Reston Real Estate: The High-Low Game, Pt. 6

After a lengthy absence, it's time once again for everyone's favorite soft-market game of wheelin' and dealin', the Reston Real Estate High-Low Game! So grab the home edition and a purple crayon if you're playing along at home, and let's dive right in:

At just shy of $1.4 million, this lovely home on Purple Beech Drive is right on Lake Thoreau:

Breathtaking lake views from the moment you open the door! Spectacular lake front home with windows! Soaring ceilings! 3-decks! State-of-the-art gourmet Kitchen! Redesigned & Award winning Master Suite with fireplace & deck! Pool! Dock! This elegant home must be seen to be appreciated! Wonderful floorplan - main level Master! Exceptionally private location with views down the length of Lake Thoreau!

Actually! this! place! looks! lovely! We don't have much to say about it, except that the Realtor(tm) in question is apparently named "Boofie."

On the other end of the spectrum, this $251,000 home on Cocquina Drive in South Reston is one of the least expensive single-family homes we've seen in a while. The listing points out that it's got a "beautiful split foyer" and is a short sale, but still... a 5-bedroom home for $251,000? Maybe the photo at right wasn't just amateurishly taken with a $50 digital camera. Maybe the house really leans to one side. That would explain the "split" foyer, anyway.

So, what else is new? The building that houses Tavern on the Lake in Lake Anne Plaza is still on the market. Also, the 'ole distillery that's up for sale? Here's a choice nugget from its own listing: It's "zoned to be able to build 11 unit condo on property."

So much for that awesome Macaroni Grill View B&B.

Reston Real Estate: The 'Ole Distillery's Up Fer Sale, Jeb!

Once upon a time, in a kinder, gentler era before Design Review Boards or mauve paints marketed under names like "russet," there was a town called Wiehle. A kinder, gentler town, where the men were men, the women were women, and apparently everyone was drunk out of their minds 99.9 percent of the time, given that the one enduring establishment was a distillery.

In 1886 Carl Adolph Max Wiehle, a doctor from Philadelphia, purchased 3,228 acres of land located where Reston is now located. The distillery was built in about 1892, and originally served as the Wiehle Town Hall and the Wiehle Methodist Episcopal Church.

According to the documents, Wiehle wanted to create a planned community of about 4,000 residents, but the town began to struggle after Wiehle died in 1901.

Hmmm... Talk about a man ahead of his time, with a humdinger of a dilemma: Create a series of planned urban developments with arbitrary landscaping regulations and covenants... or get hammered? Tough choice there, for the hardy residents of Wiehle.

A. Smith Bowman purchased the land on which the town was located in 1927, and he renamed the area, which he made his farm, Sunset Hills. When prohibition was repealed in 1934, Bowman decided to convert the building into Virginia's only legal whiskey distillery, selling Virginia Gentleman bourbon. The distillery stayed in the area for 54 years before the growing business relocated to Fredericksburg, Va., in 1988.

Where it remains today, producing hooch so undrinkable that only obnoxious fraternity types from a certain state college can swallow it. But, anyhoo, why dredge up the past?

Because the distillery is now up for sale, for a cool $1.6 million.

The Bowman Distillery on Old Reston Avenue has sat vacant and slowly deteriorating for years, but last month the building went up for sale, sparking new hopes of the historic structure's revitalization. The $1.6 million asking price includes the 14,000-square-foot lot that contains the old distillery, as well as a 5,000-square-foot lot that is adjacent to the building.

John Scira has owned the building since 1998 and originally planned to convert the piece of Wiehle history into a bed and breakfast or condominiums.

Hard to believe that B&B idea didn't work out. Who wouldn't want to get away from the daily grind of suburban life by "roughing it" with a 150-yard walk to the nearest Pizzeria Uno? (We won't talk about the untenable two crosswalks separating it from the Macaroni Grill.)

Anyway, prospective homeowners, be warned. We're guessing it's going to take a bit more than a couple of cans of russet-colored paint to bring the 1892-era building up to DRB standards.

