Crystal City is losing what is currently its only grocery store.
The Amazon Fresh store that opened in July 2022 at 1550 Crystal Drive will close after Sunday, ARLnow has learned. Multiple readers told us yesterday that the store had launched a sudden, massive sale.
Employees, we’re told, were informed of the closure this week and offered jobs at other area Amazon Fresh stores.
“I saw a large meeting taking place in the afternoon… around 3pm,” a tipster told us Wednesday. “Store has been mysteriously closed ever since.”
The store since reopened after that temporary mid-week closure and has been working to clear out inventory.
“There is a 75% off sale and the store is super crowded right now with many shelves completely bare,” another tipster said Friday afternoon.
“We are closing… it was fun,” one employee reportedly said.
An Amazon spokesperson sent a statement to ARLnow confirming the closure and saying that the company is focusing on larger format stores.
Over the last year, we’ve redesigned a number of our full-sized Amazon Fresh stores, offering a better overall shopping experience by bringing in an expanded selection, low prices on even more grocery items, and greater convenience with updated checkout options such as Amazon Dash Cart. We’re pleased to see those changes resonating with customers through higher satisfaction scores and increased purchasing. To focus on selectively opening new Amazon Fresh stores as we see positive customer feedback on the new format, we are closing our smaller Amazon Fresh store in Arlington.
Amazon Fresh filled a long-time grocery store void in Crystal City, but the new void is likely to be temporary. Further south, the neighborhood is getting a new Trader Joe’s store at 2450 Crystal Drive, though the quirky grocery chain has declined to confirm what is evident from multiple permit filings.
In nearby Pentagon City, meanwhile, an Amazon-owned Whole Foods remains open at 520 12th Street S., next to its nearly year-old HQ2.
Other smaller Amazon Fresh stores are also closing, including at least one in Seattle — home to Amazon’s main corporate headquarters — and another in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood. Additionally, this week Amazon announced that it was discontinuing its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology at remaining Fresh stores.
Amazon was expected to open a Fresh store on Columbia Pike as part of the planned Fillmore Gardens Shopping Center redevelopment, but reportedly pulled out from the deal, delaying the project and leaving a stretch of empty storefronts along the Pike. Plans for a Fresh store in Bailey’s Crossroads was also dropped.
With the Crystal City and D.C. closures, the closest Fresh stores to Arlington will be located in Fairfax County and Montgomery County, Md. Beyond its physical stores, however, Amazon Fresh remains a significant grocery delivery business, offering same-day delivery in Arlington and other parts of the region from a fulfillment center in the Springfield area.
Hat tip to Raheem W., Nathan B. and various tipsters
Trader Joe’s is seeking an alcohol license at a Crystal City location but is keeping mum about its plans.
The grocery store chain applied for the right to sell beer and wine at 2450 Crystal Drive on March 1 and is still awaiting approval, according to Virginia ABC.
A statement from Trader Joe’s declined to confirm the store opening and provided little clarity on the company’s intentions.
“We are actively looking at hundreds of neighborhoods across the country as we hope to open more new neighborhood stores each year,” Public Relations Manager Nakia Rohde told ARLnow. “At this time, we do not have a location confirmed in Arlington.”
The company noted that 2450 Crystal Drive is not on a published list of imminent store openings. The grocer had a similar response around this time last year after ARLnow asked about a construction permit application filed on the company’s behalf.
There is an existing Trader Joe’s location in Clarendon, which opened in 2011.
Both 2450 Crystal Drive and 2461 S. Clark Street — which are part of the same complex — have recently undergone substantial renovations. Rebranded as Crystal & Clark, the buildings have received upgrades to their appearance and, according to their website, offer “a street-front retail and restaurant opportunity.”
The website lists a “food market” in the works — along with a daycare facility, more eateries and a fitness center — while a rendering depicts an unnamed grocery store.
Portions of the office building still appear to be under construction. Debris and construction equipment are visible in portions of the building next to the Crystal Drive entrance.
Mezeh restaurant at 2450 Crystal Drive has temporarily closed, meanwhile, and is moving elsewhere within the development.
Workers lowered signage today (Friday) from the now-former Giant supermarket in the Lyon Village Shopping Center.
Several passersby watched with interest as the team unscrewed the letters G-I-A-N-T from the storefront at 3115 Langston Blvd. One visitor, apparently a would-be customer, walked up to the grocery store’s closed entrance and peered inside before returning to her car and driving away.
“Can you believe it?” another pedestrian asked in disbelief.
Thursday was the last day in business for the 60-year-old supermarket. One person who emailed ARLnow described a tearful affair.
“My husband was at the Starbucks there and he said people were crying,” the tipster said.
