Central Park (shopping complex)

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A sign at the Route 3 entrance to Central Park.

Central Park is a shopping complex in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with over 255 businesses. The complex is located near the intersection of Interstate 95 and State Route 3. Many national big-box stores, restaurants, and smaller local businesses occupy the Central Park complex. The complex has 2.2 million square feet of leased retail space. The complex's developer, the Silver Companies, describes Central Park as "The East Coast's Largest Power Retail Center"^[1]. In the 2004 rankings from the American Studies Department at Eastern Connecticut State University, Central Park was ranked as the largest unenclosed mall (and the second largest mall) on the East Coast, and as the seventh largest mall in the United States^[2].

Central Park also includes a Holiday Inn Select Hotel and a Hilton Garden Inn, with three more hotels scheduled to open in the next few years. In late January 2006, the Fredericksburg Expo & Conference Center opened, giving the Fredericksburg region its first convention center.

Central Park was developed by the Silver Companies. (Carl D. Silver Parkway, the primary road through Central Park, is named after the founder and owner of the Silver Companies.) Before the complex was developed, the site was occupied by a Sheraton Hotel and a golf course. The complex was begun in 1995, and is still expanding and growing. Central Park is now a 310-acre (1.3 km²) power center.^[1] It serves as the retail shopping and primary dining component of the 2,400-acre (10 km²) mega-development Celebrate Virginia, which uses the slogan "North America's Largest Retail Resort" and spans Stafford County, the Rappahannock River, and the City of Fredericksburg. Across Route 3 of Central Park is the older Spotsylvania Mall, which has undergone extensive renovation to become the Spotsylvania Towne Centre.

Many area residents complain that the developers did not make adequate allowances for the increase in traffic caused by the complex.^[3] Residents and travelers in the area are often frustrated by the congestion along the Route 3 corridor near the Interstate 95 interchange. ^[4]