MacArthur Center, the shopping mall in front of you, was built by Taubman Centers and has been owned by the City of Norfolk since August 2023. In the center of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, the 1.1 million square foot complex once sat adjacent to the General Douglas MacArthur Memorial and contained roughly 400,000 square feet of tenant shops and 100,000 square feet devoted to food and entertainment, including the Regal MacArthur 18 movie theater. Plans for this project were announced in June 1994 for a mall bounded by Monticello and City Hall Avenues, Freemason Street and St. Paul's Boulevard.
The southwest corner, where a Dillard's later stood, had been Norfolk's historic City Market until it was demolished in the early 1950s to make way for a JCPenney store, garage and office tower later known as the Systems Management America tower; that tower was imploded on November 24, 1996. The remainder of the 17-acre site sat vacant after buildings there were razed in the early 1960s. Your surroundings fold together layers of Norfolk history, from this mall to the adjacent General Douglas MacArthur Memorial next door.