Newport Beach getting 4-story, luxe RH furniture ‘gallery’ at Fashion Island
Forget any notion you have about places that peddle the stuff that fills a home. You know those large, generic shops with windowless showrooms jammed with couches and bedroom suites.
Fashion Island is getting an eye-catching furniture store that’s 11 times bigger than the chain’s current shop at the coastal shopping center.
The company once known as Restoration Hardware and now a high-end home furnishings retailer will build one of its hottest concepts, a “design gallery” at the Irvine Co.’s outdoor mall in Newport Beach.
“RH Newport Beach, The Gallery at Fashion Island” is a first for Orange County. It will be four stories high with almost 80,000 square feet of airy, indoor and outdoor spaces with “an expanse of glass-and-steel French doors that open onto lush garden courtyards and terraces.”
Oh, and did I mention a glass-walled, rooftop wine bar and restaurant overlooking the Pacific?
“RH Newport Beach reflects our vision to create architecturally inspiring and immersive spaces that blur the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality,” said CEO Gary Friedman of Corte Madre-based RH. Its collection of these large and fancy shops includes locations in West Hollywood and Los Angeles.
The store will be on Fashion Island’s coastal side, taking the place of a former Forever 21 clothing store that closed two years ago. The RH gallery is expected to open in spring 2024, selling everything from trendy furnishings to couches and beds to fabrics and design services. The 7,300-square-foot RH store at the mall will remain open.
Adding the ritzy RH store is a boost to Fashion Island, which is in a continual battle for luxury merchants and sales dollars with Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza. And what sales-tax-minded city would complain about a new store that sells a sofa bed for more than $10,000?
“Few communities in the country are fortunate enough to be chosen for an RH Design Gallery, and this is a major win,” said Brad Avery, Newport Beach’s mayor.
Much like malls have done, individual retailers are now looking to evolve shopping from a simple transaction into more of an “experience” for the consumer.
It’s all about upping the chances for a sales opportunity. Go to the gallery’s eatery for dinner or sip some wine and perhaps a coffee table catches your eye (and wallet) before you get to the fourth floor.
If the Newport Beach manse is anything like a similar RH gallery I visited this summer in Portland, it’s far more like a well-appointed furniture museum than a sales platform. It’s part of a retailing trend toward flashier and more comfortable stores.
In Oregon, I got to see the RH gallery concept in all of its spacious glory — and I’ll note the store is roughly half the size of what’s planned for Orange County.
It looks more like a home for a European monarch than a furniture merchant’s wares, inside and out. From the street, you’d think it’s a local landmark due to its richly sculpted edifice. Inside, large windows cast natural light onto shopping spaces that are generously uncluttered. The fourth floor’s open-air sales space was perfect to pitch outdoor furniture — and catch scenic views.
If you’re still curious, allow Chairman and CEO Friedman to describe the thinking behind these galleries, as he did to Wall Street analysts:
“I think it’s a combination of us creating a new market because people are seeing products that they have never seen before presented in a way they have never seen before in an environment that’s inspiring and interactive and full of light and fresh air and theatrical presentation. We call them galleries because we say it’s an artful abstraction of home furnishings in a gallery setting, right. So, we don’t really just merchandise our stores. We create kind of artistic installations of home furnishing.”
