October 9, 1961 — Fashion Square's First Opening | Scottsdale History

What happened

Scottsdale Fashion Square debuted as an open-air center at Scottsdale and Camelback Roads, its first store holding a grand opening on October 9, 1961, with the first group of inline stores following on October 30. The corner had hosted a small center since 1959; the Fashion Square name and format arrived with this opening.

Why it matters

From this open-air court grew the retail engine of modern Scottsdale: enclosed and expanded through the 1970s–90s, absorbing rivals, and adding the luxury wing that made it the Southwest's premier mall — while its gravity helped doom south Scottsdale's Los Arcos. Sixty years of city retail history start on this corner.

A corner with plans

The intersection of Scottsdale and Camelback Roads was not blank ground in 1961. A small shopping center had operated on the corner since 1959, serving a town whose population had just quintupled in a decade to 10,026 and was accelerating. What October 9 brought was a new name and a new format: an open-air court called Scottsdale Fashion Square, opening in phases — the first store’s grand opening on the 9th, the first four inline stores following on October 30. It was boomtown retail of a recognizable early-sixties kind, pleasant, low-slung, and unremarkable, in a town whose downtown a few blocks south still ran on codified western storefronts and Parada del Sol posters.

The timing was almost comically apt. Twenty-two days after the first grand opening, Scottsdale’s voters approved the home-rule city charter in the Halloween election of October 31, 1961 — the month the town got both its constitution and the seed of its retail economy, without anyone grasping the size of either.

What grew from the court

Fashion Square’s history after this day is a long exercise in compounding. Through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s the open-air center was enclosed, expanded, and expanded again, absorbing rivals as it went, and eventually added the luxury wing that made it the premier mall of the Southwest. The modest court of 1961 became the retail engine of modern Scottsdale — roughly sixty years of the city’s shopping history running through one corner.

Its gravity had casualties. Los Arcos Mall, which opened at Scottsdale and McDowell in 1969 as south Scottsdale’s enclosed downtown, thrived for three decades and then declined as the region’s retail energy consolidated at Camelback; Los Arcos was demolished in the 2000s and reborn as SkySong in 2008. Old Town’s merchants, too, spent decades adjusting to the pull of the malls. All of it traces back to a modest, phased grand opening in October 1961 — the quiet start of the biggest commercial fact in the city. The wider story of that year is at 1961, and the decade’s at the 1960s chapter.