The Tile Shop has packed up and moved out of Tysons.
The home decor closed its showroom in the Tysons 3 shopping center at 8520C Leesburg Pike on July 31, wrapping up a roughly 12-year run. A sign announcing the closing date encouraged customers to visit other locations in Springfield, Chantilly, Sterling and Rockville, Maryland.
Founded in 1985, the Tile Shop has more than 140 stores across the country, selling wood and vinyl flooring in addition to stone and tile materials, according to its website.
The company didn’t return a request for comment by press time on the decision to close the Tysons store, which opened in 2013. However, an employee who had worked in Tysons before transferring to Springfield says the cost of renting the space was a primary factor.
All workers in Tysons were given the option to move to other locations in the area, the employee said.
Located near the Spring Hill Metro station, the 20,363-square-foot storefront is currently listed as “available” on retail broker Rappaport’s site plan for Tysons 3 Center. It might not be up for grabs for much longer, though.
“We are currently negotiating a lease with a single tenant to backfill the space in its entirety,” Rappaport Director of Leasing and Brokerage Zach Elcano told FFXnow.
The nature of the new tenant remains to be seen, but grocery stores — typically candidates for larger retail spaces — can likely be ruled out in this case. That need is currently being filled by Marufuji Japanese Market, which drew long lines when it opened next door to the Tile Store in January.
Redevelopment still under consideration
Also home to a Starbucks Coffee and a standalone Exxon gas station, Tysons 3 Center is owned by an affiliate of the Springfield-based gas distributor Capital Petroleum Group, which acquired the retail center and gas station in July 2018 for a combined $64.25 million, per Fairfax County records.
The prices reflected “anticipated redevelopment,” and the property owner in fact submitted a rezoning application to the county in 2019.
Dubbed the “Piazza at Tysons,” the initially proposed plan envisioned 2 million square feet of development across three buildings, including housing, retail, a possible hotel and a 20,000-square-foot community library, the Washington Business Journal reported at the time.
The project has evolved in the intervening years, with the most recent development plan submitted on Aug. 1 showing four buildings:
- Building A: a 30-story building at Spring Hill Road and Broad Street with up to 482 residential units, 26,000 square feet of office space and up to 20,000 square feet of retail. In one option, a portion of the retail space could be devoted instead to a public facility or cultural center.
- Building B: a 33-story building fronting Leesburg Pike with up to 295 residential units, 310 hotel rooms, 30,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and three indoor pickleball courts
- Building C: a 33-story building at Leesburg Pike and Spring Hill Road with up to 760,800 square feet of office uses and 33,000 square feet of ground-floor retail
- Building D: Known as “The Cube,” the free-standing, one-story building is “envisioned as a flexible or pop-up retail space” totaling 900 square feet in size, the application says.
As suggested by the name, the development would center around a nearly 2-acre, publicly accessible piazza that could host events and serve as an everyday gathering space.
In a change from previous submissions, the prospective developer has added a pedestrian refuge in Spring Hill Road at Leesburg Pike. It’s also committing to crafting a “bird-friendly” design and contributing $60,000 to the county for a Capital Bikeshare station on the site.
The applicant withdrew a previously submitted final development plan, but the rezoning request and conceptual development plan remain under county staff review. Public hearings on the proposal have been scheduled for Oct. 22 before the Fairfax County Planning Commission and on Nov. 18 for the Board of Supervisors.