The closure, announced last month, casts uncertainty over the future of the shopping center at the busy intersection of Langston Blvd and Spout Run Parkway. Even the work crew’s foreman was curious about the strip mall’s fate, asking a reporter what will replace the anchor store.
A brief statement from the owner of the plaza — which is home to The Italian Store, Big Wheel Bikes, a CVS and a Starbucks, among other retail tenants — yielded few answers.
“We are exploring a number of options but have nothing to share at this time,” BMC Property Group President Christopher Jones said.
The county, however, has a long-term vision for the shopping center as an “activity hub” that could support a mixed-use redevelopment with 12-15 story apartment buildings. A rendering from the Langston Boulevard Area Plan, adopted by the Arlington County Board in November, depicts an apartment building rising over a grocery store near the busy intersection.
In the more immediate future, a Cold Stone Creamery is expected to open in a standalone building in the shopping center sometime after May.
Signs outside the Giant today encouraged customers to visit another of the company’s stores about a mile away, at 3450 Washington Blvd in Virginia Square.
An earlier statement from Giant said store employees were given the chance to transfer to other locations.
“In the normal course of evaluating our business and local trade areas, we determined that we can adequately serve this community through several other nearby Giant Food locations as well as our online services Giant Pickup and delivery,” the company said. “While closing this location, we remain committed to meeting the needs of our customers and providing them the best service.”
Signs for the new Ballston Harris Teeter are up, signaling that the first phase of the three-part project is nearing completion.
Last month, the owner applied for an occupancy permit for the new grocery store, which tenants do before they can officially move in. Inspection is still pending, per the county website.
Leasing began last fall for the 310 units above the new grocery store at 624 N. Glebe Road, developed by the Georgia-based developer, Southeastern Real Estate Group, LLC, per a website for the apartment complex. Construction on the apartments, dubbed URBA, began in 2020.
Additionally, Southeastern and Harris Teeter commissioned a mural by Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous that pays tribute to the legacy of the Ballston miniature golf course, which was a fixture along Wilson Blvd for over 50 years until its closure in 1989.
The rest of the planned 733 apartments will be built after the new Harris Teeter opens and the old building at 600 N. Glebe Road is torn down.
The second phase will include 197 apartments and a 0.6-acre public park where the current Harris Teeter stands. The third phase will add the remaining 226 apartments and more than 10,000 square feet of retail space, culminating in a total of 77,575 square feet of ground-level retail.
There will also be below-grade parking garages, with 942 parking spaces total. Southeastern will also extend the existing N. Tazewell and N. Randolph streets into the site.
The first phase of the project was initially expected to wrap up this past fall, with the next phase slated to begin in summer 2024. Southeastern did not respond before ARLnow’s publication deadline.
(Updated at 3:15 p.m.) The anchor of the Lyon Village Shopping Center will close in a month.
The Giant supermarket at 3115 Langston Blvd will close on Thursday, Feb. 29, the regional grocery chain confirmed today in a statement to ARLnow.
“In the normal course of evaluating our business and local trade areas, we determined that we can adequately serve this community through several other nearby Giant Food locations as well as our online services Giant Pickup and delivery,” the company said. “While closing this location, we remain committed to meeting the needs of our customers and providing them the best service.”
Another Giant store is about a mile away, at 3450 Washington Blvd in Virginia Square.
“We want to express our sincere gratitude to the Arlington community for their support over the 60 years that Giant Food has been a part of this neighborhood, and we look forward to welcoming our shoppers at our other local Giant Food locations,” the statement continues. “We appreciate the work our store associates have done to serve this community, and all associates from the… store are being offered the opportunity to transfer to other Giant locations. We are committed to supporting our employees through this transition and ensuring that they have continued opportunities within our company.”
So far, no store closing signs have been put up at the location, though word of the closing has started to spread via social media.
It is not immediately clear what might replace Giant as the anchor of the shopping center, which counts CVS, The Italian Store, Starbucks and Big Wheel Bikes among other retail tenants.
A recently approved Arlington County planning document, however, suggests that redevelopment is likely to eventually come to the strip mall at the busy intersection of Langston Blvd and Spout Run Parkway.
The Langston Boulevard Area Plan, adopted by the Arlington County Board in November, designates the site as an “activity hub” that could support a mixed-use redevelopment with 12-15 story apartment buildings.
In the more immediate future, the shopping center will soon host a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop in a standalone building closer to Langston Blvd.
New apartments along N. Glebe Road in Ballston are nearing completion.
Developer Southeastern Real Estate Group, LLC tells ARLnow construction on the residential redevelopment, near the Harris Teeter store, should be done in the next couple months.
Construction work on the apartments began in 2020. Although the units at the complex, dubbed URBA, are not quite finished, people are already signing leases, says Southeastern Vice President Mary Senn.
