From Desert Inn to Desert Fashion

In the mid-1960s, Home Savings and Loan Association acquired and razed the historic Desert Inn, the legendary hotel founded by Nellie Coffman that had hosted Hollywood royalty, presidents, and generations of sun-seekers.

In 1966, the property was acquired by Home Savings and Loan Association, which moved decisively. That same year, developer Joseph K. Eichenbaum announced plans for a multi-million-dollar commercial center, and architect Charles Luckman—known for bold, corporate modernism—was commissioned to design the project.

After the tragic death of George Alexander and the collapse of earlier hotel plans, Eichenbaum emerged as the figure willing to move the project forward—this time not as a resort, but as a commercial shopping center, very much in step with national development trends of the 1960s.

Eichenbaum’s role was less about architectural vision and more about execution: assembling financing, coordinating with institutional owners like Home Savings and Loan Association, and delivering a project that reflected the era’s faith in enclosed, destination retail. His work represents Palm Springs’ pivot from pioneer resort town to modern consumer city—ambitious, optimistic, and ultimately controversial in hindsight

Charles Luckman was not a local architect—he was a national figure, and his involvement signaled that the Fashion Plaza was meant to be taken seriously. Before architecture, Luckman had been a business executive (famously the president of Lever Brothers), and that corporate sensibility carried into his designs: bold, efficient, and monumental.

By the time he designed the Desert Inn Fashion Plaza, Luckman had already shaped some of America’s most recognizable mid-century commercial buildings, including Madison Square Garden, the Los Angeles Forum, and major corporate headquarters. His architecture favored scale, spectacle, and control, making him a natural fit for large shopping malls.

At the Fashion Plaza, Luckman applied the dominant retail philosophy of the era: shopping turned inward. Climate-controlled corridors, dramatic interior features like fountains and bells, and minimal street engagement reflected the belief that malls should be self-contained environments, offering comfort, consistency, and visual drama regardless of what was happening outside.

Demolition of the Desert Inn began in August 1966, marking the definitive end of Palm Springs’ original resort era on that site.

In its place rose something radically different: a modern enclosed shopping mall, the Desert Inn Fashion Plaza.

The Desert Inn Fashion Plaza officially opened on October 16, 1967, anchored by a 20,000-square-foot I. Magnin—a symbolic return of the retailer to Palm Springs after its earlier presence at the El Mirador Hotel in the 1930s and ’40s. The all-electric design of the mall even earned honors from Southern California Edison, reinforcing its image as futuristic and forward-looking.

Architecturally, it leaned hard into mid-century spectacle:

• A dramatic stainless-steel fountain with nearly 200 polished arms shooting water skyward

• A bell tower entrance meant to announce arrival and importance

• Wide interior corridors designed for lingering, not rushing

At the main entrance of the Desert Fashion Plaza, visitors were greeted not by glass doors alone, but by bells—a deliberate, almost theatrical gesture meant to announce arrival and importance. The bell feature was part of the original architectural composition designed by Charles Luckman, the mall’s architect, and functioned as a kind of symbolic gateway between Palm Canyon Drive and the interior world of the plaza. While no single artist or fabricator of the bells has been definitively credited in surviving records, they reflected a mid-century impulse to borrow historic civic motifs—church bells, town squares, European promenades—and reinterpret them in a modern commercial context. In a place that had just erased its most storied hotel, the bells offered a sense of continuity and ceremony: this is where downtown happens now. Like the fountain inside, they were meant to slow people down, mark time, and turn shopping into an experience. Long after the stores closed, locals still remembered “the bells at the entrance,” proof that even small architectural flourishes can outlast the buildings they once belonged to. Desert Inn Fashion Plaza bell tower, c. late 1960s–early 1970s. Photograph courtesy of the Palm Springs Historical Society.

When it opened in 1967, it was seen not as a loss, but as progress.

Architecturally, the Desert Inn Fashion Plaza was a textbook expression of its era: bold, confident, and resolutely inward-looking. The mall embraced the postwar belief that the future of shopping belonged inside—controlled, climate-perfect, and insulated from the unpredictability of weather, traffic, and street life. Like many American malls of the 1960s, it turned its storefronts away from the sidewalk and toward long interior corridors, where fountains, art, and polished surfaces created a self-contained world. Air-conditioning wasn’t just a comfort feature in Palm Springs—it was a selling point, allowing shoppers to glide from boutique to boutique in a carefully curated environment, untouched by heat or dust. The problem, revealed only later, was that this design philosophy quietly severed downtown from its streets, replacing organic wandering with programmed circulation. What felt futuristic in 1967 ultimately proved out of step with a city whose greatest asset had always been life outdoors. 

The Mall Had a Good Run

By the late 1960s and 1970s, the site had fully transformed—from desert resort to modern retail center—reflecting both Palm Springs’ ambitions and the national belief that malls were the future of downtowns. 

The place everyone went

At its peak, shoppers truly flocked to the Fashion Plaza. It wasn’t just retail—it was a gathering place, an air-conditioned living room for a desert city. Luxury names like I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue gave Palm Springs retail credibility, while banks, boutiques, and restaurants filled in the rest.

For a generation, this was downtown Palm Springs!

Reinvention in the 1980s: too late, too inward

By the 1980s, however, competition was creeping east.

