Title: Fayetteville, City of - North Carolina History Project
Headings: Fayetteville, City of
Fayetteville, City of
Sources

Content: The largest Army base in the country, Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base has boosted the local economy and is almost synonymous with Fayetteville. Many argue that without Fort Bragg, Fayetteville might have grown only to be a small town of ten thousand. Fayetteville’s growth during the last fifty years has produced an ambivalent response. During the 1960s, Fayetteville’s main street, Hay Street, with it strip joints and bars that catered to the military, was considered sleazy, and with the Vietnam War in full swing, the city was derogatorily called “Fayttenam.” By the 1980s, Hay Street had been revitalized, but it has not yet rebounded to surpass the sales of the suburban strip malls and shopping centers. Today, over one hundred subdivisions, including King’s Grant, Tallywood, Vanstory Hills, and numerous shopping plazas and malls dot the map of Fayetteville. Some of the first retailing complexes were Eutaw Shopping Center, constructed on Bragg Boulevard in 1948, Boudreaux Shopping Center, built on a former vineyard in the 1950s, and the Westwood Shopping Center, erected in the 1960s. The large and indoor Cross Creek Mall opened in 1976. In all, the city’s retail sales have skyrocketed during the post-war years: $44 million in 1948, a half billion in 1972, and one billion in 1982.The increase in sales reveals the constant population growth of the city.