Park on Main Street on a Saturday afternoon and Mayfaire feels like a boutique district: women in Free People trying on FP Movement leggings, a line at Reeds Jewelers, someone walking out of Lovesac with a Sactional swatch book. Drive two minutes over to Parker Farm Drive and the mood changes entirely. Parents are hustling toddlers into KidStrong before the 45-minute class starts. A cart from Harris Teeter is getting loaded into a minivan. Someone's grabbing a quick lunch at Vochos before an appointment.
Same shopping center. Same zip code. Two completely different Saturdays.
That split isn't new. Mayfaire has always been built as two adjoining pieces, the 610,000-square-foot Mayfaire Town Center anchored by Belk and the 16-screen Regal Cinema with its IMAX screen, and the separate Mayfaire Community Center a short walk or drive away. What's new is how consistently two different rounds of leasing, two years apart, have both reinforced the exact same line. If you've noticed Mayfaire feeling like two different errands depending on which parking lot you pull into, you're not imagining it. Every time the property adds tenants, it sorts them the same way.
Main Street Got a Fashion Refresh, Twice
Start with the Main Street side, because that's where the two waves of additions have both landed. The first wave came in 2024, when Mayfaire marked the 20th anniversary of its first phase, which opened in May 2004. Free People and FP Movement both opened storefronts on Main Street that year, occupying roughly 2,300 and 2,200 square feet respectively. FP Movement's arrival mattered more than the square footage suggests. It was the first FP Movement location in CBL Properties' entire national portfolio, meaning Mayfaire was picked over every other CBL property in the country as the launch site.
CBL CEO Stephen Lebovitz tied the additions directly to the anniversary at the time.
"This is an exciting year for Mayfaire. The property is celebrating its 20th anniversary of serving the Wilmington community and we are thrilled to mark the milestone by adding exciting new retailers, including the first FP Movement in the CBL portfolio."
Reeds Jewelers and lululemon, two tenants that have been part of Mayfaire since it opened, got significant store upgrades around that same anniversary push. Reeds is family owned by the Zimmer family and has operated on that same stretch since 2004, so its upgrade read less like turnover and more like a two-decade tenant reinvesting in place.
Then a second wave landed on the same side of the property in 2026. Lovesac opened at 6858 Main Street this spring, bringing modular Sactionals and its StealthTech surround-sound seating into a market that hadn't had a dedicated home-furniture showroom of that scale before. Flip Flop Shops opened alongside it, both announced in late May. Ben & Jerry's opened its scoop shop at 961 International Drive, with a grand opening celebration held April 22, taking the spot of a previous ice cream tenant. And Rack Room Shoes, already established at 6859 Monument Drive, expanded its footprint by 5,000 square feet, giving it room for a noticeably wider shoe selection than the store carried before.
Two separate leasing cycles, two years apart, and both of them filled the same side of the property with fashion, home goods, jewelry, ice cream, and footwear, the categories that make Main Street feel like a destination rather than a stop on a to-do list.
The Community Center Keeps Solving a Different Problem
The Community Center, tucked behind the main retail strip off Parker Farm Drive, tells the opposite story across both of those same years. In the summer of 2024, Vochos Urban Mexican Kitchen and Potbelly Sandwich Shop both opened there, and Chick-fil-A reopened after a closure. Then in March 2026, KidStrong opened at 6801 Parker Farm Drive, Suite 145, right next to Harris Teeter. The science-based kids' fitness program is owned locally by Sarah and Craig Love, who described opening the location as a dream built around helping kids build strength and confidence through structured weekly classes.
None of that is a fashion bet. It's a family-services and quick-service-food bet, made twice, two years apart, in the same corner of the property. Add Harris Teeter as the anchor grocery store, and the pattern holds both times. This side of Mayfaire isn't trying to be a shopping trip. It's trying to be the place you stop between school pickup and dinner, where the parking is close to the door and the errand takes twenty minutes instead of an afternoon.
The two sides aren't competing with each other. They're specializing. Main Street chases the visitor who wants to browse. The Community Center serves the resident who needs to get in and out.
What Still Bridges the Two Sides
The one thing that still pulls both halves of Mayfaire together is the Friday night concert series, Music on the Town, held on the Event Lawn behind the main retail strip. It's a long-running fixture at this point, free to attend, and it's one of the few reasons someone who normally only visits the Community Center for groceries ends up wandering over to the Main Street restaurants afterward, or vice versa. Check the Mayfaire events page before you head over, since the schedule shifts by season.
Dining is the other connective tissue, mostly because the sit-down restaurants don't sort as cleanly by side. Coquina Fishbar and True Blue Butcher & Table at The Forum draw people from across the property for dinner reservations. G Prime and Tomiko-San handle the higher-end steak and sushi crowd. Roko Italian Cuisine, run by owners Jadran and Vojka, has built a following as one of the more consistent Italian spots in town. None of these restaurants care which parking lot you started in.
Why the Split Matters If You Already Live Here
If you've lived near Mayfaire for a while, you've probably already built a mental map of which side handles which errand without ever naming it. What two separate rounds of leasing confirm, one in 2024 and another in 2026, is that the property itself keeps sorting new tenants into the same two buckets rather than blending them. The next round of retail announcements will almost certainly keep sorting the same way, lifestyle and fashion brands filling in around Main Street, practical family services and quick-service food filling in around the Community Center.
That's useful to know the next time you're planning a Saturday. If you want the browsing experience, the newer storefronts on Main Street, Free People next to FP Movement, Lovesac a few doors down, Ben & Jerry's for dessert, give you a genuinely different lineup than what was there just a couple of years ago. If you're running the weekly circuit, Harris Teeter, a Chick-fil-A that's back open, KidStrong for the kids, that side has quietly become its own self-contained loop.
Mayfaire will keep calling itself one shopping center, and technically it is. But two rounds of leasing decisions, two years apart, have made it easier than ever to tell which half you're standing in.
If a friend or family member ever asks what this corner of Wilmington is actually like day to day, beyond the retail directory, Olivia Galarde is a useful person to point them to. Schedule a Personalized Consultation whenever the timing makes sense.
