Say It Ain't So, Joe! Chain Closure Shows Revenge is a Dish Best Served With Unlimited Breadsticks

In the most shocking news since the ought-fourteen bombshell that forced us to retire our most popular meme* about the midscale chainification of Reston, Not Your Average Joe's, the perfectly average chainery that replaced our beloved Macaroni Grill, has announced it will close in July. Say it ain't so, Joe!

The Massachusetts-based chain is permanently closing its location in the Spectrum at Reston Town Center on July 15, according to a sign recently posted to the restaurant’s front door.

“We are so grateful to have been a part of your great community,” the sign says. “Thank you for the many wonderful memories and all your support throughout the many years.”

It's been here since ought-sixteen, so a decade is a pretty good run for a chain "concept," we guess. But we know what that soon-to-be-vacant storefront could mean!

We're so back, baby!

Right now, you can only find the Macaroni Grill on the blockchain, or maybe six time zones away (we need to take a tax-deductible Restonian On Your Side business trip to confirm this; we owe you, dear "web log" readers, nothing less). But Barnes & Noble triumphantly returned to Reston after a similar shocking closure, and we've hoped against hope before, so you never know!

* Said meme was never popular, the end.

Sign O' The Times: Lake Anne Unveils New Old Brutalist Signs, With A Dash of Mondrain

Hey, remember the time that Lake Anne Plaza's branding, including a somewhat suggestive sign that looked like it would be more at home in a certain park in Brambleton, was put up for a refresh?  Yeah, that was awesome. Well, it turns out that refresh is back from the branding refresh factory, which took out the vaguely oogy liquids, added some cool blocky elements and a touch of Mondrain, and came up with magic!

BEHOLD:

Cool "colorway," as the design kids might have said, back in design school where people routinely use terms like "colorway." Give us some good Mad Men-esque design blockquote, BFFs at FFX Now:

A concept design unveiled by Streetsense at a virtual meeting swaps the current fountain-oriented logo for a simplified look with blockier font intended to evoke the neighborhood’s 1960s origins and defining Brutalist architecture.

“The logo design took inspiration from midcentury color palettes and forms, including some iconic signs at Lake Anne,” said Jodi Dubyoski, a senior urban designer at Streetsense.

Refined over months based on community feedback, the concept cements a consistent style, while also offering more flexibility through different color options, for example, that can be adapted “to different messaging needs,” she added.

It's getting rave reviews! 

“Functionally, it’s very legible, and it looks [Piet] Mondrian-esque,” said [a community member], referring to the Dutch abstract painter known for his line compositions. 

And, of course, the logo is a nice play on one of our favorite skull-crackin' concrete adornments:

Put it all together, and you get some really nifty signs:

But the proposed placement of the so-called "beacon" signs... confuses us. Check it, as the kids no longer say, whether in design school or not:

Now we're just simple country "web loggers," but we're not sure why these signs would be placed sideways in the medians like this, where they would 1) cause drivers to crane their heads to look at the pretty colors, muttering "very legible, and it looks [Piet] Mondrian-esque" to themselves, brackets and all, as they careen towards a red light at 55 mph and 2) inform the residents of the Fellowship Lake Anne House across the street, residents who presumably know where Lake Anne is, of the location of Lake Anne.

We'd humbly suggest a sign that could be viewed from every angle, and luckily you can find them outside a lot of small-town laundromats (IYKYK, as the kids also no longer say). All they'd need is a small typography fix (and a little bit of Windex):

You're welcome.

Casinopocalypse Never: Developer Denies Interest in Reston, Herndon Casino, Nosiree Bob! (Simon)

 

No one:
Absolutely no one:
Comstock: We never wanted to build a casino in your stupid town anyway.

The fancypants casino bill has been dead (for now) for almost a month, and developer Comstock just issued a public statement saying nosiree, we never thought about building a giant casino entertainment project in Reston or Herndon, why would anyone think that, silly rabbits?

