Vienna, VA approved four buildings under the now-repealed Maple Avenue Commercial (MAC) zoning.
The Chik-Fil-A/Car Wash is what it is. The current owner of that Chik-Fil-A franchise is at least the second owner, since this building went up around six years ago. Unsurprisingly, the sidewalk-based seating, 20′ off a busy arterial highway, remains empty 24/7. I don’t think anyone would mistake that area for a vital and happening corner of town.
The old folks home (Sunrise assisted living) has a no-name coffee shop at street level, for its token retail, as required under MAC. This appears to be a captive enterprise, that is, commercially, it’s part of the assisted living facility. But as a result, if there is a more moribund “retail” location in Vienna, that remains open for business, you’d be hard pressed to see it. I live around the corner, and I’ve never seen anyone go into or out of that establishment, nor have I ever seen anyone sitting close enough to the windows that I could make out the figure of a person. For all intents and purposes, the coffee shop might as well be purely decorative, as it appears completely unused.
Vienna Market has a little row of hard-to-get-to-shops with no street-level parking. But it’s OK that they are awkward to use, because they’re all empty. They’ve stood empty in the roughly four years since that townhouse development was finished. I noted the other day that they finally removed the construction barrels from around the steps going down to those shops. But those shops are still dark.
The Town also approved a big apartment block at the corner of Maple and Nutley, 444 Maple West. The builder tore down the existing buildings some years ago, and is now getting grief from the Town for leaving it a vacant lot for so long.
But the important thing is that, as of now, none of the retail space in that proposed new building has been rented. In fact, per this recent reporting, potential renters shown at the original presentation for the building either were imaginary, or pulled out. The result is that ” … marketing materials show all suites as still available for leasing.”
Conclusion
And yet, the actual retail scene on Maple Avenue appears healthy. There isn’t an excessive vacancy rate. There are no large unused retail spaces. (The biggest exception is, I think, a disused stand-alone bank branch on the west end of Maple in Vienna.)
That said, at this point, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that MAC zoning has not resulted in the explosion of “destination retail” that had been touted by the (then) Mayor and some members of Town Council.
Instead, new construction, at new-construction rental rates, appears … difficult to lease, to say the least. Un-leasable, so far. That suggests that retail in Vienna is “saturated”, for want of a better word. What’s already there isn’t doing badly. But building new space, at high rents, doesn’t appear to be a viable strategy.
Afterthought: Relic retail? I wonder about the extent to which some of our existing retail is, like our private outdoor membership pools, a relic of an age of lower land prices. Relics, in that they continue to function, as-is, but they wouldn’t (possibly, couldn’t) be produced at current land prices.
