Coliseum Mall

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Coliseum Mall is a medium size shopping mall, located in Hampton, Virginia with anchor stores JC Penney, Macy's, Barnes & Noble, and Burlington Coat Factory. It is located in the middle of the peninsula in the "Coliseum Central" commercial district of Hampton, adjacent to the major highway interchange of Interstate 64 and Mercury Boulevard.

The mall was built in 1973, as a commercial centerpiece of Hampton's Mercury Boulevard-Coliseum Central district. It was the largest and busiest shopping area on the Virginia Peninsula, aside from its rival at the time, which was Newmarket North Mall located in the northwest corner of Hampton but closely bordered neighboring Newport News. Newmarket North Mall opened in 1975, and Coliseum Mall was expanded in 1976.

During the mid-1980s, major tenant Montgomery Ward moved into Coliseum Mall, and replaced the defunct Korvettes department store, from the adjacent Mercury Mall which was converted into an open-air shopping center.

In 1987, The Crown American Corporation and the City of Newport News built and developed the competitive Patrick Henry Mall, and later surrounding "big-box" shopping centers sprouted around the mall during the 1990s. Since then the city's Oyster Point/Patrick Henry district has experienced substantial growth, making commercial retail challenging for the Coliseum Central district of Hampton.

According to the Hampton City Council's Coliseum Central Master Plan[1] (pdf file), most of the current Mall property will be converted to three or four blocks of a new urban setting with 1-2 story buildings of mixed use. The aim is to change the outdated suburban "parking lot desert" into a trendy pedestrian-friendly district of mixed-use and condominium buildings. As of this writing, JC Penney store will remain intact, because it owns the land it's built on. This plan is one of several similar plans that are being implemented throughout Hampton [2].