To be fair, Comstock probably felt compelled to issue the statement because an Action McNews teevee story conflated two unrelated events in our neighbor to the west, Herndon. At the same time as town officials were considering tweaking zoning requirements to make it difficult to build a casino there, ultimately deciding to try to simply prohibit them outright, they were dealing with another Comstock-related issue: Herndon is suing the company to get back the land for a fancy downtown development project the company backed out of in 2024. And the teevee people combined the two into one story, as they often do given the limited time between mattress commercials, and hence the public statement.

Give us some good public statement blockquote:

Contrary to what has been reported or speculated, Comstock has never pursued the approvals necessary for a casino development anywhere on the Silver Line outside of Tysons. The reason is straightforward: our concept for what this type of destination development should look like, what it should include, and how it should function is simply not compatible with a residential neighborhood.

Alrighty then! We'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but let's be perfectly clear, as the kids politicians said as recently as a decade ago: While Comstock didn't author it, the language in the original casino bill proposed back in ought-twenty-three by Sen. David Marsden (D-Burke) and Del. Wren Williams (R-Stuart) that Comstock supported included some very specific legalese about the location of any proposed casino that was still somehow nonspecific enough to make both Tysons and Reston possibilities, though that later got narrowed to Tysons (and then expanded back to include just about anywhere) during this year's legislative deliberations. So another company, if not them, could have built it here if that language had held and the bill passed. 

But we're glad that Comstock put their commitment to keep casinos away from residential neighborhoods in writing for all to see. If only some other equine-adjacent developers could do the same thing instead of poking around some moldy sixty-year-old property plats, we'd all be a lot happier, the end.

With Trump Truth Post, Reston Has Finally Arrived

Maybe you thought it was that time Money Magazine ranked Reston the 7th best place to live in the country. Or that time they named a disease and an opera after our plastic fantastic planned community. Or that time we got our fancypants Wegmans before Manhattan (yes, that Manhattan). Or that time the Metro finally arrived and all of our homes one particular penthouse quintupled in value. 

But no. It was only yesterday, May 3, 2026, that Reston finally arrived. That's because that was the day we joined the ranks of Bruce Springsteen, various"low IQ" politicians, Greenland, the Superbowl halftime show, and covfefe. That's right, Reston was at long last the subject of a Trump tweet truth. Check it, as the kids haven't said since well before his first term:

Good to see Fannie Mae getting with the program! Let's check out that inspirational photo greeting employees as they head past the fake harvested timber to the elevator banks. COMPUTER, ENHANCE:

Resisting the urge to make obvious comparisons that would get us put on a list, so haha, good thing it's posted against a russet brown background or the DRB would be awfully sore, haha, the end.

Swanky $10M Reston Penthouse Sets Record

 

ZOMG, someone roust Bob Guccione from his penicillin-lined tomb, as a swanky Reston penthouse has set a new record. 

The 27th floor penthouse at the JW Marriott Residences at Reston Station, presumably bathed in the perpetual sunlight of the motel's blinding signage, sold for an eye-popping $10.25 million last month. That's nearly double the cost of the second most-expensive Virginia condo sale ever, which was in (shudder) Rosslyn, which goes to show you what some people will do to be able to walk to a Matchbox Davio's Founding Farmers.

But what else do you get, besides a 5,700-square-foot aerie overlooking a vast swath of midscale chain retail? Give us some good real estate blockquote, BFFs at the Washington Business Journal:

The condos, which have their own private entrance, feature dedicated spaces and amenities, all on the 25th floor, including an owner's lounge, board room, rooftop grilling areas, rooftop dog park, and private fitness center.

Cool cool. Life without a rooftop dog park and "grilling areas" is a hollow existence, indeed. But what else could a mere $10.25 million buy you in our plastic fantastic planned community? 

COMPUTER, CALCULATE:

• 11,516 years of Reston Association dues. That's a lot of pool/pickleball time!
• An entire cluster—or two. We'd do it, just to rename Forest Edge Cluster to Forest Gump Cluster, a small price to pay for the laughs
• Approximately 640,625 cocktails at one of Reston Town Center's finer drinkeries
• 40,196 votes for Hunter Mill Supervisor
• 301,648 cans of Behr Russet Brown paint -- more than enough to paint the entire Pentagon a DRB-friendly color.
• 931,818 in tolls for round trips to the Tysons Corner Galleria, where you'd obviously shop if you lived in a motel penthouse
• 43 percent of Reston National Golf Course, which is more than what will remain open space if developers have their way, the end.

