New grocery store coming to Bailey’s Crossroads
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| A sign on the future grocery store on Leesburg Pike. |
A Food Star grocery store is opening up in the former Toys R Us building at 5521 Leesburg Pike in Bailey’s Crossroads – possibly by the end of the year. Toys R Us closed in 2018 after the company filed for bankruptcy.
Food Star is known for its large selection of international items, especially from Latin America and the Caribbean.
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| The Food Star in Alexandria. [Food Star] |
There’s one other Food Star, at 206 W. Glebe Road in the Arlandria area of Alexandria. That store relocated from Columbia Pike at S. George Mason Drive in Arlington in 2017 when its small retail strip was demolished to make way for a mixed-use development.
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| Renovations are under way at the old Toys R Us building. |
Food Star will be the second new grocery store in Bailey’s Crossroads this year. Aldi opened in the former Babies R Us store at 5725 Columbia Pike in September. Meanwhile, the Safeway at Crossroads Center closed in June.
Oh this news just keeps getting worse.
How is this bad news?
Food Star is a dump, at least the one that was on Columbia Pike in Arlington. Basically a step up from Murrays.
If you've never shopped at one of the international grocery stores, I strongly recommend it. My favorite is Americana right next to the Barcroft dam. The selection of food that is NOT American is impressive and they have real butchers. I also love the store in Lincolnia (cannot think of the name.) If you need interesting ingredients or spices, they'll likely have it.
Time to get out of your shell, explore the diversity of the world that is right in your backyard!
We use to have a Whole Foods until they figured out Mason was a bad investment and moved to a more up and coming part of Alexandria.
…um, what does that have to do with Daren's post?
A 50,000 sq ft Whole Foods is moving into downtown Falls Church.
There use to be a really nice Italian restaurant on the top of hill next door to the former Baby's r US. Now its a huge Laundromat. And now Tows R US is going to be a junk grocery store under the guise of an international foods store……..please. This area is an ever increasing decline: homeless shelters, vacant lots, soviet style looking interim parks, junk and litter everywhere. Folks its time to change your glasses.
I don't think anyone has issues with international grocery stores. There are so many in this area already. This is a budget store that sells low end products – similar in nature to a pic-n-pay you would find in rural poor areas. That is not the kind of businesses we should want. The prior posters were correct – we have had some nice stores and restaurants but they left this area because the revenue wasn't there. The rents decrease in the area and allow for lower end businesses to lease. Until we improve transit and attract better quality of businesses the area will stagnate.
Case in point is Barcroft Plaza. If the DMV plan would have gone through that plaza would have died and have been filled with discount stores. It was already headed that way because the county would not work with higher end businesses and attract like other areas of the county do. The community fought tooth and nail and got Glory Days there. And that plaza came back to life. It is always hopping now and it is great. Orange Theory, take out food, dry cleaners, bank, grocery store, etc. It should be a model as to putting the right kinds of businesses in place can improve the overall economy.
But that was not the vision of the leadership – because Ms. Gross is a dinosaur with zero vision. Any successes in our district have occurred when the population went against her "vision"
Gross's vision in stuck in the 70s that pushed for social engineering. That social engineering concept destroyed the fabric of neighborhoods, such as the DC waterfront. And all that 70s crap has now been demolished and replaced with vital and robust waterfront.
And what does Penny do in Baileys, tears down a crappy 1960s office building , albeit that needed to go and replaced it with and an interim park that looks like something out of the eastern block, empty lots and a revitalized stock yard for utility maintenance equipment. The problem, the County spent millions on all of this and the community got nothing in return…..ZERO.
Gross I hope you are listening, if you had any decency you would retire.
I concur. We need to bombard Gross with our Vision for the area instead of being passive about our future. What was the DMV plan for Barcroft?
Ill try again, the Blog blocked my first comment response. Our wonderful County and State leadership were gong to move the DMV from Four Mile Run to Barcroft Plaza. There was a huge meeting to fight against its relocation. Penny Gross did not even have an iota of interest or concern to show up for the meeting and support her constituency. Instead she encouraged the re-use of the shopping center.
Luckily between community outrage and Harris Teeter Corporate getting pissed off, the landlord retracted the offer to DMV. Bad idea all around.
It’s a step down – much rather have a grocery store at Baileys which is too large a space for anything else. What, more strip mall businesses like the near empty AT&T store? The departure of non-food retail is something to be mourned- it’s all the internet or Target/Walmart now. The loss of Borders to bankruptcy left fewer areas for the community to meet up, so it’s getting harder to draw in new business to begin with; I’m not sure what’s left to occupy all this business space. We have to take what we can get.
These stores should be bulldozed. The land owners and the County should be implementing the Comprehensive Plan with Mixed Use Development and not more junk stores that will further push the district into decline and lessen the impetus for investors to reinvigorate Baileys.
Not every single underutilized shopping center can be turned into mixed-use development. That is pie-in-the-sky foolishness.
Please follow Bailey's Crossroads and 7 Corners Revitalization Corp on Facebook and come to our meetings and get involved!
Thanks!
Here's your opportunity Mason District! Submit your ideas for land use planning until Dec. 3rd.
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/planning-development/plan-amendments/sspa/south
But hurry…the deadline for this two year cycle is Dec. 3rd
Could you share some ideas that have been posited for planning?