Get out!

I will plan it!!!! Start with HH at Bluz Brothers this friday at 6pm! this is an excellent plaza to crawl thru b/c there are so many businesses here.

 

Dang, my husband and I missed you guys! We were next door at the sushi place, also avoiding the trick or treaters.

We used to like the pizza at San Vito's, but after they changed to Michelangelo's, it went way downhill. The pizza wasn't cooked hardly at all, very soggy and not to the same standard. Although to be fair, San Vito was starting to have some quality issues towards the end. We tend to eat at home a lot. A restaurant has to really wow me for me to make an effort to go. (Banjara is one of the few that has consistently wowed me!)

 

Just so you know, this center was not Van Metre's. It was sold to B.F. Saul. They own and developed the shopping center.
Van Metre owns the Southern Walk Center.

 

Sold it... before or after the sites were designated???

 

It was sold to Saul before it was ever developed. It was also sold when Terrabrook was still the (primary) Developer.

 

i will be putting together a suggested schedule for fun crawls, and i will work with these restaruants on some level to do something interesting for us! don't ask what- but you will likely- especially folks who have NEVER been to some of these places!!

 

I think a lot of these shop owners also got excited by the amount of people moving in the area. Maybe miscalculated the population to store ratio? Plus, if you get in before, say another pizza place, you may be able to get a certain market cornered. Landlord's tend to not lease out spaces to similar stores or restaurants in the same area/shopping center.

 

The owner of The Little Gym franchise in our area closed some of his stores recently. The one in South Riding and the one in Cascades (Sterling) are closed. The number of new homes built in the South Riding/Stone Ridge area wasn't enough to keep that location open. The Little Gym owner was told when he researched that location that there would be a lot more residential development in that area than actually came to pass.

 

There was a Little Gym in Woodbridge. New strip mall. Fairly new neighborhood. It lasted less than 1 year.

 

I think the number of eateries we have would be more appropriate if all of the office space along the greenway was developed. Unfortunately that hasn't happened so the eateries which opened, probably anticipating a good business lunch crowd, have suffered.

 

As the one who leased Broadlands Marketplace, here's my two cents:

Correct, that developers and tenants all expected the housing growth to continue and the office market to grow. At Broadlands Marketplace, we expected to have an office building up on Wynridge by now, as well as the Moorefield Station development to be well under way. So retail kept getting built, and tenants kept leasing space, and now we have too much retail and not enough houses and office space to support them.

There were a few centers that were being built simultaneously, so no one knew what competitive businesses were being planned. At the time that I did the Anothai lease with Lalida, there were no other Thai restaurants close by. Market research is an imperfect science.

Thank you Cliff for clearing up the Van Metre vs. Saul misunderstanding. And you are correct - VDOT will never allow an entrance off of Claiborne.

The "restaurant crawl" and "progressive dinner" ideas are good ones. In fact, at our marketing meeting with tenants last week, the idea of a progressive dinner party did come up, and we're going to try it out sometime in 2009. Of course it will have to be on a Mon-Wed when business is typically dead.

Thank you all for pumping up the local businesses. I'm sure that some businesses will naturally fail, but let's make it be the ones outside of Broadlands. Let's be good to our own. And I'm not saying that as a landlord; I'm saying that as a Broadlands resident.

 

Rumor is that glory days is losing about 10 g a month. They are corporate backed and can take a hit though.

 

they'd lose less if the food and service were better. i loved the one in Sterling but have been disappointed on every visit to the Broadlands location. and i am pretty lenient- but they have shown no efforts to improve food or service there.

 

Their beer list is nothing to write home about either.

 

Vill Grill has a good beer list, as does OHS and Not Your Average Joes...

 

American Flatbread as well.