The Starbucks at the Chesterbrook Shopping Center (6214 Old Dominion Drive) in McLean has reopened after an extensive facelift.

Starbucks closed in early March to get some interior design improvements.

According to a release, the improvements brought a new bar set-up, a redesigned second story and more:

• Alterations to the current bar setup
• Updated partition arrangements
• Installation of new lighting
• Incorporation of modern furniture and fixtures
• Application of fresh finishes
• New, inspiring artwork
• Redesigned second story seating

A Chantilly office has landed AT&T for a rare full-building lease.

In late February, the telecommunications company signed a lease for 111,000 square foot at 4807 Stonecroft Blvd, part of the Westfields International Center at Dulles office park. It will take over the building in 2025 under a long-term lease, building manager Stream Realty Partners announced on Feb. 29.

“We are excited to welcome AT&T to Stonecroft IV and into our regional portfolio,” said Max Sanford, a partner at Menlo Equities, which owns the building. “Their decision to lease the entire building reaffirms the strength of the property’s offerings and its strategic location, and we look forward to their long-term occupancy in the building.”

The building includes new amenities like a fitness center, lounge, upgraded lobby and conference center.

The move comes as AT&T consolidates its Virginia offices, according to Bisnow. Plans for mixed-use development on the company’s longtime corporate campus at 3033 Chain Bridge Road in Oakton are already in the works.

Here’s more from Bisnow on how Stream Realty Partners landed the lease:

The telecommunications giant is consolidating from multiple Virginia offices, including 3033 Chain Bridge Road in Oakton, Stream Realty co-Managing Director Jeff Roman told Bisnow. Its Oakton building is slated for a 1.5M SF redevelopment from EYA and Carlyle Group.

The 4807 Stonecroft building had been occupied by Northrop Grumman starting in 2008, but the defense contractor vacated a few years ago, said Roman, who leases the building along with Stream Executive Vice President Malcolm Schweiker.

After Northrop Grumman left, then-owner Franklin Street Properties Corp. worked with the Stream brokers to secure an agreement with another defense contractor, Roman said, declining to name that firm. Franklin Street renovated the building as part of the effort to bring in that tenant, but the company decided not to proceed with the deal due to pandemic-related shifts, Roman said.

Franklin Street sold Stonecroft IV and another Chantilly building to Menlo Equities in November 2021 for $40 million. The Stonecroft building was vacant at the time, according to the Washington Business Journal.

Stream Realty Partners also touted the building’s location for providing “unparalleled connectivity” to government operations, including the CIA and FBI.

“This whole building lease represents another great office success in Westfields and continues to show commercial resilience in the Westfields community,” Westfields Center said in a statement welcoming AT&T.

Photo via Google Maps

A small business that specializes in all things granola is relocating its Chantilly location to Reston.

Dano’s Granola plans to open in 11495 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 105, by the middle to end of this summer, according to owner and mom of three, Dania Abimourched.

“I’ve lived in Reston since middle school and we started our family here,” Abimourched told FFXnow. “We love the Reston community and our customers that have become part of extended Dano’s Granola family.”

Abimourched’s passion for baking stems from her master’s degree thesis project — an endeavor that tied together her art and ideas together. After her eldest son was diagnosed with several allergies, she began experimenting with different ingredients for health food snacks and treats.

She sells mixes of granola that come in flavors like turmeric and vanilla, carob spice, coconut and seeds, and chocolatte (a combination of chocolate and coffee).

Dano’s Granola currently operates a retail location at 4520 Daly Drive, Suite 100, in Chantilly. It also appears at the Lake Anne Farmers’ Market every spring and fall and provides products to several partners around Northern Virginia, including Wegman’s in Reston, The Bike Lane and Beloved Yoga.

(Updated at 12:30 p.m.) Cindy’s Legacy — a Reston-based nonprofit organization that helps cancer patients in financial stress — received a lift from a local business last week.

Reston’s Great Clips donated $579 to the nonprofit organization, which was named after its founder’s mother, Cindy Martin, who had been a hairstylist in Reston for more than 30 years. Martin died from brain cancer in 2011.

(Correction: This story initially stated that Martin died in 2021.)

“This event, the vital funds raised, and our ongoing partnership will continue to honor her legacy and help cancer patients in our community,” Cindy’s Legacy founder and president Stacy Brooks said.

The three-day fundraiser also included free haircuts for cancer patients and showcased the business’ hair donation programs.

