Military Circle Mall Was Your CHILDHOOD — Now Norfolk Is About to Tear It DOWN

For fifty-two years Military Circle was where Norfolk spent its Saturdays. Then one January the doors were locked, and it was not the shoppers who closed it. The history of Military Circle Mall in Norfolk, Virginia, from opening day in 1970 to the closing in 2023 and the demolition the city has scheduled: the Circle 6 cinema, the Piccadilly, Thalhimers, JCPenney, the Sheraton hotel and the one-mile ring road. This is the mall the way you knew it. August the sixth, 1970, and Norfolk's first indoor mall. A Saturday at the Circle 6, the summer Star Wars arrived and would not leave. Snow Bear at Thalhimers. And Harvey Lindsay Jr., the Norfolk broker who had to persuade thirty-seven landowners to sell. Then the part most people outside Norfolk never heard: who bought the mall, who voted to take it down, and why the building stood locked for three more years while the city paid to guard it. Some of it nobody wrote down, like what a plate cost at the McCrory's counter. And the city's own page says there is still no final plan for the land. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:39 The Day the Doors Opened 03:32 A Saturday at the Circle 06:33 Snow Bear and Palm Trees 10:01 Thirty-Seven Landowners 12:56 One Store at a Time 16:05 A Show of Hands 20:17 Make Way for What 24:44 One Line in an Agreement The real photographs are the ones credited below. If you like stories about the places we all used to go, subscribe. Next time, a waterpark in the Mojave Desert called Lake Dolores. #MilitaryCircleMall #NorfolkVirginia #DeadMalls