Retail Ruckus: Marvelous Market To Be Replaced By Mysterious Burgery, Plus North Point Empties Out

Along with a cupcakery and saladry, Reston's fake downtown gritty urban core will soon be home to a fancy new burger place, because one high-end burger joint simply isn't enough for a midscale retail plaza authentic downtown area. But which one? This fancy sign, presumably focus-grouped by a top marketing firm to "build anticipation," isn't telling. One possibility could be brgr, a New York chain which opened its first Virginia location in RTC-esque Ballston last year. (No word on whether its motto is "we skimp on vowels and pass the savings on to you.") Another possibility suggested by Confidential Restonian Operative "Michael," who risked the wrath of Fake Downtown Security to snap this photo, is Elevation Burger, which is based in Falls Church and has a fancy "iPhone app" and an even fancier futuristic Coke machine. (We're secretly hoping for a nice fry pit like In and Out Burger or a White Castle, but that seems unlikely.)

In any case, the as-of-yet unidentified burgery will take the pace of Marvelous Market, which is now closed.

Meanwhile, almost-as-fancy-as-RTC North Point Village Center has become the subject of some muttering online because of a series of departures of tenants in recent months, including the learning center, Just Pets and the UPS store. Now, Blockbuster is apparently getting ready to vacate, as all the kool kidz use their Netflix machines, whatever they are, to watch the latest "Star Wars," or whatever's the new cool "movie" to come out on "video" these days. Is this the precursor to redeveloping the shopping center into some fancy mixed-use project with multiple burgeries, and maybe even a cupcakery?

While all five village centers will be part of discussions by the Task Force With an Unpronounceable Acronym this year, that seems doubtful anytime soon, given how far North Point is from the planned Metro stations. And Blockbuster has been shuttering hundreds of stores nationwide due to the aforementioned Netflix and those shiny silver discs we keep trying to put into our CD Walkman. And similar rumors started while the Tall Oaks stucco wasteland shopping center was bereft of a grocery store. But at times, it's just indifferent management combined with a still really quite crappy economy, at least so long as you're trying to sell something other than artisan cupcakes and grass-fed, free-range burgers.

Update: According to our BFFs at Patch, who did some of that "reporting" thing we keep hearing about, the future burgery has been revealed as neither brgr nor Elevation Burgers, but Marvelous Market's own entry into the artisanal protein disc business. After the usual suspects denied involvement, we had been secretly hoping it was going to be a subversive, Banskyesque exhibit challenging our cultural ambivalence towards the food we eat. But we're good with some fancy breaded onion rings instead.