Casinopocalypse Later: Spanberger Vetoes Bill, Used Car Lot Casino Off the Table For Now

V. v. sad news for the people who find their living rooms too devoid of cigarette smoke and sadness to gamble on their phones and the developers who spent more than $3.5 million on their own bet that a fun casino could be built in the complete absence of local support in Reston Tysons Reston Tysons a specific used car lot in Tysons: Gov. Abigail Spanberger has vetoed a bill that advanced relentlessly through the Virginia House, bringing this multi-year saga to an end... at least for this legislative session.

Give us some good blockquote, Action McNews BFFs:

“Local governing boards should lead on proposed casino development, as has happened in every locality that now has a casino,” Spanberger said in a statement. “But in Fairfax County, the Board of Supervisors has explicitly opposed this legislation, and an overwhelming majority of the General Assembly members who represent Fairfax voted against it.”

The casino proposal changed in about a dozen ways in recent months but returned to where it started: with a proposed location in Tysons. The proposal called for funds to be split 70% to the state and 30% to Fairfax County. Fairfax County Board Chairman Jeff McKay told News4 that wasn’t enough.

Reston kept being put on and off the table (as in a meal to be devoured) as the bill twisted and turned, which means it could be back on the table in future legislative sessions.  But for now, we can breathe a sigh of relief, what, with no other unwanted development proposals trying to sneak into our plastic fantastic planned community in whatever way they can, even if it means digging up some badly xeroxed zoning documents which were filed and forgotten before Nixon was president. Right?

Right?

Update: Hunter Mill Supervisor Walter Alcorn issued a succinct statement thanking Spanberger for vetoing what he called a "bad bill," stating that "we never wanted it and never asked for it."

Call Me Loudounian

The rumors are true. After nearly two decades covering Reston like invasive English ivy, we’ve decided to move on to brighter, beiger pastures. That’s right—we’re swapping the earth tones of our plastic-fantastic planned community for the bright lights and particleboard charms of our neighbor to the west, Loudoun County. Back in the day, we used to derisively call this “graduating,” but we’re older and ... older now.

“But why?” one—maybe two—of you unrelated to us by blood or marriage might be asking. “What does Loudoun have that Reston doesn’t?” Thought you’d never ask, silly rabbits.

Midscale chains. A wise man once said that when one is tired of visiting the same shops and restaurants found in exurban strip malls blanketing 98 percent of the country, one is tired of life. We do have that here, but fortunately, there’s an even greater movable feast of midscale chain eateries, shopperies, cofferies, saladaries, cupcakeries—maybe even a picklery, if we’re lucky—to our west.

Unimproved roads. Ever since they added a fancy third turning lane to the intersection of Route 7 and Baron Cameron, we’ve been overwhelmed—what is this, Talladega? A windy two-lane road originally surveyed by a Civil War general, carrying traffic from dozens of massive subdivisions, would let us “bliss out,” as the kids no longer say, while sitting in never-ending traffic.

Latency. When you’re in the highly lucrative online blogging business, every millisecond counts. The only way we can be sure we won’t be scooped on a critical bit of wastewater board meeting news is to have a massive data center behind our home to plug our 300-baud modem directly into. Advantage: Loudoun.

Upscale vowels. The word “Reston” does roll off the tongue nicely, but having a couple of luxury “u”s in one’s address speaks to a certain exclusivity we’d like to grow accustomed to.

Metro. The only thing better than a nonexpress, 50-minute train to downtown D.C.? A 75-minute one.

One Loudoun, which is mathematically one better than Reston Town Center (no numerical value).

Spring vibes. Thinking that the Loudoun lifestyle would be an improvement is like living April 1 every day, the end.

This post originally appeared in the Reston Letter.