Qualla: Downtown Norfolk, Virginia

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joey Sheely, Public domain. The skyline of downtown Norfolk in 1982 and the skyline of downtown Norfolk today share almost no buildings. A visitor who flew out in the early 1980s and never came back would not recognize the waterfront they remember. The piers that once handled noxious cargo, the decaying warehouses, the pedestrianized Granby Street with its empty storefronts and rising crime - all gone. In their place: Town Point Park, the Waterside Festival Marketplace, the Nauticus science center with the battleship Wisconsin moored at its door, the Half Moone Cruise Terminal, the Wells Fargo and Dominion Enterprises towers, and an upscale shopping mall named for a five-star general whose tomb sits across the street. The transformation took forty years and a lot of federal money. It is not a finished project. Most of it works.

Image: Joey Sheely | Public domain

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia: How Granby Street Died

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Through the first half of the twentieth century, Granby Street was the commercial heart of southeastern Virginia. Smith and Welton, Rices Nachmans, Ames and Brownley - the city's department stores ran a century or longer. The street had fine hotels, the NorVa Theater, Loew's Stat...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia: Urban Renewal at the Waterfront

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lluck002, CC BY-SA 4.0. While Granby died slowly, city leaders looked at the waterfront and made a different bet. The Housing Act of 1949 had created federal funds for the demolition of urban blight, and Norfolk took them. The piers and warehouses came down. Some of what came down with them, in retrospe...

Image: Lluck002 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia: The General's Mall

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ArchitecturePlus, Public domain. By the mid-1990s the waterfront was solid, and city leaders went back to Granby Street. The piece of urban-renewal land one block east had been sitting empty for years. The strategy was an upscale enclosed shopping mall - the same form that had nearly killed Granby Street in the ...

Image: ArchitecturePlus | Public domain

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia: The Retail Apocalypse Arrives

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael, CC BY 2.0. MacArthur Center peaked early. The retail apocalypse hit it the way it hit American malls everywhere. Nordstrom closed in April 2019. Dillard's followed in September 2023. By 2024 the mall was only 56 percent occupied; Regal Cinemas had become the largest tenant by a long way. Th...

Image: Michael | CC BY 2.0

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia: The Map Today

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PghPhxNfk, CC0. Walk through downtown Norfolk today and the layers are visible. The Walter E. Hoffman federal courthouse from the early 1930s and the Pickett Custom House from 1852 anchor the historic district. The Wells Fargo Center from 2010, twenty-three stories, sits a block away. Tidewater ...

Image: PghPhxNfk | CC0