Tall Oaks Shopping Center Parking Lot Overflows; Also Hell Freezes Over

This box of Japanese Choco ThinThin "chocolate for girls," as noted on the oddly inappropriate baby-blue packaging, were the spoils of our investigative journey to the new Fresh World Supermarket in Tall Oaks Shopping Center this weekend. During one of our rare expeditions out of the secure undisclosed location from which we do our "reporting," we saw such wonders as live eels and crabs in a seafood section that looks more like an aquarium than a grocery store, seaweed soup packets that proudly proclaimed they "contain no sand," and -- most shocking and out of place of all -- the parking lot bordering Tall Oaks' stucco wasteland filled to beyond overflowing.

The clientele would probably worry the black T-shirt crowd or our enlightened neighbors to the west, but Fresh World appears to be doing what Giant couldn't -- packing them in. Now if that golf shop would just open, we could get a new set of clubs and wrap live eels around them for some real fun on the greens!

Tall Oaks Resurrected: Beef blood and golf clubs, the two great tastes that taste great together

With Tall Oaks awesome new Fresh World grocery store slated to open May 16, Reston residents got a behind-the-scenes look at how the international-themed store will begin a stucco-themed rebirth of the shopping center poorly signposted wasteland.

But first things first: Apparently, the awesome postcard campaign to win over Bloom wasn't a complete success:

Fresh World was selected to fill the space vacated by Giant in November, and Dallon Cheney, KLNB Retail's principal broker, explained why KLNB selected that store serve as the center's anchor rather than another grocery store. Cheney said although the community had requested that Bloom fill the space, the store turned them down. He said KLNB had been in negotiations with Fresh World at the same time.

Cheney said KLNB was very impressed with Fresh World's store in Springfield and they are confident that it will be a good addition to the community. He also said if the Reston store has the same sales as the Springfield location, they would be doing three times the business that Giant was doing and twice what a Bloom store would have done.

In your face, Bloom, with your handheld checkout scanners and your bleach-tainted pork chops and... whatnot! But what of the rest of the shopping center, which currently resembles a scene from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, only with better parking and more stucco?

He said they have been speaking with many coffee shops and other similar businesses, but so far they have not had any luck. However, he said they plan to revisit many of those businesses after Fresh World opens.

Cheney said they have also been attempting to negotiate with banks, a yoga studio and a golf store, and prospects are good for the golf store. "We're feeling very optimistic," he said.

Yep... we just picked up a quart of pork blood and a new set of tees. Now watch this drive!

So maybe that smell wasn't the algae in Lake Anne

Finally, a nuisance lawsuit we can actually get behind.

Lake Anne of Reston Condominium Association filed a negligence lawsuit against Dominion Virginia Power in late February. The case is a result of "Dominion's negligent destruction of one of the Association's waste lines," according to the lawsuit, and LARCA is seeking a full reimbursement of the costs incurred to repair the line. LARCA President Rick Thompson said the dispute "wasn't easily settled so we had to get counsel involved."

In early January 2007, an underground electrical cable on LARCA's property stopped working, resulting in power outages, and Dominion was called to investigate the issue, the lawsuit states. Dominion hired D.A. Foster to make the repairs, "including boring into the ground and the replacement of one of the underground cables and a transformer." The work was completed in January 2007 and shortly after the owner of one of Lake Anne's commercial properties contacted LARCA to report a sewage backup on the property.

We deal with a lot of crap on this site, but this is a first.

Come for the macrobiotic, grass-fed corn, stay for the Macaroni Grill (tm!)

A farmer's market is coming to Reston's fake downtown, fulfilling the longstanding dream of mixing generic, high-end retail with... smelly corn.

Reston Town Square — the park in Reston Town Center nestled between Midtown Towers, the building hosting Greater Reston Arts Center gallery and the new block of commercial buildings at South Market, which hosts Rolls Royce headquarters among other tenants scheduled to start moving in before summer — is the site for the Reston Town Center market.

No starting date has been set for the market, but Barbara Rovin, the Reston Town Center Association executive director, said she hopes the market would open no later than May 1.

Yay! So will this bring on the long awaited battle royale between RTC and Reston's original downtown, the comical-sculpture-festooned Lake Anne Plaza?

