Gene Kemp points to the picture on his office wall, an old black and white photo of Mission Valley taken before there was a Fashion Valley. "See there? That was a ballpark, Westgate Park," says the Fashion Valley general manager, recalling how the property once owned by C. Arnholt Smith was transformed from an abandoned playing field for the minor league Padres into a fashion mecca in the late 1960s.

    A native San Diegan born at Mercy Hospital, Kemp has an institutional memory stretching back to that earlier pre-Fashion Valley era. And he has remarkable career longevity in an evolving shopping center industry, where general managers frequently come and go. He has been in charge at Fashion Valley for the past 22 years - through changes in shopping center ownership, through the departure and arrival of retail tenants, through the acts of God that sent the San Diego River surging into its parking lots. In San Diego his tenure is a record.

    "I’ve been lucky," says Kemp. "There are very few people who have the tenure I have at shopping centers. Very few. I’ve had some extremely good ownerships. I’ve worked for some extremely good companies."

     He arrived at Fashion Valley at a time when shopping centers were still a relatively new phenomenon. The concept took off, causing a construction boom in suburban malls during the '70s and 80s. When downtown retail business began to wither as a result, civic groups across the country - including San Diego’s - countered with Centre City revitalization efforts.

    To stay ahead of the competition, both urban and suburban, Fashion Valley is undergoing a major renovation. Kemp is managing the center through the final stage of a massive $112 million expansion that started in January 1996. The grand opening is scheduled for Oct. 9.

    The project has had its share of headaches and tragedies, including two fatal accidents. In June 1996, a crane dropped a 10-ton steel column on an ironworker, killing him. Two months later, another construction worker died after falling through a floor opening during second-story remodeling. Kemp found himself having to respond to a barrage of media inquiries. Construction also affected sales. Many of the retailers had to do business within an intimidating cocoon of scaffolding and plastic sheeting as a second level was built on top of ground-floor stores. Customers and merchants complained the mall looked like a war zone.

    But by mid-August, the worst seemed to be over, and the outline of the new Fashion Valley began to emerge.

    Parking structures and a public transit center, incorporating a soon-to-be-completed San Diego Trolley line, have replaced the acres of flat parking on the San Diego River side of Fashion Valley. The East and West Village wings were razed, but because of the new construction, the number of tenants will grow from the current 125 to between 205 and 210.

    When complete, the expansion will boost Fashion Valley's total gross sales to nearly $600 million a year, compared with about $400 million last year (a figure lower than normal because of the construction). Sales per square foot are expected to jump from $365 to $450. The expansion will give Fashion Valley more gross leasable area - 1.7 million square feet - than nearby Mission Valley Center, which until now has ranked as the largest in San Diego County and, statewide, among the top 10 in size.

    All of this is music to the ears of Kemp's bosses at the Yarmouth Group (now called ERE Yarmouth), which holds the management contract for Fashion Valley.

    Thomas Dodge, senior vice president of ERE Yarmouth, says the expansion is on schedule, although he acknowledges "it’s been a long two years."

    "Fashion Valley is going to be one of the premier shopping centers in the United States," Dodge says.

    At 57, Kemp finds his life dominated by the huge expansion project at hand. But he and his wife of 38 years, Barbara - parents of a grown son and daughter - enjoy their leisure time. As a hobby, Kemp collects fine wine from California's quality boutique wineries. An avid athlete since his high school years, when he played basketball and football, he still plays racquetball occasionally.

    The son of a San Diego police officer, Kemp graduated from San Diego High School. After marrying, he worked to support his young family and attended San Diego State University at night. His early career development did not suggest a future in retail. For several years, he worked for San Diego Gas & Electric, assigned to its automotive fleet. After a two-year stint in the Marine Corps, he returned to SDG&E and then went to Ford Motor Co.

    It was his love of sports, though, that eventually landed him in the shopping center business. While playing with a fast-pitch AA softball league, Kemp met Ron Hahn, then head of the property management division of Ernest W. Hahn Inc. For several years, Kemp, a catcher, and Hahn, a first baseman, played on the same softball team. One day, Hahn offered Kemp a job with his company. "I said, 'Sure, what do I do?'" recalls Kemp. "He said, 'Do you want to run a shopping center?' I said, 'Don't they run themselves?'"

    In 1974, Kemp became a trainee assistant manager of Ernest W. Hahn Inc.'s Parkway Plaza in the East County, at a time, he says, when shopping centers still represented a "young, young, industry." After less than a year at Parkway Plaza, Kemp was named general manager of Fashion Valley, starting Jan. 1, 1975.

    Hahn, the current president of Arena Group 2000, which operates the Sports Arena, says Kemp was a quick learner with personality traits that made him an ideal shopping center manager.

    "He's a good people person," says Hahn. "The tenants like him, and they like doing business with him. He's an honest person. He doesn’t try to fool anyone. If he doesn’t know something, he’ll find out for them."

    Hahn says that Kemp gained professional skills and expertise that enhanced his reputation as an excellent shopping center manager.

    The shopping center Kemp managed also was destined for success.

