The former Misomen ramen restaurant on Lee Highway
A note posted on the door of Misomen ramen restaurant on Lee Highway
The former Misomen ramen restaurant on Lee Highway
Misomen, a ramen and sushi restaurant on Lee Highway, now seems to have closed its doors.
The eatery only opened at the location at 5731 Lee Highway late last year, when it took the place of Asian Kitchen. Now, its doors are closed and windows covered, with a note covering up the restaurant’s hours of operation.
A call to a number posted on the restaurant’s door was not immediately returned, and Misoramen’s main phone line seems to have been disconnected.
But, according to Yelp commenters, the restaurant has been shuttered for a few weeks now. One first reported that the eatery was closed on Sept. 13, with tables and chairs removed from the space, while another wrote on Sept. 16 that the restaurant seemed to be closed during its normal operating hours and trash littered its floor.
The restaurant is located next to a former car repair center, and the original District Taco location.
Healthcare technology company Cerner is coming to Rosslyn, renting out space in the massive office building that recently became home to Nestle’s U.S. corporate headquarters.
The Missouri-based company plans to lease out just over 38,075 square feet at 1812 N. Moore Street, according to a release today (Tuesday) from building owner Monday Properties.
Cerner will occupy the entire 14th floor of the building, and part of its 12th floor, in order to house staffers working on the company’s contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. The company employs about 27,500 people across 35 countries, according to its website.
The move marks another success for Monday Properties in luring tenants to the 537,000-square-foot building, after a rocky few years following its opening in 2013. The developer built the tower “on spec,” without any tenants secured ahead of time, and it sat largely empty for months.
But Nestle’s decision to relocate its American corporate headquarters to the space, followed soon after by Nestle subsidiary Gerber, meant that roughly half of its space was spoken for in the space of of just over a year.
Cerner’s move comes just a day after plans came to light that WeWork plans to open a new coworking space at the CEB Tower (1201 Wilson Blvd), representing yet more good news for Arlington leaders looking to reverse Rosslyn’s rising office vacancy rate.
“We see this deal as further confirmation that Rosslyn has become the place to be for companies at the forefront of innovation, from technology and consumer goods to health care,” Mary-Claire Burick, president of the Rosslyn Business Improvement District, wrote in a statement. “Our proximity to the federal government combined with a highly educated workforce and vibrant urban core provides unique opportunities for corporations like Cerner that are experiencing exciting global growth.”
The building that’s been home to the original Bob and Edith’s Diner for the last 50 years is now listed for sale.
The real estate and development firm BM Smith is advertising the diner, located at 2310 Columbia Pike, for sale with an asking price of $2.5 million. Yet what that means for the restaurant chain, which operates four locations around Northern Virginia, remains unclear.
An attorney for Greg Bolton, the owner of Bob and Edith’s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the listing agent for the property at BM Smith.
The Bolton family opened the chain at the Columbia Pike location back in 1969, though county records show that a company controlled by BM Smith — the owner of a variety of other South Arlington properties — took over ownership of the location in 2015.
Jonathan Reed, a local realtor, first drew attention to the Bob and Edith’s listing when he shared BM Smith’s posting on his own website this week. As a longtime Arlington resident, he told ARLnow he was “shocked” to see the space listed on an internal database for realtors, and has even since directed two potential buyers to BM Smith since sharing the post.
Based on Reed’s examination of the listing, he believes Bob and Edith’s has a “four-year term” left on its current lease, and could opt to renew the lease for another term. Accordingly, he isn’t so sure that the building being listed for sale necessarily means the restaurant is on the move, though it certainly could be.
“It doesn’t seem like they’re closing or leaving, it could be that they opted not to buy the place,” Reed said. “Of course, there could be someone that buys it that doesn’t want to continue their lease… but whoever buys it will have to contend with the lease that’s already there.”
Ballston Quarter’s Wilson Blvd entrance under construction
Ballston Quarter construction from Wilson Blvd
Ballston Quarter’s residential and office space.
Courtesy photo
Ballston Quarter rendering (courtesy photo)
The developer behind Ballston Quarter is now promising a grand opening late next month, a minor departure from the September date originally targeted for the revamped Ballston Common Mall to begin welcoming customers once more.
Forest City is now targeting Oct. 25 for the development to open its doors “barring any unforeseen delays,” Forest City Regional Director of Marketing Jill Fredrick told ARLnow, via a PR rep. The bevy of restaurants and retailers set to call Ballston Quarter home won’t open all at once, but on a “rolling basis” over the next nine months, Fredrick added.
