Bookpocalypse Now: Barnes & Noble 0, Purveyor of Containers 1

Well, the rumor that was first surfaced by our BFFs at Patch over the weekend has been confirmed: The Barnes & Noble in Reston's Spectrum Center is closing after the holiday season. Much to our surprise, it is not being replaced by a purveyor of frozen yogurt, artisanal cupcakes or salad. What's really surprising is that it's being replaced at all, given that Spectrum owner Lerner recently revived its longstanding plans to redevelop the big-box center into the usual bollardy mixed-use highrise goodness -- plans which were approved by the county's Planning Commission last month.

In case you're keeping score at home, B&N is being replaced by The Container Store, which sells… containers, we guess. And after the departure of Books a Million, Bretanos at RTC, and the independent bookstore at North Point, Reston's only remaining bookstore will be its first one -- the used bookstore at Lake Anne.

What's weird about this all is that even with the imminent demise of the printed word and all the antiquated, industrial-era business models still desperately clinging to it challenges of the bookselling industry, what with all those fancy "Kindles" and whatnot, B&N didn't choose to leave -- it was apparently pushed by the Spectrum's owners.

David Deason, Vice President of Development at Barnes & Noble, said the company wanted to stay in Reston and was willing to pay more to do so.

“We tried extremely hard to come to an agreement with the property owner to extend the lease at our Reston location, but despite our offering significant additional rent, the property owner was unwilling to agree to an extension," he said in an email. "We regret that we will be closing this location at the end of February, 2013.”

Who knows, maybe the Lerners just like containers.

It does make us wonder exactly how long Lerner plans to wait to begin redeveloping Spectrum, assuming the project wins final approval from county supervisors. We figured they wouldn't have restarted the approval process if they didn't have plans to get rolling soon, but it's unlikely that the Container Store would have agreed to move all its fancy containers into a new space without a multi-year lease.

Of course, all this just gives us an excuse to enjoy some of the details from the site plans for the Spectrum redevelopment (ginormous PDF file):

SOLD. They had us at that fancy trashcan with the swinging lid. Though what is that roundish item in the middle of the top row? A pair of calipers to check the BMI of people before they're allowed to sunbathe in the (semi-) public areas?

Here's a fancy 3-D isometric rendering of the project, apparently rendered using the same hardware as this game from the 1980s. Note the low-rise building at the right -- that's where the rocket-shooting robot lurks the existing Harris Teeter building, which will continue to offer free cookies to hungry shoppers, minus the surface parking.

Finally, here's the view of the development from the existing Fake Downtown vibrant urban core. Of course, we all know what's missing from this lovely, urbane streetscape:

TICK.