Work to Begin on High-Fashion Shopping Center : Downtown: The deal for a ritzy downtown retail complex, called the Paladion, has been closed and plans have been made to start contruction this month. Tiffany and Gucci will be among the stores.

Construction of San Diego County’s swankiest fashion retail complex, soon to be the only home in the county to such posh establishments as Tiffany and Gucci, will begin this month in downtown San Diego, with completion expected in October, 1991.

Developers of the upscale shopping center, resembling a luxury grand hotel with valet parking and an open atrium, closed a $32-million deal Wednesday after spending two years working to obtain construction financing and a 12,500-square-foot parcel owned by the city, said Walter A. Smyk, a managing partner of the development company.

The three-story, 107,000-square-foot commercial center, dubbed the Paladion, will sit on the block bounded by Front Street, G Street, F Street and First Avenue.

The Paladion will be situated on the block between the Nordstrom department store in Horton Plaza on First Avenue and the high-rise Meridian condominium building on Front Street, another of Smyk’s projects.

“San Diego has grown tremendously in the last five to 10 years as a market, but has been overlooked by fine quality stores,” Smyk said. “Those stores have never had a good location to move to in San Diego, where there isn’t one street where better stores can go. That’s what we’re creating.”

Smyk said the Paladion will be anchored by Tiffany & Co. and Gucci, which have leased the largest amount of retail space, as well as Salvatore Ferragamo, Mark Cross and Alfred Dunhill of London.

The shopping center, which is expected to be at least half occupied when it opens next fall, will house about 40 shops, with primary emphasis on women’s and men’s apparel and accessories, Smyk said.

Smyk said the Paladion isn’t being positioned as the Rodeo Drive of San Diego, referring to the coterie of exclusive shops on the popular Beverly Hills strip. “We’re not looking for that snob appeal,” he said.

“We’ll have shops along the Nordstrom range and all the way up to upper-upper-level shops,” said Steven L. Davis, a partner in Paladion Partners Ltd.

Pam Hamilton, executive vice president of the Centre City Development Corp., the city’s downtown redevelopment agency, said the ritzy shopping center will be designed to cater to San Diego residents, as well as conventioneers and their spouses.

“There isn’t a collection of retail outlets of this quality in one place in San Diego,” she said, noting that some shoppers hop from La Jolla to Fashion Valley to do their fine shopping.

The project is being funded by the Yasuda Trust & Banking Co. Ltd. and being designed by Los Angeles architect Gerald Allmand, who also designed the Meridian.

Smyk said the exterior design will be in the style of the department stores constructed during the early part of this century, and the shops will be symmetrically arranged around an open atrium.