“Our first phase at URBA is currently in lease up,” she said.
The full redevelopment project is far from over, however. The next phase, of three, includes more apartments and a roughly 0.6-acre public park.
Senn says this phase will start “next summer.”
After that, a temporary parking lot will become the third apartment building: a 227-unit residential building ground-floor retail and below-grade parking.
Arlington County approved the redevelopment of 600 N. Glebe Road back in 2019. The proposal includes three residential buildings, with a total of 732 units, a new Harris Teeter and 77,575 square feet of ground-level retail.
There will also be below-grade parking garages, with 942 parking spaces total. Southeastern will also extend the existing N. Tazewell and N. Randolph streets into the site.
It is too early to tell whether this grocery store could potentially become a Piggly Wiggly, as the Washington Business Journal reported is a possibility after an ownership change of 10 local — but so far unidentified — Harris Teeter stores.
The Amazon Fresh store in Crystal City is closed, though the company says the closure is temporary.
ARLnow first received a tip about the closure on Saturday. Subsequent tips fretted about whether the closure might be more than temporary.
“I asked an Amazon associate… and she said no one knows why and management has not said why,” a tipster said. “Residents are worried it was shuttered, it’s our only easily accessible grocery store in the heart of Crystal City.”
But fret not, says an Amazon PR staffer, it will reopen.
“I can confirm that our Amazon Fresh grocery store in Crystal City is temporarily closed,” wrote Amazon’s Jessica Martin. “We regret the inconvenience to customers, and look forward to re-opening the store soon.”
She was not able to clarify a timeframe for reopening nor why the store closed.
“I don’t have any additional details to share at this time,” Martin wrote.
Amazon Fresh opened at 1550 Crystal Drive in Crystal City, a few blocks from the company’s Pentagon City HQ2, in July 2022. It’s the only full-service grocery store in Crystal City, though there are a pair of Harris Teeter stores and an Amazon-owned Whole Foods just outside of the neighborhood’s boundaries.
Amazon was rumored to have been planning to open a Fresh store on Columbia Pike, but that grocery tenant — whether Amazon or otherwise — ultimately fell through, delaying a planned redevelopment. Amazon has been “rethinking” its strategy for Fresh and other brick-and-mortar stores, according to various reports.
An apartment redevelopment proposed for a strip mall on Columbia Pike is stalled for the foreseeable future after the anchor tenant — a grocery store — fell through.
But some of the existing tenants, including the restaurant Atilla’s, have already moved out. And now, the Fillmore Gardens shopping center on the 2600 block of the Pike, which includes a still-operating CVS, is attracting graffiti artists and other signs of blight, according to neighbors.
Penrose Civic Association President Alex Sakes says the development was “slated to become a new crown jewel” but is now “an unbelievable embarrassment.”
“The never ending graffiti and garbage is truly appalling and gets worse by the day,” he said. “My residents and I don’t just work here or drive past this site — we live here. We take great pride in our neighborhood and are happy to step up to help beautify this site once again. I’m not here to point fingers or place blame, but the condition of this site cannot and will not continue to perpetuate.”
The Arlington County Board approved the plans to build a a 247-unit apartment complex with a ground-floor grocery store, rumored to be an Amazon Fresh, in March of 2022. Some tenants have already moved out, anticipating the project starting in late 2022 or early 2023.
Progress halted in late December, however, when the grocery store tenant told the developer it would not be moving in. Without a major tenant guaranteed for the space, the developer — Insight Property Group — could not borrow the money it needed to proceed with the project, Insight’s Sarah Davidson told the Penrose Civic Association earlier this month.
She confirmed that an unnamed retailer pulled out of the space with ARLnow, adding that “economic conditions will determine a revised project timeline.”
The grocery tenant, Davidson said in the civic association meeting, told Insight “they were pulling out of a significant number of pipeline deals, of which this was one.”
That sounds quite similar to what is happening with Amazon Fresh: across the country, proposed locations of the tech company’s grocery store are falling through, with at least one ending in a lawsuit against Amazon.
For Sakes, watching the shopping center struggle is a “worst-case scenario” for “once a thriving hub for diverse, Black and Brown-owned small businesses, including Atilla’s, Salsa Room, Legend Kicks, and more.”
Graffiti keeps popping up. Some drawings found on Monday were apparently scrubbed off only for markings to return today (Tuesday). Davidson says they’re trying to stay on top of it.
“The property owners are committed to keeping the property in clean and presentable condition,” she said.
Insight is also trying to crowdsource ideas for how to fill the storefronts for the next few years, until redevelopment plans can be revived.
“We would love to offer pop-up space for some of the local artist communities, provide space for activities that might be supplementary to CPP’s initiatives, and business incubators as well as find ways to activate some of our parking areas,” Davidson said. “Currently, we feel fortunate to have CVS and Burrito Bros who remain as tenants of the Center.”
