CHECKING IN WITH Werner Escher:

South Coast Plaza observed its 40th anniversary last year — and Tuesday, Werner Escher celebrated a 40th anniversary of his own. The shopping center’s executive director of domestic and international markets started his job in January 1968, and after four decades of traveling around the world to broaden South Coast Plaza’s clientele, he still has no intention of slowing down.

So you’ve been with South Coast Plaza 40 years today. Who’s going to retire first, you or the Rolling Stones?

I don’t even have to think twice about that. They will retire first. I just can’t imagine anybody asking me when I’m going to retire.

What’s your key to longevity?

Just looking forward to coming to work every day. The secret is the challenges in the environment in which you work and the opportunity to be creative, the opportunity to have your voice heard by management and ownership, that acknowledgment by management and ownership that what you do makes a contribution to the overall effort of the business and that what you say is listened to, that it’s not just ignored. There’s not a lot of routine.

When people in other countries ask you, “Where’s Costa Mesa?” — what do you tell them?

I tell them that it is on the West Coast of California in the county of Orange and near Newport Beach.

Do they know where Newport Beach is?

That seems to be more defining than Costa Mesa. More people seem to know Newport Beach. That’s not just because Newport Beach has sister city programs, but it’s a seaside location. For further explanation, I tell them [Costa Mesa] is the city of the arts, that we have a concert hall, a performing arts center and a Tony award-winning theater that few cities in the United States can brag about.

If you could pick one country in the world and bring 20 people over for a guided tour of South Coast Plaza, which country would it be?

If it were possible, I would like to repeat what they had in Newport Beach with the Boy Scouts Jamboree [in 1953] and have all the countries represented and have them all in tow and able to see South Coast Plaza. That’s what I would do.

If you hadn’t worked for South Coast Plaza, what would you have done?

In a word, I think I would have left myself distraught. I think when you’ve found everything in your working life that satisfies you, how can you think of what would have happened? I can’t even contemplate.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].