Palm Desert was growing rapidly, and both the Town Center mall and the increasingly sophisticated El Paseo were pulling shoppers away. Parking was easier. Residents were closer. Retail followed rooftops.

In response, a new owner attempted a major rescue:

• The mall was renovated and expanded

• “Desert Inn” was dropped from the name, becoming Desert Fashion Plaza

• A six-story hotel with underground parking was added
  

On paper, it sounded like a comeback.

In actuality, it exacerbated the mall's primary weakness: it continued to face inward, abandoning the street at a time when Palm Springs was starting to appreciate the importance of outdoor, walkable urban living.

Saks leaves—and the lights go out.

Desert Inn Fashion Plaza bell tower, c. late 1960s–early 1970s. Photograph courtesy of the Palm Springs Historical Society.

For years, one elegant holdout remained: Saks Fifth Avenue.

Saks became the last major retailer anchoring the Fashion Plaza, long after other stores had left and foot traffic had thinned. Shoppers walked through quiet corridors past empty storefronts just to reach Saks—a surreal experience that perfectly summed up the mall’s decline.

When Saks relocated to El Paseo in 2001, the spell was broken.

Without Saks, the mall was finished.

The long vacancy: a downtown scar

Desert Fashion Plaza exterior after 1980s renovation. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

What followed was not swift demolition or renewal, but years of emptiness.

For more than a decade, the Fashion Plaza sat largely vacant—13 acres of silence in the very heart of Palm Springs. Too important to rush. Too complicated to easily redevelop. Too symbolic to get wrong.

Plans came and went. Economies shifted. The city debated what downtown should be.

The mall lingered—an absence you could see.

Desert Fashion Plaza demolition, c. 2014. Photo courtesy of The Desert Sun.

Demolition and redemption

In 2014, the wrecking balls finally arrived. Demolition felt less like destruction and more like closure.

Retail didn’t die downtown. It just had to breathe again.

The real lesson

Desert Fashion Plaza didn’t fail because Palm Springs lacked shoppers or style.
It failed because it misunderstood its setting.

Palm Springs thrives on:

• wandering, not corridors

• patios, not partitions

• flirtation, not commitment

Retail moved to Palm Desert because it followed the preferences of residents, their need for convenience, and evolving shopping habits. Downtown Palm Springs survived by remembering what it always did best: being Palm Springs.

Flash forward to The Block

Flash forward to today: the site has been reborn as The Block, developed by Grit Development—a deliberate reversal of the mall experiment. Instead of an enclosed box, the redevelopment returned to street life and openness, a project that, fittingly for Palm Springs, arrived with both excitement and debate. From the start, The Block sparked controversy over height, massing, and how closely the buildings meet the street, a sharp contrast to the low-slung modernism many residents associate with the city’s past. But what’s hard to argue now is its impact: The Block has become the new heart of downtown Palm Springs, active day and night in a way the mall never managed. Anchored by the Kimpton Rowan Palm Springs, the development combines a boutique hotel, rooftop bar and pool, street-facing retail, restaurants, and public gathering spaces designed to put life back on the sidewalk. National brands like West Elm, Sephora, Johnny Was, H&M, Kiehl's and casual dining spots like Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar, Clandestino, Blaze Pizza, offering up a mix with pedestrian energy, events, and constant foot traffic. (The Block is also home to Bennion Deville Homes, our real estate brokerage for The Paul Kaplan Group.) 

Unlike the inward-facing mall it replaced, The Block turns outward—embracing density, walkability, and visibility. Future plans continue to focus on activating downtown with hospitality, retail, and experiential uses, reinforcing a lesson Palm Springs learned the long way around: downtown doesn’t need to be enclosed to thrive—it needs to be lived in.

The fountain is gone.
The bells are silent.

And yet, this site remains the very center of downtown Palm Springs—layered with memory, reinvention, and more than a little controversy along the way. For those of us who lived here during the Fashion Plaza era, the mall isn’t remembered as a planning mistake or a missed opportunity. It’s remembered by sound: the echo of bells at the entrance, the rush of water inside, and the unmistakable feeling that this was where life briefly gathered.

We may laugh now at our fully air-conditioned devotion to retail, but once upon a time, those bells called us downtown—to shop, to linger, and to live our best, unapologetically material lives.

Lost Palm Springs, indeed.

Resources

• The Desert Sun

• Wikipedia
  “Desert Fashion Plaza” — Background on the site’s evolution from the Desert Inn through demolition, including ownership history, architects, developers, tenant anchors, and redevelopment timeline.

• Palm Springs Historical Society
  Archival photographs, captions, and historical documentation of the Desert Inn, Desert Inn Fashion Plaza, bell tower entrance, interior fountain (Rainmaker), and tenant listings.

• The Desert Sun
  Contemporary and archival reporting on the Fashion Plaza’s opening, renovations, decline, tenant departures (including Saks Fifth Avenue), vacancy period, and demolition.

• Alexander Construction Company (historical references)
  Contextual background on George Alexander’s role in Palm Springs development and unrealized plans for the Desert Inn site.

• Home Savings and Loan Association
  Ownership and development role in acquiring the Desert Inn property and commissioning the Fashion Plaza.

• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
  Architectural attribution for the Joseph Magnin department store added to the plaza in 1969.

• Southern California Edison
  Historical recognition of the Fashion Plaza’s all-electric design at the time of its opening.

• Grit Development
  Information on the post-demolition redevelopment of the site as The Block.