She said she does not think the Reston Town Square market would compete with other farmers markets, including the Lake Anne market held on Saturday mornings. "There is no reason why we can’t complement each other," said Rovin.

That's great! But with gas prices what they are, where will we drive the Escalade to pick up our locally grown, carbon-neutral rutabegas?

Bringing in wine vendors to the market is also under discussion.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

Tall Oaks Un-Giant To Open in May

Somehow forgetting to credit our own awesome, world-exclusive scoop, the local newspapers finally figured out that Tall Oaks Shopping Center is getting a new, international-themed grocery store, complete with beef blood and pork blood and whatnot.

Because the old media, ink-on-dead-tree types tend to do things like "ask questions," though, we now know more about the awesome new grocery. First of all, "El Grande Supermercado" translates into "Fresh World." The grocery store won't have a pharmacy, but it will open in May, as a flapping sign along Wiehle Avenue now suggests.

"Fresh World will carry things that you couldn’t find anywhere else," said Dallon Cheney, principal at KLNB, the leasing agent. The store specializes in seafood and fresh fish and its aisles are arranged by international foods. Super Ee, Fresh World’s parent company, currently owns a store in Springfield and there are plans to open more in Virginia and Maryland later in the year.

And like the Easter miracle of our aforementioned, world exclusive scoop, Fresh World could transform the vast stucco wasteland of Tall Oaks into a vibrant, bustling retail destination.

KLNB principal Dallon Cheney said several merchants near Fresh World's location in Springfield have been “so impressed by Fresh World” that they have expressed interest in opening locations in Tall Oaks.

The remaining vacancies will likely fill up also now that the center has a new anchor store, said David Ross, president of Atlantic Realty.

To figure out what stores would make the best fit, a community meeting is being planned to gather input.

Awesome. We love input. Like the input provided by this commenter:

i had a feeling the store that was interested in moving into that empty Giant space would not be your typical grocery store. The MO has become for an old, decrepit store to shutter and then the foreigners move in. They open an oriental grocery and tons of people flock to them. of course, most of those ppl don't speak English and/or are rude.

Guess we just met the Welcome Wagon.

Caddyshack 2: Why Does the RA Hate Gophers?

Ah, Reston's gardening plots. Perhaps the finest example of the planned community's communal, Earth-friendly spirit. Except maybe for the pesticides and the gopher assassinations.

Of the four garden locations, the site at Lake Anne is the only one that is not completely organic, Greenberg said. Gardeners at all other plots are forbidden from using any pesticides or fertilizers containing chemicals.

First, we learned that the RA is condoning the napalming of tree stands, now this? Which makes us wonder: What kind of hell-spawn pests are menacing the good people of Reston's beloved tomatoes and carrots and whatnot?

She said sometimes moles, groundhogs and other animals get into the plots, so RA has been looking at adding a nesting area for red-shouldered hawks.

We have a simpler and more effective suggestion:

At Tall Oaks, Hope No Longer Blooms Eternal, But a Grocery Store Still Returns from the Dead (OMG a very special Easter Restonian World Exclusive!)

It's only appropriate that on Easter, we discovered that the awesome empty Giant at the Tall Oaks Shopping Center Stucco Wasteland will soon be (ahem!) resurrected as another grocery store. Only it's not one of Food Lion's bleach-and-NASCAR-free Bloom alternatives. Instead, according to two festive multilingual signs in the windows, an "international" grocery by the name of El Grande Supermercado will soon take its place.

Thanks to our extensive language skills, we can ascertain that the store's name translates to "The Big Supermarket." There's apparently another iteration of the chain within spitting distance of the Mixing Bowl in Springfield and another on Gallows Road somewhere near Falls Church. They don't have a Web site, but fortunately, we can always count on the intelligent, well-travelled users of the Internets to give us the lowdown, in the form of the picture above and the thoughtful, in-depth review below:

Wtf. There's an "El Grande Supermercado" (which translates to "The Big Supermarket") in Springfield, West Virginia (the city we're staying in). Ha!! …okay fine…I thought it was funny.

-10: 35 pm

Omg! My mom just ate a peanut butter M&M. If you know my mom well enough, you'd pretty much know that she never eats anything "unfamiliar" LOL.

