When the Fashion Fair shopping mall opened in 1970, it changed Fresno forever. It was the city's first indoor shopping mall. But it also marked a big change in the city’s approach to growth and urban planning. The story of how it came to be, today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots.
It was fall of 1964. Fresno had just opened its new downtown urban renewal experiment: the Fulton Mall. It was a six-block long pedestrian mall on the city’s former main street. The idea was to freshen downtown’s appeal to shoppers, retain existing department stores like Gottschalks and J.C Penney, and make smaller retail thrive. It was part of a larger plan, with new freeways and housing to support downtown as the retail and business center of the region.
But just one year after the Fulton Mall opened, southern California developer Gordon MacDonald had a different vision. In 1965 he announced plans for a $20 million-dollar enclosed shopping mall on Shaw Avenue at First Street, in suburban north Fresno. They called it Fashion Fair. But Fresno’s city plans didn’t allow a mall at that location. Shaw Avenue was supposed to be home to low-slung office buildings. Downtown was supposed to be the retail center. But plans aren’t always followed.
The city council rejected the Fashion Fair plan twice in 1966 alone, concerned it would hurt the investment downtown. But MacDonald and his local representative Ed Kashian didn’t give up. They tried again, and finally got city council approval, after MacDonald told the Fresno Bee he would use his influence to get a new department store to locate downtown, if they approved his new North Fresno mall plan.
Fashion Fair opened in 1970, with anchor department stores Weinstocks, Gottschalks and J.C. Penney’s. In a few years Kashian would begin planning his next big shopping center, which you know today as River Park. Meanwhile downtown continued to decline, and Fresno’s suburban sprawl accelerated. Downtown’s last department store, Gottschalks closed in 1988.
