Mercury Plaza Mall was a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

located in

Hampton, Virginia Hampton () is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 137,148. It is the 7th most populous city in Virginia and 204th most populous city in the nation. Hampton i ...

. The shopping mall opened in 1967 as Mercury Plaza. The mall was the

Virginia Peninsula The Virginia Peninsula is a peninsula in southeast Virginia, USA, bounded by the York River, James River, Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. It is sometimes known as the ''Lower Peninsula'' to distinguish it from two other peninsulas to the n ...

's first indoor shopping complex.

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curre ...

Roses A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be e ...

and Giant Open Air Supermarket served as the mall's primary anchors.

History

Mercury Plaza was built in 1967. Its first

anchor store In retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls. Wi ...

was

. In the mid-1980s, the mall was renamed Mercury Plaza Mall, and Montgomery Ward moved its store to Coliseum Mall. It was replaced by

Home Quarters Warehouse Home Quarters Warehouse (HQ) was an American chain of " big-box" home improvement stores, originally based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 1984, the chemical manufacturing company W.R. Grace & Co. announced its intentions to enter the home improv ...

and

Circuit City Circuit City is an American consumer electronics retail company, which was founded in 1949 by Samuel Wurtzel as the Wards Company, operated stores across the United States, and pioneered the electronics superstore format in the 1970s. After m ...

. In 1987, the remaining enclosed portion of the mall was razed, and was replaced with a

Burlington Coat Factory Burlington, formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory, is an American national off-price department store retailer, and a division of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation with more than 1,000 stores in 40 states and Puerto Rico, with i ...

store. Burlington Coat Factory opened in Mercury Plaza in November 1987, ending Mercury Plaza's status as an enclosed shopping mall. HQ left the complex by end of the 1980s. Roses and Giant (what later became Farm Fresh) left the shopping center in the early-1990s. Circuit City remained at Mercury Plaza until April 2002, and was the shopping center's only other retailer left except for Burlington Coat Factory. Mall Properties, based in New York City, owned both Mercury Plaza and Coliseum Mall. The company decided to move Burlington Coat Factory to Coliseum Mall in July 2003. In September 2003, Mercury Plaza shopping center became vacant, and the original building structure was demolished.

References

External links

Deadmalls.com: Mercury Plaza Mall
{{Shopping malls in Virginia Buildings and structures in Hampton, Virginia Buildings and structures demolished in 2003 Shopping malls in Virginia Shopping malls established in 1967 Shopping malls disestablished in 2003 Defunct shopping malls in the United States Demolished shopping malls in the United States 1967 establishments in Virginia 2003 disestablishments in Virginia