A Look Back: 1964 -- The beginnings of the ‘city under one roof’

The expectations for it were at the same time both grand, and small.

Grand in sheer size — 66 acres of shopping at the epicenter of developing Orange County at a price tag of $30 million — and small in expectations — sales tax revenue for the city was supposed to top out at $500,000.

In both ways, Costa Mesa and Orange County got more than they expected from South Coast Plaza.

The plaza was approved by Costa Mesa’s City Planning commission in December 1964 and its first store, the May Co., was scheduled to break ground just a month later. It was one of two anchor stores, along with Sears, Roebuck department store.

The concept was for South Coast Plaza to be a “city under one roof,” according to the Los Angeles Times. And it was only the beginning. The indoor mall, at 1.1 million square feet, according to the Times, was only the first step of a 150-acre shopping and business center built on Segerstrom land.

The mall’s design — the largest indoor, air-conditioned mall in California — wasn’t originally meant for Costa Mesa. The architectural firm that designed the mall, owned by Victor Gruen, was actually conceived for a Minneapolis project in 1957, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1965.

Instead, the mall was constructed in the Segerstrom’s land off Bristol Street and when originally built, was still surrounded by lima bean fields.

The Segerstrom family was the second largest Orange County landowner at the time behind the Irvine Co., which was building Fashion Island in Newport Beach.

The mall was originally slated for only two levels with parking for 6,000 cars. The rest of the site was later developed into outside shopping areas and a business complex across the street.

While half a million dollars was the expected revenue, in just a few years the sales tax revenue from the mall was funding Costa Mesa’s $3.9-million civic center on Fair Drive. As recently as two years ago, South Plaza was generating hundreds of millions in sales, with a portion of that becoming revenue for the city.