(Updated at 5:25 p.m.) A new Ethiopian market has opened along Columbia Pike.
Afomia Organic Market at 4105 Columbia Pike opened its doors late last week, co-owner Shah Feyisa confirmed to ARLnow.
The market is in a shopping center near the corner of S. George Mason Drive and Columbia Pike in the Alcova Heights neighborhood. It is two doors down from Papa Deeno’s, a family-owned halal pizza shop that opened last year. Afomia is in a 960-square-foot space that was formerly occupied by a hairstylist and beauty salon that has since moved to S. Glebe Road.
The market stocks a large selection of spices, grains, meat, and groceries “from home,” Feyisa said. Plus, everything is organic.
“Afomia Organic Market is a small, family-owned business that sells injera, bread, herbs, spices, clothing, coffee sets, traditional coffee, and accessories, from Ethiopia. We additionally sell vegan cakes, which can be ordered for special occasions (by our email: [email protected]), and also vegan cookies and sweets! We also have non-vegan treats as well,” reads the business’s Yelp page.
The decision was made to move into this location because there’s a large population of Ethiopian immigrants living along the Pike but there are few markets to meet the demand, Feyisa noted. Plus, more and more people are becoming vegetarian and vegan, he said, and the market provides plenty of choices for them as well, he continued.
There are at least a couple of other Ethiopian markets in the area, including Ayana Ethiopian Market a half mile west on Columbia Pike and Lideta Gebeya about a mile away, on S. Glebe Road.
(Updated at 11 a.m.) Crystal City, for years a grocery desert, appears set to land a coveted Trader Joe’s store.
A construction permit application has been filed for 2450 Crystal Drive, one of the newly-upgraded Century Center towers just south of 23rd Street S. It calls for “landlord prep work to prepare for new Trader Joe’s Grocery Store.”
“Garage Levels, B1 and B2, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor are affected,” notes the permit application, which was filed on Friday.
As reported in February, a website for the renovated office complex says that a “food market,” as well as “casual and upscale restaurants, [a] boutique fitness club, and more,” are “in the works.” A new open-air retail plaza at the complex is set to open this spring, we reported.
Responding this morning to an inquiry from ARLnow, a Trader Joe’s spokesperson did not directly address whether the company would be opening at 2450 Crystal Drive, instead noting only that it’s not on a published list of imminent store openings.
“We consider many locations,” wrote Nakia Rohde. “All of the locations that are opening soon are listed on our website. Unfortunately, Arlington is not on the list at this time.”
Arlington has an existing Trader Joe’s store that opened in Clarendon in 2011. Other nearby locations include 1101 25th St NW in D.C.’s West End, 612 N. St. Asaph Street in Old Town Alexandria, 7514 Leesburg Pike in Tysons and 5847 Leesburg Pike in Bailey’s Crossroads.
Crystal City’s long grocery drought ended last year with the opening of an Amazon Fresh store at 1550 Crystal Drive. There are other grocery stores just outside of the neighborhood, with a Whole Foods at 520 12th Street S. in Pentagon City, and Harris Teeter locations at 3600 S. Glebe Road in the Potomac Yard area and 900 Army Navy Drive in Pentagon City.
Hat tip to Chris Slatt
The new Amazon Fresh store in Crystal City is now open.
This morning, Amazon announced that its branded, 16,000-square-foot grocery store opens today. Store hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
For more than a year, it was a bit of a mystery to exactly what was coming to 1550 Crystal Drive — even if all signs pointed to an Amazon Fresh. In February, the company finally confirmed it.
In addition to standard check-outs, the store will employ what Amazon calls “Just Walk Out technology.” Meaning, customers can exit the store “with the option to skip the checkout line.”
“Amazon’s Just Walk Out system uses ceiling-mounted cameras and artificial intelligence to track shoppers’ selections as they walk around the store and automatically charges them when they exit,” as described by Grocery Dive.
The other recently opened Amazon Fresh stores in Northern Virginia also use the technology.
The Crystal City Amazon Fresh is set to create “hundred of high-quality jobs with a starting wage of $15.50/hour,” according to a press release. “In addition to donating surplus food to local food banks.”
This will, technically, be the first grocery store in Crystal City in almost two decades, though there are a number of grocery stores nearby in Pentagon City and Potomac Yard.
Amazon Fresh is continuing its expansion across the region with three stores opening in Northern Virginia in just the past year including a planned store in Potomac Yard
Plus, it continues to be a rumor that Columbia Pike will be getting an Amazon Fresh as well. So far, Amazon has stayed quiet on the possible Pike store with a spokesperson telling ARLnow back in May that “we don’t comment on our future store roadmap.”