OMG! LOL! ROTFL! We totally feel like we've already been there now.

(Shout-out to an anonymous commenter for the tip.)

Just Call it No Oaks

Hey, guess what? Just four months after Giant vacated Tall Oaks Shopping Center Stucco Wasteland, the center may be on the verge of announcing an awesome new anchor tenant. Here's the thing, though: It probably won't be Bloom, it might not even be a grocery store, and it'll likely require a few teensy tiny site modifications to make the shopping center more visible from Wiehle Avenue, like cutting down a whole slew of trees.

KLNB Retail's Julie Cyphers, who oversees the leasing of Tall Oaks, said she “anticipates there being [an announcement] soon,” but would not elaborate because nothing has been signed.

With that store filled, Cyphers said she is optimistic about the remaining vacancies in the shopping center, which combined with the Giant space total 49,366 square feet of empty space, double the amount of occupied 24,634 square feet.

“We're talking to a number of folks,” she said about the center's other vacancies. “I feel like we'll probably pick up speed once the anchor store is in.”

After courting Bloom with an awesome postcard campaign and meetings with RA officials, it looks less likely that the awesome, less NASCAR-intensive Food Lion variant, is a viable option.

“There are some hurdles with Bloom,” said [RA CEO Milton Matthews]. “They would possibly want changes to the interior and exterior.”

Furthermore, Bloom's negotiations for new locations typically last a year, Matthews said.

“We don't want to wait a full year,” he said.

Yeah, that would be a bummer. Of course, those issues might be the same for any grocery store, and we all want easy access to leaky jugs of 2% milk and hilarious seasonal novelties, right?

Tara Coonin said she hopes above all else that any new tenant in Giant's old space would indeed be a grocery store.

“As long as it's a grocery store, we don't care. That's just my worst nightmare because that space would be perfect for a large gym,” she said.

We certainly don't want Tall Oaks' massive, empty parking lot filled with 'roid rage-fueled pickups, do we? So that brings us back to those, um, tall oaks:

Coonin said negotiations with Bloom raised this concern as well, with Bloom concerned that the center simply wasn't visible enough.

Part of the solution may be removing some of the trees behind the stores on Wiehle Avenue, a move that the RA would likely support.

“The association owns a lot of easements, we're committed to them getting more visibility to the stores in there,” Matthews said.

The RA actually supporting the wholesale removal of trees? Check the sky for flying pigs. And bring on the Agent Orange!

Moldgate Revisited: The Saturday Night Massacre (only on a Monday, and with more mold)

Remember how a whistleblower with courage and pluck, kind of like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich only not a woman, dared stand up to the monolithic Fellowship Square Foundation and say its Lake Anne buildings were filled to the gills with scary, toxic mold? We sort of forgot about it, too, but it turns out that after getting fired, he's now been evicted.

An ex-employee of the Fellowship Square Foundation was evicted from the Lake Anne location Monday after he refused to move out upon his termination in August.

Oliver Thomas was hired by the Fellowship Square Foundation as the chief of maintenance for both buildings on April 1, 2003. He was fired in August 2007 in what he believes was retaliation for his vocal concerns about mold and bacteria growing in the building's infrastructure.

Thomas and his family maintain that the 35-year-old building's heating and cooling system is corroded and contains mold that has caused the family severe allergies and health problems.

Director James Garrett said Thomas was fired because of insubordination.

Thomas filed a lawsuit against the Foundation for wrongful termination but continued to live in the apartment initially provided by his former employer.

Wow. Nearly six months without paying rent before getting evicted? Is the apartment still available?

Anyway, Thomas has a lawyer and a lawsuit and a new job and a new apartment. The real question is whether or not folks at the Fellowship House actually got their newspapers this week.

Reston Real Estate: The High-Low Game, pt. 5

We start this edition of everyone's favorite soft market game of wheelin' and dealin' not with the usual McMansion or condo, but a restaurant in Lake Anne Plaza.

Hidden Gem located with a view of Lake Ann in Reston. Where else can you get a high quality property for under $400 a square foot? Present owner relocated and pursuing other interest. TOP Opportunity for a restaurant owner currently leasing. Make a quick offer to own tax benefits and get a jump start on Spring inundation of outdoor customers with many seats with a view of the lake.

