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Short sales increase: Just three months after its “grand reopening” to celebrate a $100-million renovation, Newport Center/Fashion Island is noisily touting its 54% mall-wide sales increase during the 1989 fourth quarter.

Predictably, mall officials relate the quarterly increase--representing total sales of $77 million or $67 per square foot--to the renovation. But considering that Fashion Island added 70,000 square feet of retail space for 60 new stores, the upswing isn’t too surprising.

Dana Lazzarevich, a mall spokeswoman, said fourth-quarter sales totals without the newly added stores were not available. Not counting the mall’s anchor tenants, including Bullock’s Wilshire and Neiman-Marcus, mall sales in the fourth quarter climbed 33.4% to $39.9 million from $29.9 million, she said. Those numbers, however, also include the new retail footage.

Among Orange County’s other malls, preliminary indications are that 1989 fourth-quarter sales showed modest gains.

Not including anchor tenants, here are the sales tallies reported by some of Orange County’s top-grossing malls for the last period, October-December, 1989: Brea Mall was up 8%; Westminster Mall down 1.5%, and Buena Park Mall up 5.5%.