Lake Anne: New Businesses, Same Old Misspellings

Businesses continue to come and go at the Lake Anne Village Center, but fear not. With warm weather coming, the planned accordion and ukelele festivals are going to really pack the customers in. No, really:

Part of the merchants association’s plan to bring people to the plaza this spring and summer is an accordion festival, scheduled for May 22, and a ukulele festival, whose date has not yet been pinned down, Thompson said. The children’s concerts and “Take a Break” concert series will continue this summer, and last year’s Family Fun Nights, hosted by Washington Plaza Baptist Church, will be repeated. This weekend, auditions will take place for street performers, or buskers. Thompson said she was hoping to find acts like magicians and jugglers, as well as musicians.

The association is also working on improving storefront appearances and building a new Web site, and a new Lake Anne logo was just approved last week, Thompson said. Security cameras are also being installed in the wake of January’s purple graffiti spree.

Sweet! Maybe the roving gangs of mimes can scare away the spraypaint-wielding thugs the next time they want to tag the statue of Dear Leader.

Meanwhile, the ongoing shuffle of businesses has brought in a small sushi restaurant -- which, following the advice of commenters on this "web log" we tried and can attest is quite good -- and a dry cleaner's.

Jiang “Kenny” Gangmiao said business at his newly opened sushi takeout and delivery business at Lake Anne Plaza had been slow thus far, but he was hopeful that it would pick up as warmer weather brought more people to the plaza.

“My sushi is very good, but my business is not doing too good,” said Gangmiao, who opened G. Sushi next to the Reston Museum at the beginning of February. Marked by record snowfalls, though, last month was a difficult one for most businesses, and Gangmiao said business had improved this month.

Properties on the plaza continue to change hands, with Rita’s Express Alterations and Dry Cleaning opening at the beginning of the month in one of the two properties that comprised the former dry cleaners, at the same time that Salon Chakra, next door to G. Sushi, moved out.

“They had an ongoing dispute with their landlord, so that’s not a surprise,” said Eve Thompson, president of the merchant’s association, of the salon’s departure.

She said the potential buyer for the former Tavern on the Lake had been attending merchants’ meetings at the plaza, but a deal on the property had not yet been finalized.

And of course, the pharmacy is still for sale.

In the meantime, please to be enjoying the spelling on this sign for another "new" Reston business, the constantly shifting off-brand 7-11 at the edge of the parking lot:

You may not be able to tell thanks to the amazing photographic quality of this fancy "cellular telephone photograph," presumably snapped by one of those phones with a cord connecting it to a briefcase, but the word at the bottom is "Grosery." Slap a couple of buskers on the stoop, though, and no one will ever notice.