shopping center was one of a kind,” said another shopper, Therese Pagano of Woodland Hills. “You’ve got big malls from Thousand Oaks to Glendale. I come here because it is a small mall.”
Retailers say there’s a small future for small malls, however. As vacant land suitable for new shopping centers disappears, older centers such as Fashion Square are under increasing pressure to expand. And that pressure is particularly severe on small centers such as Fashion Square that are already successful.
In past years, Fashion Square has been ranked as the San Fernando Valley’s top regional shopping center, surpassing the rival Sherman Oaks Galleria, the Woodland Hills Promenade Mall and Canoga Park’s Fallbrook Mall in sales. The larger Topanga Plaza, Northridge Fashion Center and Glendale Galleria are classified as super-regional centers.
The most recent expansion of a Valley shopping center occurred three years ago at Fallbrook Mall. During that project, the mall was closed to shoppers while a roof was installed and storefronts were remodeled.
According to Sauers, Fashion Square will remain open while a two-story-high roof is built. After it is in place, workmen will remove the roofs of existing stores so that second-floor shops can be constructed above them.
He said special beams will be used to span the mall, which is 85 feet wide in some places. They will support a roof consisting of a series of skylights designed to preserve Fashion Square’s old open-air feeling, he said.
“We’re looking to getting half of the roof up by this Christmas,” he said. “We’re doing the end near Broadway first. Then we intend to really cut back the work during the busy holiday season of November and December.
January Resumption
Work will resume in January. The project is scheduled to be finished by October, 1989, he said.
Meanwhile, most of Fashion Square’s stores are taking advantage of the confusion to do their own remodeling. Some are moving temporarily to empty storefronts to allow for major make-overs.
“We’ll move to the end of the mall in September, and then come back in a month and a half when our store’s remodeling is finished,” said Sandra Guttman, co-owner of Pickwick Fashions women’s shop.
Guttman said her business has actually increased since the mall reconstruction began. “People are curious about what’s going on. Our business is up 18% so far this month,” she said.
Louise Bloom, who has operated Louise’s Fabrics and Quiltworks at Fashion Square for more than 10 years, said her shop already has been moved to one temporary location. It will move to another before the reconstruction project is complete, she said.
“I think it’s time for a face lift here,” Bloom said. “I know there are a lot of complaints now, but I think they’ll eat their words when it’s finished.”
Shopkeepers will make the best of the situation, said Fashion Square marketing manager Constance Cashin.
On Saturday, most stores will participate in a “construction clearance sidewalk sale,” she said.
“We’ll give yellow construction tape to merchants to put in their windows, and we’ll have entertainers wearing construction-worker costumes on the mall,” she said.
“We may even have some real construction equipment around for people to look at.”
