of Youngstown, Ohio, and in turn, DeBartolo introduced the Desert Plaza partners to the Pratt Hotel Corp. Saks executives then introduced the Desert Plaza partners to one of the largest shopping center builder/developers in the United States: the Edward J. “They said that they would move to Palm Desert if they couldn’t move to Fashion Plaza in the center of Palm Springs.” They are currently in the financial district several blocks away. Then executives of Saks Fifth Avenue, a prime revenue producer in Palm Springs since it opened there in 1959, “put the fear of God into us,” he said. “The Desert Plaza partners (who bought the center in 1978) wanted to expand and get a department store in the rear, but they weren’t having any success,” Feenstra explained. Stores fronting Palm Canyon Drive-the main shopping street-apparently did well, but there was no major department store to anchor the back and draw customers through. Situated in downtown Palm Springs in the 100 block of North Palm Canyon Drive, the shopping mall has been described as “cold, stark and uninviting-the antithesis of Palm Springs’ extended-village character.”
“But we had a problem even before Hahn’s shopping center opened,” Ken Feenstra, Palm Springs redevelopment director, conceded.įor some time, the Desert Fashion Plaza, built in 1967 on the site of the famous old Desert Inn of the 1930s and 1940s, wasn’t “functioning that well,” as Feenstra put it. In 1983-1984, for example, Palm Springs had a 7.6% increase in taxable sales, while we had a hike of 45%.”Įver since Ernest Hahn’s 742,000-square-foot Palm Desert Town Center opened about 15 miles to the east in December, 1983, there has been increasing concern about shoppers leaving Palm Springs, not only for Palm Desert, which reported $211,082,000 in taxable retail sales for the calendar year 1984, in contrast with $364,676,000 for the same period in Palm Springs, but also for Indio, which ranked second with $265,889,000. Stiles Jr., president of the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce, calls “the oldest community out here.” And, though she still has the highest taxable retail sales of nine area cities, Palm Desert has been giving her some new retail-sales competition for slightly more than a year.Īs Carlos Ortega, redevelopment director for Palm Desert, expressed it: “We’re rapidly catching up with Palm Springs.
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