‘It’s going to be spectacular’: Chanel and other couture coming to Westfield UTC’s new luxury wing

San Diego’s first dedicated Chanel fashion boutique and four other couture brands, including Tom Ford and Carolina Herrera, are coming to Westfield UTC mall next spring.

Together, these fashion houses and two first-to-market global restaurants are anchoring the third phase of the mall’s overhaul and expansion, which began more than a decade ago and will continue with more luxury additions over the coming years.

The key word in this nearly 70,000-square-foot expansion, which will open in and around the area once occupied by the old Nordstrom’s building: luxury.

“San Diego doesn’t have a High Street, and we really believe that we are that for San Diego,” said Kim Brewer, the senior vice president for development with Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. In the same sentence with London’s famed shopping road, she named the Champs Elysees, Park Avenue and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, home to the Magnificent Mile couture corridor.

UTC has curated a “diverse shopping offering” with a mix of accessible, upscale and premium brands, Brewer said, but “when you look at the luxury addition, that’s a piece that we had been missing.”

While the luxury emphasis is new, the shopping and strolling experience will match the rest of the mall, which Brewer described as “very San Diego: relaxed, sophisticated, coastal. It feels like a resort.

“That was the original inspiration back in 2015, when we designed the expansion that we opened in 2017,” she said. In keeping with that vibe, “the visioning for this project was super simple. We wanted to bring a project that was seamless to what we already offer at UTC. On the design inspiration of the area, and the environment, it wasn’t hard. It was let’s continue what we’ve already created.”

She mentioned lush landscaping, chic furniture, a combo of dining, shopping and entertainment, and a strong sense of local place, where people go to see and be seen, as cornerstones of that experience.

A spokeswoman declined to say how much this expansion costs.

Luxury lineup

“It’s going to be spectacular. It’s going to be remarkable,” Brewer said of the Chanel boutique.

Chanel is known for its gorgeous stores. When it revamped its Costa Mesa store in 2015 and tapped New York architect Peter Marino, that earned a nod from Architectural Digest.

Chanel has a presence in San Diego, including an in-store boutique within Fashion Valley’s Nieman Marcus, and fragrance, eyewear and beauty goods at various department and specialty stores, but no standalone fashion boutique. The nearest is at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

“Something like Chanel, it’s going to give us such a point of difference,” Brewer said. “There are not very many in the United States.”

What does it mean for a Chanel to open at UTC?

“It says that there’s a demand,” Brewer said. “They see that there’s a demand in San Diego and they picked the best real estate in the market to do that special deal with. They really go in very unique locations. They are not your run-of-the-mill operator. They are very selective about where they go.”

The other stores opening alongside Chanel are Carolina Herrera, Saint Laurent, Tom Ford and Zegna. Several first-to-market luxury names will be added to the extension, with announcements coming soon, Brewer added.

UTC already has a Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Tiffany & Co. and a Chanel fragrance shop, plus upscale brands such as BA&SH, Zadig & Voltaire and Kate Spade New York. Diptyque, the Parisian luxury purveyor of perfumes and candles, is opening its first San Diego boutique there soon, near Apple Store. Luxury brands are also available at Nordstrom.

With these openings, the San Diego mall raises its profile as a luxury fashion destination and better competes with Fashion Valley, which has boutiques including Cartier, Prada, Burberry and Saint Laurent. It also offers San Diego County shoppers closer alternatives to Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza, which has dozens of high fashion brands, from Alaïa to Zegna.

Spanish paellas, French dip

The expansion includes two restaurants — one with Mediterranean roots, the other Canadian.

Joey is a Canadian upscale casual chain with around 30 restaurants in Canada and the U.S., each customized to its location.

The menu is global and playful, yet reliable, with some classic North American restaurant staples (hummus, $21, fish tacos, $23 for two, and Cajun blackened chicken, $39) and some Asian and Latin American inspired dishes (sake glazed Chilean seabass, $51, truffle udon carbonara, $27). A featured dish the website is highlighting: Mini Steak French Dips, a slider-sized version of the meaty sandwich, with gruyere and garlic butter over a bite-sized New York strip sandwiches.

Telefèric Barcelona opened more than 30 years ago in Barcelona and has since opened locations in upscale communities throughout California, including Los Gatos, Palo Alto and Walnut Creek. Here, it will sell “the restaurant’s signature tapas and paellas with a refreshed California twist, crafted by Executive Chef Oscar Cabezas,” a Westfield UTC brand representative said in a news release.

Along with classic tapas (ham croquetas, gambas al ajillo), the restaurant offers five kinds of paella. Each serves two people, and prices start at $39 for the veggie variety and reaches $62 for the lobster version.

“We look to curate really dynamic food experiences,” Brewer said. As two examples, she brought up Raised by Wolves, the mall’s moody speakeasy, and Din Tai Fung, which she said has been drawing diners in droves.

The new restaurants will be stacked, with Joey on street level and Telefèric Barcelona on the floor above.

More than shopping

The mall has long sprinkled landscaping, seating, water features and art pieces between shops, and this section will be no different.

The expansion will add new areas for strolling and hanging out. It also aims to make shopping easier, with an additional valet tucked close to Chanel and the other luxury stores. And it is building additional underground parking.

A contemporary sculpture, Swan Flower, by Nadia Yaron — a Brazilian-born artist now based in upstate New York — is already installed. A short video from the artist shows her tending to the work in its new place. “Yaron honors the beauty of the universe by embracing the perfection and inherent truth of its natural materials,” her website says.

Westfield UTC has been continually revamped, with big pushes in the mid- and late 1990s, new spaces added over the last decade in phases, and a residential building that opened in 2019. Nordstrom, which moved from the northwest side of the mall toward its center, opened in its current location in 2017. The former Nordstrom building was torn down in 2022.

This is the third phase of the mall’s expansion, but not the last, Brewer said.

“We know that there’s opportunities in the future to look at mix-use components to UTC. Is it residential, is it office, is it hotel? … I am already working on the next project. We really believe in the market. We believe in the center — all the growth that’s happening around us. There’s definitely a ton going on.”