    Ernest W. Hahn Inc. built Fashion Valley on a site leased from C. Arnholt Smith. The shopping center opened in 1969, eight years after construction was completed on Mission Valley Center.

    At the time Fashion Valley was built, the land was mostly used by a riding stable. The Padres had already abandoned Westgate Park, anticipating their move to the new San Diego Stadium as a major league team. Eventually, Hahn's company wound up owning the Fashion Valley site, purchasing it from the federal government, which had seized the property.

    When Kemp took over as manager, Fashion Valley was living up to its namesake: It was attracting customers by billing itself as a fashion center, with stores like Robinson's, Buffum's, Joseph Magnin and John Hogan.

    The center went through an initial $15.2 million, 18-month expansion completed Aug. 28, 1981. Although it had lost Joseph Magnin by then, the first expansion brought in Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, adding luster to the center's high fashion image. Shortly afterwards, Hahn and his partners sold Fashion Valley to the Imperial Tobacco Co. (ITC) of London.

    In 1986, after the mall had been freshened up with a $1.5 million remodel, ITC Fashion Valley sold 50 percent of the shopping center's ownership to Equitable Life Assurance Society. Equitable bought the remaining 50 percent in 1994.

    In 1983, the owners contracted with Yarmouth Group to manage Fashion Valley. In an industry in which new management typically brings in its own people, Yarmouth retained Kemp - by then highly respected for his skill - as its general manager.

    Yarmouth is big and international in scope. Its parent company, the Lend Lease Corp. in Australia, has the contracts to manage all Equitable-owned properties.

    The company kept a relatively low profile in San Diego until the early 1990s when it ran afoul of local and state campaign laws. In 1994, the California Fair Political Practices Commission fined Yarmouth Group $92,000 for laundering campaign contributions to six incumbent and past San Diego City Council members and Mayor Golding. The company was reimbursing employees for its contributions to campaigns, violating a state law requiring proper disclosure of donors as well as the city of San Diego’s ban on corporate donations. At the time, San Diego officials were considering Fashion Valley's plans for its current expansion. City Council members griped about the tainted donations but ultimately approved the shopping center's expansion.

    Planning for the expansion started in the late 1980s when Fashion Valley was doing well, and moving forward with the work was a tough decision, says Dodge. "It’s hard to tear up something that’s so successful to rebuild it," he says.

    But the center's management believed it had to upgrade the property to ensure that Fashion Valley would maintain - or improve - its market share.

    Other centers had sprung up downtown and around the county. Besides nearby Mission Valley Center, which was embarking on its own renovation program, Fashion Valley was nine miles from University Town Centre, 4.8 miles from Horton Plaza Downtown and 22 miles from North County Fair.

    When work crews broke ground for the Fashion Valley expansion early last year, the goal was to complete the project without interrupting more than one Christmas season, says Dodge, adding that the shopping center will achieve that objective.

    For Kemp, effective management of the center continues to revolve around a variety of issues, ranging from changing consumer tastes affecting individual stores to philosophical questions about the very nature of a shopping center. Should the shopping center, for instance, be considered a retail operation or a piece of real estate?

    Both, says Kemp.

    "You have to market the retail, but you have to protect the physical property," he notes. "So where do you draw the line? I don’t think anybody's been able to do it, and I don’t think you want to do that. You have to market it as a living, breathing entity. Real estate is not a living, breathing entity. This property (Fashion Valley) is, as are all shopping centers."

    In practical terms, the new Fashion Valley will reflect a number of changes: To keep up with the public's taste for more entertainment along with the shopping, the expanded center will have a new movie complex with 18 screens (opening in late March or early April) to replace the four small theaters lost when the West Village wing was demolished.

    There will be new restaurants and a food pavilion.

    With its five new parking structures, the number of parking spaces will increase from 6,500 to 8,000.

    The average store size is increasing. "Where you used to have two stores with 4,000 square feet, now you have one store with 8,000 square feet," says Kemp. "We’re changing gear."

    The types of stores are changing, too.

    Houseware stores have gained in consumer popularity, says Kemp. Among the new tenants, he says, is a Restoration Hardware.

    Still, the center is not neglecting its high end. Last month, Tiffany & Co. announced it would be moving from the Paladion Downtown to a 6,300-square-foot store in Fashion Valley in January.

    With the major expansion work behind him, Kemp talks of retiring in a few years. But not yet.

    ERE Yarmouth has made an addition to its Fashion Valley management team, hiring Robert Doherty, former general manager of Horton Plaza, away from Trizec Hahn Centers, formerly known as the Hahn Co. Doherty became Fashion Valley's vice president, asset manager.

    Dodge insists that Doherty is not being brought in over Kemp and that both will have their "separate areas of responsibility."

    In his new job, which began Aug. 18, Doherty will "have strategic and global oversight of the investment of the owners," says Dodge.

    Doherty says he will make sure that Fashion Valley maximizes its sales potential. It will be aggressively marketed, he adds, to "make it the best it can be."

    Kemp, meanwhile, remains as general manager, overseeing the "living, breathing entity" of a shopping center he nurtured to maturity. And one expected next month to capture San Diego’s retailing limelight.