The overhauled mall has been in the works for years now, as Forest City has sought to refresh the aging structure with a mix of retail, office and residential space. But the exact timetable for its completion has been difficult to pin down, with the developer reporting some construction delays to county officials over the past few months.
“You’ve got to look at the magnitude of this project — it only slipped a month,” said Ballston Business Improvement District CEO Tina Leone. “Of course, we would’ve loved to have had a huge grand opening, but at least they’re opening.”
Leone and county leaders alike view the development as a critical one as Ballston continues to become an ever-more-urban section of Arlington — as she puts it, it will help transform Wilson Blvd into a “truly a retail street” and the neighborhood as a whole into “an 18-hour community.”
Yet the massive amount of construction required for the project, running in tandem with a host of other major Ballston developments, has snarled traffic in the area and forced visitors to the businesses that have remained open in the mall to wind through a confusing maze of scaffolding and tarps. Accordingly, Leone is quite anxious to see things start to wrap up on the site.
“There will be a critical mass of things starting to open in the fall, and then by the spring, end of the second quarter, it’s going to be up and rolling,” Leone said.
By the Oct. 25 opening, Fredrick expects that the mall’s “public areas will be fully open and accessible to the public, including vertical transportation elements like the escalators and elevators.” Leone says that will include clear ground-floor entrances along both Wilson and N. Glebe Road, as well as some big improvements to the mall’s parking garage.
“The elevator banks are going to match up with the floors in Ballston Quarter, instead of having to go up and down the stairs, and there will be more escalators,” Leone said. “It’s going to be more open, so you can actually see where you’re going and where the parking garage is. The connectivity is going to be much better. It couldn’t have gotten much worse, right?”
She added that sidewalks along Wilson will also be wider for people walking to the mall by the time it opens, which will help the development accommodate outdoor seating for a variety of its restaurants. The County Board is set to give the go-ahead for the new patios to open next week, when it could grant permits to establishments including Compass Coffee, South Block, Ted’s Bulletin, True Food Kitchen, Union Kitchen and Bartaco.
Leone also noted that the CVS pharmacy, which has remained open during the construction, will be accessible from both the Glebe and Wilson sides of the mall. And for fast food fans, she fully expects that the reopened Chick-fil-A will start serving customers by the time development opens.
Inside the mall itself, Leone hopes that the “wayfinding is going to be very, very clear” to help shoppers navigate the new space. Fredrick says construction will be ongoing even after the development opens, but she expects it will be “limited to the interior of tenants’ space and will not interfere with overall public access.”
Crucially, Leone says the new “plaza” at the center of the development should be open by the time fall rolls around, and she hopes to start working with Forest City to schedule activities and events in the space through the winter and spring.
One feature the area will be missing, however, is are the “large media screens” the developer originally proposed for the plaza. Attorney Evan Pritchard says the developer had hoped installing two LED screens there would “be an interactive and fun element to help activate the plaza,” but has since determined that they might not be allowed under county zoning rules.
Forest City is asking the Board to drop its request for the screens at its meeting Saturday (Sept. 22), though Pritchard expects to pursue a change to the county’s zoning ordinance to allow them in the future.
“We hope to have Board support on that,” he said.
With or without the screens, Leone hopes the plaza will be a natural “entrance into the market area,” a 25,000-square-foot food court home to 18 restaurants. She expects that will open by November, as will Punch Bowl Social, a bar offering a bevy of games and entertainment options.
As for the rest of the offerings at Ballston Quarter, Leone hopes to see everything open by spring 2019. But half the battle will be the mall finalizing tenants for its remaining open space — Fredrick said three quarters of the development is already leased, with “additional deals in the works.”
“It’s just a matter of getting everyone into their spaces,” Leone said.
A new Domino’s Pizza location could soon be on the way for Ballston.
The County Board is set to sign off this weekend on a use permit for the pizza chain to open up a new shop at 550 N. Quincy Street. The location is adjacent to a Jimmy John’s, just near the Founders Square development.
According to a staff report prepared for the Board, the new Domino’s will offer delivery for “the north and central Arlington areas including the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor.” The location would become the chain’s fourth store in the county.
Staff is recommending that the Board require the pizza purveyor to “implement a delivery and driver safety plan” before opening its doors, and stipulate that Domino’s delivery drivers can only park in the surface lot behind the building instead of on the street. The restaurant would be allowed to have four drivers working at any one time, according to proposed terms of the permit.
The Board will vote on the permit at its meeting Saturday (Sept. 22) as part of its consent agenda, a slew of noncontroversial items generally approved all at once.
Yong Kang Street, a long awaited dumpling and noodle restaurant, is open for business in the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City mall.
