The Deleted Scenes - Is This Really a Strip Mall?
Today we’re in Vienna, Virginia, a D.C. suburb with a fairly traditional main street corridor, along which today’s building is located. It’s a pretty basic neighborhood-sized strip plaza, with a bunch of small stores and restaurants. But if you’re familiar with this series—in which this is the 30th entry!—you’ll know that there’s a little more to it. “What Do You Think You’re Looking At?” features a building with a long or interesting history, and which generally began life as something different from what it is today. This one is nothing too exotic, but it did not begin life as a little strip mall. Any guesses? Here it is—the part we’re interested begins around the Chopt storefront (the first raised façade about 2/3 to the right) and ends past where I was standing when I took this picture of it. You are looking at a medium-sized former supermarket which once anchored this L-shaped strip mall. The supermarket closed in 2013 and the space was subdivided, making the strip mall a larger collection of smaller businesses. There is no major anchor store now. A local news site quotes a Vienna official on the fairly simple project: “They are basically just subdividing the space and giving the façade a face lift.” Interestingly, the same article observes, “The future of the former Magruder’s site [the supermarket] mirrors a trend in Vienna in recent years wherein sites that held large businesses have been divided into smaller spaces.” This is good—it’s what I like to call “commercial density,” i.e. more enterprises per unit of land. All things being equal, it’s a positive trend in using suburban spaces more productively. And it’s also just kind of cool. Related Reading: What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #4 What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #7 Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekend subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive of nearly 200 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You’re on the free list for The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. |
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