New Annandale grocery store to open in May
K Market, the huge international supermarket under construction
in the former Kmart on John Marr Drive in Annandale, is expected to open in
May. The store will have a food court, a seafood section with
live fish, a butcher shop, and much more.
27 responses to “New Annandale grocery store to open in May”
Leave a reply
It is better than leaving this space vacant, but the remodel of this shopping center is horribly underwhelming. This center should be entirely razed and rebuilt as a modern, mixed-use town center akin to Stonebridge (Woodbridge) or the Mosaic District. The center looks so outdated and bland.
Most of the shopping centers in central Annandale need to be razed and rebuilt to today's standards. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors needs to set ambitious goals for redevelopment or we're going to continue to see not much other than smaller, marginal niche businesses opening up here and there.
While I'm excited about this new store and what's going on in this space, I agree that this is a prime spot to do more. I'm not sure if this is still accurate or not but this is/was a plan: https://sjmpartners.com/coming-soon/kmart/
It would have been nice to have something like the Mosaic district. I don't feel we need anymore international grocery stores in this area!!
Absolutely agree! The suggestion to raze and rebuild into a mixed use space would do wonders for Annandale and property values!
How about a government funded rehabilitation/work program for homeless people that would like to get back on their feet & that gives them the means to be contributing & successful members of society. I see many homeless people begging or just alone & helpless. There should be a program in place that helps them to get their basic needs met & a way for them to get employed & housed.
The open your home to them or let them build it next to your house.
This is an extremely grotesque response…but expected.
You are not any more human than those experiencing homelessness.
CATBOY then you apparently aren't human. Take them into your home or let them build a homeless shelter near where you live. Why is it that Mason District has to absorb all the homeless and homeless support activities. Can't they be built in Tyson's as well? I'm not against helping people, what I am against is having one district in particular singled out every time someone wants to help. If helping is so good, spread the wealth and stop trying to run down Annandale and the Mason District by making it the dumping ground for Section 8 and homeless. There is enough crime in that area already. Apparently its only "human" if you are forced to help people in your town and district and expressing any objections is verboten.
For the record I do not mind living next to a homeless shelter.
I understand and agree with your desire for an egalitarian approach when it comes to public facilities.
Normally I would agree that dense, mixed-use development is the best type of redevelopment for "downtown" Annandale. However we should keep it as is for the time being. The problem is that the county wants to approve mixed-use developments left-and-right for revenue but they don't want to spend the money on infrastructure to support this type of development. The updated design guidelines for Annandale CBD guarantee that we will be seeing mixed-use development in our future. What is the cost of this type of development? Traffic on 236 is bad as it is. Adding massive parking garages to service the increase in density, as well as shifting street designs to be "pedestrian oriented" are only going to make traffic exponentially worse.
It makes no sense to shift to a dense downtown when the greater context is unchanged. These "walkable" places are only driven to. Creating a Mosaic on John Marr only spells a traffic nightmare for Annandale, because we are unwilling to further expand public transit and general connectivity/permeability within Fairfax County.
AMEN
AMEN
AMEN!!!
Thank you for sane insight and clear wording. So many commenters here (and devlopers everywhere) think bigger is always better.
Do you folks ever stop to consider that the people you don't trust with any open or vacant lot whatsoever are not the people you want to arrange a mini-city in a small town?
You know what's so great about all the mixed-use districts in our area? THEY'RE ALREADY RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD. So use them and be glad they're not in your lap because Annandale can't handle it.
–kda
I will post something positive about this. K Market is a latin grocery, and I believe this is the only latin grocery in central Annaandale. Also, there's a food court, I bet it will have some awesome snacks and good casual latin food. I can't wait to try this place.
You are so right,
its really not that every other supermarket here is either a Latin grocery store or a Korean BBQ
No, Not at all 🙂
Re: traffic in Annandale. I agree that transportation improvements (bike lanes, sidewalks, smart intersections, complete streets) are necessary as we go forward. I disagree that the traffic in Annandale is so bad that we should slow down development. We have been taught that the only good intersection is one that we can whip through without pausing because the lights are always green. The LOS approach to traffic management has twisted our expectations. The problem is that LRT is designated as a through arterial and people expect it to be almost a highway. We have to learn to accept that waiting through a signal at the busiest times of the day is not evil, just normal if you want a thriving, human-focused downtown area. Designing our cities for extremes of traffic and parking has led to the inhuman physical environment we see everywhere…but things are changing.
James, we definitely are in agreement over what we want our cities to look like. I am huge proponent of human-scale land use design and I practically salivate over a pedestrian oriented future for Annandale. Imagine you are the same way.
What I am trying to say is that bike lanes, wide sidewalks, smart intersections, and complete streets are not enough on their own. We cannot expect people to change their behavior based on these design guidelines. They create a strange juxtaposition in our landscape. It's a juxtaposition just as strange as our current bedroom community landscape in a county with almost 1.5 million people. These changes in land use favor the pedestrian, but the greater context of our region completely ignores the pedestrian. Alternative modes of transportation are completely impractical. As long as efforts to densify the county remain isolated, transportation will continue to suffer.
It is true connectivity that makes mixed-use development useful. Who is going to bike to these places? Who, other than those that live in a 0.25mile catchment area, are going to walk in these places without first arriving by car? We need a large-scale overhaul of alternative transportation and we need it quickly if this is to be our future.
Catboy – I reread your original post and find that I agree with you as well. I am the Mason rep on the Sidewalk and Trails Adv Committee, so I am firmly on board with alternative transportation. A complete overhaul or a recentering of the county's perspective on transportation is needed; development can't run rampant without this. They are mutually dependent. Unfortunately, we can't hold anything in place while we correct something else, and we can't as citizens manage to have that a big impact on development. I, too, have read the plan and find that it overemphasizes big multi-use developments at the expense of smaller, community oriented improvements and changes – the kinds of uses that are more in tune with alternative transportation. We aren't going to see (or perhaps) want Metro down 236, but we COULD see a more complete bus transit system with interconnections. That is something that many cities (outside of the US) have and it allows for large development, less traffic, and greater human connectivity.
I would prefer a walmart in stead of kmarket
I agree.
Other than one restaurant, there are no commercial establishments in Annandale that I care to frequent. I go to Tysons, Springfield, Fairfax or Alexandra.
Good for you.
Vacuum shop, coffee shop, lunch, drug store, farmers market, grocery store, dentist, doctor, medical supplies, post office, bank, glasses repair, banking – are all establishments I frequent in Annandale. (Good for me!)
Disappointing to say the least. Annandale is a dismal place.
Penny Gross has no vision and we will continue to get these shoddy businesses until we get new leadership with new vision. We need someone who cares about the voters/citizens and not their re-election.
There's no such politician with interest in anything other than re-election.
You are probably correct, but Penny has been in her position for far too long. Gt someone with fewer years in the office who hasn't built relationships that they aren't willing to let go (within the community) and who can look at this area with new vision……Penny can no longer do this.
For folks who would like something other than the K Market and smaller shops in the defunct K-Market site….stop whining and complaining. Take an economics course and finance course….Then you will come to realize that either put up your own money to buy the property … or be quiet. Don't look to Fairfax County's bloated bureaucracy to provide a solution…It is not their job. Taxes already have been climbing steadily…providing subsidies will only increase taxes…