BIGMallrat | Retail history of Northern California

Fashion Island opened in 1981 as San Mateo's newest enclosed mall, anchored by Bullock's, Liberty House, JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward. These two surviving directories offer a snapshot of the mall just a few years apart—one showing Fashion Island near its peak, and another revealing the first signs of change. 1983 Fashion Island directory: a mall in its prime Just two years after opening, Fashion Island was packed with retailers. The 1983 directory shows a healthy mix of department stores, fashion chains, restaurants, and specialty shops that reflected the mall's upscale ambitions. Among the tenants were The Limited, Miller's Outpost, Thom McAn, Waldenbooks, Walgreens, The Wherehouse, Oshman's Sporting Goods, Things Remembered, and See's Candies. The mall's four department store anchors—Bullock's, Liberty House, JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward—were all operating, while the Ice Capades Chalet ice rink and Red Robin Restaurant added to the center's ap...

San Mateo Fashion Island opened in 1981 at the height of the American mall boom. Anchored by JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, Bullock's, and Liberty House, the project represented decades of retail thinking: build a bigger mall, add more department stores, and shoppers would come. But Fashion Island arrived at a turning point. Within just a few years of opening, two of its four anchors had abandoned the Northern California market entirely. Meanwhile, nearby Hillsdale Mall reinvented itself and captured much of the attention Fashion Island had hoped to command. The result was one of the Bay Area's earliest major mall failures—a shopping center that opened at the peak of department-store dominance only to discover that the retail landscape was already changing beneath its feet. Grand opening ad from September 1981 for San Mateo Fashion Island mall with the slogan "look to us." Annotated Apple Maps view of San Mateo showing the location of Fashion Island mall, positioned o...