You might want to get an exterminator to check out that inundation. It doesn't mention which restaurant is on the block, but the address suggests it's the building housing Il Cigno Tavern on the Lake. The asking price of $1.7 million will buy a lot of tapas!

Too rich for your blood? Just $149,000 will get you this charming three-bedroom walk-up in Freetown Court.

SHORT SALE, 3RD PARTY APROVAL... BEAUTIFUL CONDO, 3 BEDROOMS, 1 FULLBATH, GREAT LOCATION, BREAKFAST ROOM, LOCATED ON 2ND FLOOR, W/ BALCONY AND MUCH MORE...

Awesome! With a mortgage of just $705, you can use all the money you're saving on rent to buy a dictionary and a new keyboard with a SHIFT key!

Meanwhile, bargain hunters take note: One of our previous winners, the swank Town Center condo, is back on the market for the low, low price of $1.995 million, a savings of more than $300,000. Dinner at Uno's is on us!

No, they didn't see that balloon-making clown on the Plaza

The Virginia Polar Plunge attracted what one newspaper account called "tens" of people willing to expose themselves to the chilly waters and iggy runoff of Lake Anne, each raising funds for Camp Sunshine, a Maine facility for children with life-threatening illnesses. But why, you may ask, did the event organizers pick Lake Anne?

“Last February [Jennifer] said we should have one in Virginia. Since there are no oceans handy we looked at Lake Anne,” Jennifer's mother, Gail Toth, said.

Just don't tell anyone in Virginia Beach.

Tall Oaks: Hope Blooms Eternal Pt. 2: The postcard is mightier than the sword

Ever since the awesome Tall Oaks Giant closed last year, leaving behind an eerie wasteland of empty shelves and stucco in the mostly vacant shopping center, people have been hoping that Bloom, Food Lion's less bleachy, non-Nascar-intensive grocery chain, would take its place. Turns out Bloom may well be interested after all.

According to the campaign’s initiator, Tara Coonin, decision makers at Bloom have told her that the grocery store is interested in the space formerly occupied by Giant. She said more than 1,500 postcards were mailed to Bloom to encourage the store to open at Tall Oaks.

That awesome postcard campaign actually may have worked. Yay! Of course, there's one small hitch:

However, she said, the chain is reluctant to move into the space until better signage for the shopping center is placed on Wiehle Avenue. Coonin said the leasing company for Tall Oaks, KLNB, has tasked a consultant with a signage study for the area.

Awesome! Maybe they'll erect a giant blinking neon sign surrounded by spotlights visible from outer space. Or at least replace the missing letter from the word "Center" on the existing sign. But how do we get those pencil-pushing bureaucrats to move from a "signage study" to a... well, an actual freaking sign? How 'bout another petition!

The petition, found here, states that the undersigned "understand Bloom has begun negotiations with Tall Oaks Village Center to open a store where Giant was previously located. We would like the process of opening a Bloom to be done in a timely, efficient manner by all parties involved so that Bloom will be opening its doors to the public as soon as possible."

Next up: Convincing a Captain D's to take the place of the shuttered stucco Burger King.

Oh, the humanity!

Lake Anne Chevron, which was out of business for more than a year after a drugged-out driver hit the building and started a massive fire that attracted more TV station helicopters than a remake of the beach scene in Apocalypse Now, has suffered yet another insurmountable blow. Below is a picture of the carnage, but be warned -- it ain't pretty. We'd suggest getting anyone under the age of 17 or over the age of 63 out of the room before scrolling down, because the uncensored scene of raw destruction depicted below will shock and offend just about everyone who believes in Reston's core principles of truth, justice, and the mauve-colored way.


Okay. Everyone with delicate constitutions out of the room?


Don't say we didn't warn you... here goes.


There are no words.

Actually, the whole thing kind of sucks, because the accident happened in front of two other drivers who, like the driver of the "big box" style truck, drove off without notifying anyone.

Kapoor hoped to present the perpetrator’s credit card number, but the officer told him that privacy laws preclude him from pursuing anyone based on a credit card number. Kapoor said he received the same answer when he tried to send the credit card number to the oil company.

