Renovations will create a central hallway stretching the length of the Colonial Williamsburg-owned building at 345 Duke of Gloucester St., which also houses Lululemon. The existing escalator will be in the new hallway and will lead to new shops on the second floor.

The new Campus Shop, expected to open in March, will be situated at the right just inside the building’s primary entrance. Other shops will be at the end of the hallway at the rear of the structure.

Sam Wallace Jr., his son Sam III and his brother Cabell are principals in Williamsburg Merchants Inc. The business, established in 1972, also operates two other stores in Merchants Square — the Christmas Shop and R. P. Wallace & Sons General Store. The company operates two additional stores, Wallace’s Trading Post and Williamsburg General Store, on Richmond Road.

Sam Wallace Jr. said the impetus for the move was two-fold: to be on Duke of Gloucester Street and to have a larger sales floor.

In addition to more space for existing merchandise, the extra space will allow the creation of “concept shops” within the Campus Shop, he added. Popular brands such as Nike and Under Armour now can be featured with multiple items; instead of six different styles, Wallace Jr. said, “now we can offer 12 more of each.”

A Williamsburg section featuring souvenir, apparel and gift items will be located in the rear of the store. Simply Southern, a women’s and men’s apparel brand founded in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 2005, will also be sold.

At its current location at 425 Prince George St., the Campus Shop has provided a place for people looking for W&M products, but the business was cramped for space.

The Prince George shop has 1,600 square feet of retail space, while the new Duke of Gloucester space will be 3,850 square feet, including a stockroom.

“We’re extremely excited for the move and are pleased to continue and expand our relationship with Colonial Williamsburg,” which owns the property, Wallace Jr. said. “We had never considered moving the store; we’ve been extremely successful where it is.”

“But when this space became available, we started to think … a move?”

Barnes & Noble moved out of the Duke of Gloucester location in April 2021. The William & Mary Bookstore became the William & Mary Spirit Shop and Bookstore and is located in the Triangle Building at 601 Prince George St.

Steve Haigh has been general manager of the Campus Shop “since the first day in 1994,” Wallace Jr. said. “I had tried to hire him a year before, but he said it ‘wasn’t enough’ for him because we really didn’t have a specific concept. I just knew we wanted him to come work for us.”

Around 1991, Williamsburg Merchants Inc. opened Mobjack Bay at its Prince George location. The shop offered higher-end gifts and decoys related to the Chesapeake Bay.

Three years later, the Wallaces switched concepts and the Campus Shop was born, with Haigh as general manager.

From 1994 until 2012, the family operated both the Campus Shop on Prince George and the College Shop on Duke of Gloucester Street. In 2012, the College Shop, the family’s first Williamsburg enterprise, was rebranded and became R.P. Wallace & Sons General Store in a building that originally was a hardware store.

The Wallace family’s business connections go back to 1919, when Wallace Jr.’s and Cabell’s grandfather, Robert P. Wallace, a William & Mary football player, set up the Pocahontas Tea Room at the corner of Duke of Gloucester and Boundary streets. The city’s bus station was located in the rear of the tea room.

R.P. Wallace first sold school supplies at the Campus Shop, which became the first college bookstore. As tourism increased, he added Williamsburg souvenirs.

The Campus Shop was in a smaller frame building adjacent, facing Duke of Gloucester. Eventually, R.P. Wallace sold his property to Colonial Williamsburg as the Restoration began, and the area now known as Merchants Square was constructed.

Wallace eventually rented a building from Colonial Williamsburg on the site he used to own.

The corner to which the Campus Shop will be relocated next year was known years ago as Casey’s Corner — as in Casey’s Department Store, which operated on the site for 70 years from 1929 to 1999.

Several buildings have been built on the corner since a general merchandise store was opened in 1869 by two Casey brothers.

In 1928, the Casey family sold the store to another Virginia family — the Sydnors, of Richmond. A descendant, Charles Sydnor, closed Casey’s in 1999 because of bankruptcy.

Wilford Kale, [email protected]