The restaurant features a mix of flavors from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. The restaurant is named after a street in Taiwan famous for its restaurants and street food.
Yong Kang Street is located between Garrett Popcorn and Haagen-Dazs. The restaurant is open 10 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. on Sunday.
The Taco Bell on Lee Highway will be out of commission for the next few months, as its owners tear down the existing store and replace it with a new one.
The fast food restaurant, located at 4923 Lee Highway near Yorktown, shut down last week and construction tape now blocks off its drive-through lane. The eatery will remain closed for the next three to four months, general contractor Steve Taylor told ARLnow.
Taylor said the exact timeline for the project will depend on the weather in the coming weeks, but current plans call for the old restaurant to be demolished and completely replaced.
County records show its owner, the Ionedes Family Corporation, received the necessary permit approvals for much of the project in April.
The records also show that the current restaurant was built back in 1993.
Dinner items at Le Kon in Clarendon (via Tiffany Gordon)
A new Mexican-Japanese fusion restaurant backed by a former “Top Chef” star is open for business in Clarendon.
Le Kon started serving up food on Sunday (Sept. 1) at a space located at 3227 Washington Blvd, according to spokeswoman Wendy Gordon. The restaurant replaces the short-lived Park Lane Tavern on the ground floor of the Beacon at Clarendon apartment building.
The eatery will be the first D.C. location for chef Katsuji Tanabe, who appeared on the Bravo program back in 2014 and has since opened restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
Its menu promises seafood-themed small plates, taco platters and entrees from a “Sonora-style grill.”
Gordon says Le Kon will start serving brunch this Sunday (and will eventually offer it on both days of the weekend), and is offering happy hour deals from 3:30 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.
The restaurant has space for around 200 seats, and will offer an outdoor patio as well.
The former American Tap Room in Clarendon (file photo)
Plans for the “FootFire” gym that could be on the way for 3101 Wilson Blvd in Clarendon (via Arlington County)
A boutique fitness studio could soon move into the space once occupied by the American Tap Room in Clarendon.
A gym branded as “FootFire” is applying for a use permit to open in a 49,200-square-foot space adjacent to an office building at 3101 Wilson Blvd, according to documents filed with the county on July 17.
Located just across from the Clarendon Metro station, the space has sat empty since the American Tap Room closed its doors in 2016. The restaurant had struggled for years with noise complaints from neighbors and the area’s high rent prices.
Lawyers for Christopher Hoffman, the gym’s owner, wrote in a permit application that the new fitness studio “will be a member-based running, training, recovery and education center focusing on the complete training experience for runners and other endurance athletes of all fitness levels.”
The attorneys added that the gym will offer both indoor and outdoor running classes, including “treadmill-based courses, group outdoor running exercises, indoor weight training, yoga and stretching courses.” Plans sketched out for the facility also call for a juice bar and daycare area.
The County Board is set to consider the permit request at its first meeting of the fall on Sept. 22.
A new bar and restaurant could be on the way for an office building along Fairfax Drive in Virginia Square.
Records show that a restaurant dubbed “Erasian” is applying for a license to serve wine, beer and mixed drinks in a space at 3811 Fairfax Drive.
Representatives with the company backing the venture, ABR LLC, didn’t respond to requests for comment on their plans for the restaurant. But the permit application, filed on Aug. 14, shows that the proposed restaurant would have space for anywhere from 101 to 150 people.
The office building is also home to a Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and was once the home of Water & Wall, a restaurant backed by chef Tim Ma that closed last year.
A sign posted on the door of Cassatt’s on Lee Highway
Just a few weeks after new owners took over, Cassatt’s Kiwi Cafe and Gallery has suddenly stopped serving customers these last few days.
As of this afternoon (Friday) a sign posted on the door of the New Zealand-themed eatery (4536 Lee Highway) informed visitors that the restaurant is closed, even though its posted hours would indicate it should be open. A tipster told ARLnow that the restaurant was similarly shuttered yesterday (Thursday), fearing its long-term future.
Longtime owner Art Hauptmann, who opened Cassatt’s 16 years ago, recently sold the restaurant to a pair of new owners: Mario and Marco Jelencovich. While the pair’s family has worked on other restaurants in the D.C. area before, Hauptmann previously said he was unsure of their plans for the eatery, though he hoped they’d keep the business going as usual.
The Jelencoviches haven’t responded to repeated requests for comment about Cassatt’s future, and no one answered the phone at the restaurant Friday.
County permit records show that Mario Jelencovich has successfully won a business license for the establishment, and had it inspected by the county recently, though they offer few other details.