Just like in one of those buddy movies starring a wisecracking Cop on the Edge and his long-suffering parter who's got one more week to go until he retires and is Getting Too Old For This, those paper-pushing bureaucrats are actually helping the criminals! Maybe once Chuck Norris is finished shilling for Mike Huckabee, we can get him down here for some Texas-style justice.

Moldgate at Lake Anne: A sordid tale of recriminations, coverups... and Bingo nights

Who knew so much was festering behind the seemingly placid mauve facades of Lake Anne Fellowship Square? Lawsuits, allegations and counter-allegations, stolen newspapers, Bingo nights and... mold. Icky black mold. So says a former employee of the center, who's suing to get his job back.

A lawsuit filed by Oliver Thomas against the Fellowship Square Foundation for reinstatement of employment alleges a deteriorating heating and cooling system in the two Lake Anne Fellowship buildings.

Thomas was hired by the Fellowship Square Foundation as the chief of maintenance for both buildings on April 1, 2003. He was fired in August 2007 in what he believes was retaliation for his vocal concerns about mold and bacteria growing in the building's infrastructure.

Fellowship Square management has since come forward and said that they've tested the air, and it's as fresh and clean as a mauve-colored whistle. In the meantime, local residents are organizing.

Muenzer said the tenants lack any sort of association.

“We have nothing here. We have bingo on Tuesdays,” she said.

Or at least trying to organize:

Thomas and his lawyer, Henry Fitzgerald, have organized an informational meeting for invited residents in the meantime at the Lake Anne Reston Community Center on Friday. In addition to those invitations, Thomas slipped an informational packet on mold that included the article in last week's Times under the door of most of the residents, he said.

That article may not have been read by most of the residents, as The Times received several complaints from Fellowship House residents that the paper was not delivered last week.

Garrett said he was unaware of staff removing the papers, which are normally delivered in a stack to the lobby.

Mary Muenzer, a resident of the Lake Anne Fellowship House, said there have been no copies of The Times in the lobby rack since Wednesday, the day the article was published.

“We have a right to those newspapers,” she said.

As a former president once learned the hard way, it's not about the crime; it's the coverup. And this goes all the way to the top! Or to the county board of supervisors, anyway.

On Sept. 24, Supervisor Cathy Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) entered a board matter titled “Regulating Mold” that asked the Board of Supervisors to ask staff to research existing statutes to determine what legal or oversight options exist to “protect our most vulnerable citizens.”

Hudgins cites a notification about “mold concerns in residential dwellings, notably a senior facility,” for her interest in the matter.

The county investigated, and it turns out there was mold after all. But it's apparently nothing a bottle of Clorox can't take care of!

Fairfax County zoning enforcement inspector Bruce Miller inspected the building after Thomas' complaint shortly after his termination in August.

Though mold and dust were found, it is not a criminal matter, nor is it regulated by the county, said county spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald. The only action the county will take is in the form of a recommendation.

“In cases like this we make recommendations that it be cleaned with a mild bleach solution,” she said.

Great idea! We'll grab the squeegie.

Wheeeeeeee!

The falling housing market is pushing Fairfax County into a $220 million budget shortfall.

The crunch on government spending is expected to be worse in other communities, including Loudoun and Prince William, where housing values are slumping more dramatically and foreclosure rates are higher. But the news that Fairfax, an inner suburb with more stable property values and a robust job market, is suddenly feeling such profound consequences of the housing bust suggests that the effects on the regional economy are just beginning to be felt and could last for years, county budget analysts said.

Foreclosures in Fairfax have jumped from just under 200 to nearly 4,000 this year, and housing prices are falling:

The average price of a house in Fairfax County was down 4 percent, to $500,462, last month, compared with the previous year, Long said. And the numbers will probably worsen next year.

As your friendly neighborhood Realtor(tm) will tell you, that means this is an excellent time to go bargain hunting, like this Lake Anne waterfront condo, now on the market for a scant $219,000:

BANK SAYS GET THIS SOLD. BRING ALL REASONABLE OFFERS!!!!

What are you waiting for? Sell your "average" Fairfax County house and buy two, and you'll still have enough leftover change for tapas at the Plaza!

