Norfolk buys former Military Circle hotel for $2.4M

Less than a week after Norfolk announced its purchase of the Military Circle Shopping Mall for $11 million, the Norfolk Economic Development Authority (EDA) said Thursday it has also approved a plan for the city to purchase the former DoubleTree Hotel at Military Circle for $2.4 million. 

The hotel property was listed for sale for $3 million and had an assessed value of $21 million, according to the EDA. 

In 2015, Military Circle Mall went into foreclosure and lost all of its anchor tenants, which spurred Norfolk to consider redevelopment plans for the area.

A state-funded study released in 2017 showed that there is potential for more than 6,000 housing units and 16 million square feet of development in the Military Circle corridor (the area that includes Military Circle Mall, Military Highway and Norfolk International Airport), and the city has been planning to use this space for mixed-use development.

The EDA now has control of the entire Military Circle Mall property. In 2014, the Norfolk EDA purchased the former JCPenney store on an outparcel of the mall for $2.3 million (highlighted in yellow in photo) and redeveloped the 200,000-square-foot building into an office building, which is now 100% leased. The purchase announced May 1 included the remaining mall property and its surrounding outparcels (shown in green).

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