Comments on: Cloverleaf Mall; Richmond, Virginia

By: jacob

jacob — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:24:29 +0000

does anyone know if the city ever plans on doing any thing to this mall i drove by recently and walked around the mall there was no one to be seen its kinda like a place of my childhood is just gone i dont care about shopping there but what i would give just to walk through the whole mall one more time id be happy

By: Bobby P.

Bobby P. — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:39:44 +0000

@Dave, So about where Blockbuster Music was on this map, right? http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u68/TenPoundHammer/cloverleaf2000.jpg?t=1259113038

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:55:57 +0000

@TenPoundHammer, The McCrory’s was in the “Sears” wing on the south side.

By: TenPoundHammer

TenPoundHammer — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:36:58 +0000

Where was the McCrory? I’m guessing where Deb Shop later was (next to JCPenney)?

By: Chesterfield Kid

Chesterfield Kid — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:30:19 +0000

I grew up in Chesterfield from the mid 70’s thru the mid 90’s. When I was a kid back in the early 80’s Cloverleaf Mall was the mall to go to. Going down there was always something we looked forward to as kids. It was big, full of busy stores. I saw Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back there, as well as numerouos Disney movies back before VCR’s were a household standard and they would re-run old movies at theatres. That whole stretch of Midlothian Tnpk. was full of great retailers back then. Best Products and Wards across the street, Toys R Us a bit further west, Putt Putt Golf, etc. Chesterfield Mall pretty much sucked back then. It was a fraction of the size it is today or even after it first expanded and became Chesterfield Town Center. However, even back then if you crossed Chippenham to the east of Cloverleaf Mall you could see the bad tide of urban decay coming that continued spreading west down Midlothian Tnpk. causing retailers to continue closing and relocating further west. K-Mart and the Old America Store were pretty much as far as my mother would take us. I moved in 96 and I remember hearing about the murders but I don’t think i was living in VA at the time that they happened. I don’t know if my mom ever went back there after that or not. Even by that time Cloverleaf Mall had been suffering. It was pretty evident to many back then what was in the future for that mall. It was definately not the me place that it had been when I was a kid.
Kelly, you are right about the giant sphere shaped fountain. There was another fountain a little further down, I think it was where the old theater/ foodcourt corridor joined.

By: Jonah Norason (Pseudo3D)

Jonah Norason (Pseudo3D) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:48:06 +0000

@Carl, scary midway fair? Please elaborate…

By: RVA Chica

RVA Chica — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:45:05 +0000

My family knew one of the Cloverleaf Mall murder victims, Charlita Singleton. She was a kind-hearted, religious woman with a loving husband just working to help feed her kids. Noone deserves the die the way she and her co-worker did. Can’t believe police still haven’t found who did it.

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:07:31 +0000

I remember my father working at that Sears when I was a child. We would meet him for lunch at Piccadilly, and then wander for awhile.

Sadly, when they had that really scary “midway” fair there about 10 years ago, it hit me that the mall would never recover.

Like Azalea Mall, maybe razing it to the ground, and building something else may be in order.

By: melinda

melinda — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:57:59 +0000

@AceJay, That was actually the theater, there was a Sears Auto center and it was in the front of the mall where the entrance was located. She took no pictures of that.

By: Mustang GT

Mustang GT — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 04:07:10 +0000

Cloverleaf failed because of crime. Go to DeadMalls.com then click Landover Mall in Maryland. I’ve experienced this personally as well. That is Cloverleaf’s fait. Also look at Dixie Square Mall in Illinois. Hope that Cloverleaf gets torn down before it gets to the point of Dixie Square Mall. What happened to Cloverleaf was crime got so bad in the area that shoppers stopped shopping at Cloverleaf. The stores stopped getting the business they wanted to stay open so they started pulling out. It gets worse. Customers were scared to shop their. Then it got even worse. The employees still working there were scared to walk out to their cars at night. Then even more stores closed. After that, the mall found itself loosing more and more money, creating a loss, forcing it to close.