Hope Blooms eternal

Lake Anne residents aren't giving up on their dream of having Bloom, Food Lion's slightly less NASCAR- and bleach-intensive chain of grocery stores, squeeze into the stucco wasteland better known as the Tall Oaks Shopping Center. They're writing postcards.

Bentana Woods cluster president Tara Coonin is opening up a more traditional line of communication to find a solution with a postcard campaign.

To date, Coonin said she has handed out nearly 1,500 postcards addressed to the Bloom Grocery Store Real Estate Department, urging the chain to open a location in Tall Oaks. Residents simply have to sign the card and stick a stamp on it.

A woman who answered the phone in Bloom Real Estate Department said they've “been enjoying those, there's been so many.” The typical efforts involve a couple phone calls, she said.

Awesome! We're glad they're enjoying the postcards. But who wouldn't enjoy getting 1,500 postcards like this one?


Meanwhile, there's still the question of whether the Tall Oaks owners actually want to fill the vacant space, or if they'd rather the shockingly empty shopping center degenerate into a pile of moldy, rotting stucco in anticipation of some awesome redeveloped shopping center, perhaps made of synthetic stucco.

Coonin said Bloom representatives did not deny they had looked at the space when she contacted them. Despite her best efforts, Coonin, a Realtor, said an ulterior motive by the owners may mean Tall Oaks has an uncertain future.

“I'm not convinced the landlord or the management company are doing that much to fill the space,” she said. “I wonder if they aren't trying to vacate it to redevelop it.”

On the bright side, that means there'd be space for the Macaroni Grill once its current location is razed.

Well, it's closed. Now what do we write about?

Yesterday was the final day for the Tall Oaks Giant, which we've written about once or twice. So we did a bit of that "citizen journalism" all the cool kids are talking about and visited the store one last time. Also, we needed some frozen waffles and maple syrup.

The store was a beehive of activity at midmorning, but much of it came from the folks dismantling shelves and running inventory on the remaining dented canned goods and $5.99 videos (anyone want to see Santa Clause 3: Down the Chimney and Direct to Video?) A security guard wandered around the front of the store, making sure no one left with an unauthorized souvenir or a bottle of Super G peppercorns. A few desultory customers were wandered the store in a daze, and the one cash register open was decorated with kids' cards saying things like "We'll miss you."

It's the end of an era, and quite possibly, the end of Tall Oaks as a viable commercial center, at least until it's demolished and replaced with something even more awesome and less stucco-y. And yet, we're left with one overwhelming question: Does Safeway Select cola taste as good as Super G cola?

Watch your step!

Coming soon to Reston: More hilarious outdoor statuary.

An already-vibrant arts community that counts the Greater Reston Arts Center and the League of Reston Artists as its leaders will welcome the Initiative for Public Art in Reston, a nonprofit that has been formed thanks to a large gift from an anonymous donor and the pledged support of several community organizations.

A collaborative effort among RCC, Reston Association, Reston Town Center Association, Arts Council of Fairfax County, GRACE and LRA will work on creating a master plan for the initiative, which may serve as a national model for other communities, according arts council President Ann Rodriguez. The effort has even attracted the attention of the national organization, Americans for the Arts.

“They have indicated they're going to be watching the process in Reston with wide eyes,” Rodriguez said.

That's good, because if they don't, they might trip over pieces like the one near Lake Anne Plaza pictured above. Assuming, that is, that they don't think it's a heat exchanger for some vast subterranean complex populated by poured-concrete golems.

But we digress. The consortium expects to wrangle funds from developers to include such art in their projects, plus incorporate existing statuary into an awesome master plan. Their first big project?

One of IPAR's first projects to oversee and guide will be the two Metro stations in Reston. Rodriguez said both stops will feature public art.

The group will seek public input for such projects, so here's our suggestion for appropriate art for the Metro stations: A terra cotta mural depicting the heroic moment the Tysons developers slapped a lawsuit on the project, lots of statues of people clapping loudly, plus, in a tribute to this historic photo, a large picture depicting the moment that the last track is laid near a Boxter-filled kiss-n-ride lot in Loudoun County.