Cindy’s Legacy has since provided more than $75,000 to at least 400 cancer patients nationwide. Great Clips also offers free haircuts to anyone who wants to donate their hair to Wigs for Kids, an initiative that helps kids and young adults experiencing hair loss.

Clips of Kindness is another program run by Great Clips that provides a free clipper cut to anyone who is losing their hair due to cancer treatment.

The fundraiser for Cindy’s Legacy — titled Shear Love — kicked off on Valentine’s Day and concluded after three days.

Run by franchisee Sean Carroll, Great Clips opened its Reston location at South Lakes Village Center (11130 South Lakes Drive, Suite E) in November 2022. The company was founded in Minneapolis in 1982 and now has over 4,400 salons in the U.S. and Canada.

Global cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks Inc. will lease one of Boston Properties’ new office towers in Reston Town Center.

The company — which currently leases space at RTC West (12110 Sunset Hills Road) — plans to occupy 58,000 square feet of space at a 20-story office tower in Reston Town Center, the Washington Business Journal reported.

The new lease was signed on Jan. 12 for 58,000 square feet in the tower at 1950 Opportunity Way — one of two office buildings built in Boston Properties’ nearly 5-million-square-foot expansion, just north of the Reston Town Center Metro station.

According to the WBJ, the building at 1950 Opportunity Way will be close to fully leased with the Palo Alto deal. Other tenants of the paired office towers, which total 1.1 million square feet of space, include Volkswagen and Fannie Mae.

In a quarterly earnings call in late January, Boston Properties Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Michael LaBell noted that Reston Town Center is 94% leased.

“Because it is such high quality kind of a live work play kind of place, and these clients really, really value that,” LaBell said during the call. “So we’re outperforming from a rental rate perspective, and we’re seeing positive absorption there.”

LaBelle told investors that Reston Town Center had signed a “60,000 square foot new lease with a technology company” that’s relocating but didn’t name the tenant.

Originally approved by Fairfax County in 2018, the Reston Town Center expansion is planned for 4.8 million square feet of development on a 33-acre site northwest of the Sunset Hills Road and Reston Parkway intersection. Skymark Reston Town Center, a 40-story residential building, is currently under construction.

A new future is brewing for Elden Street Tea Shop, as the local business sheds its address of more than six years and moves from Herndon to Reston.

The business expected to open at Lake Anne Plaza in the spring.

Rachel Eisenfeld, co-owner of the business, said the tea shop outgrew its current location, especially for tea party events, with more local tea enthusiasts visiting more regularly after the pandemic.

“We would have liked to stay in our current location and opened a second location,” Eisenfeld said by email. “However, we were not able to come to a resolution on our new lease terms with the landlord. We are excited to bring a little bit of Historic Herndon to Historic Reston!”

The Herndon location at 714 Pine Street is expected to close on Saturday, Jan. 27.

The shop will reopen in Reston by March or April of this year, according to Eisenfeld. During the interim, the tea shop will offer online purchases and pickups at Lake Anne and tea parties in Tysons in February.

The tea parties in Tysons will be hosted at The Tower Club in Towers Crescent (8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Suite 1700), but access is by ticket or appointment only.

The Reston location will feature full tea service options and more themed tea events, such as yoga and tea meditation, paddle board tea time, open mic night and literary tea hours.

“We are excited to have a space to continue new and unique tea events in and provide the cozy communitea we are known for,” Eisenfeld said.

The tea shop is expected to celebrate its big move at the Northern Virginia Tea Festival on May 4 and 5.

The first-ever Northern Virginia Space and Satellite Summit is about to launch in Tysons.

Organized by the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce, the event will bring space industry leaders and experts to the Womble Bond Dickinson office in Boro Tower (8350 Broad Street, Suite 1500) on Thursday, Jan. 18.

“We are excited to bring together industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals in the field of space and satellite technologies for the first-ever Space and Satellite Summit,” Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce interim president and CEO Mark Ingrao said. “This event is a testament to our commitment to fostering innovation, collaboration, and economic growth in the Dulles region and beyond.”

The Fairfax County Economic Development Authority counts aerospace as one of the county’s key industries when coupled with the plethora of defense contractors in the area.

• David Bettinger, CEO of Arlington’s Axta Space
• Dennis Gatens, CEO and founder of LEOCloud in Ashburn
• George Nield, president of the British consulting firm Commercial Space Technologies
• Joseph T. Darden, director of aviation business development for Iridium, a satellite communications company headquartered in Tysons
• Stephen McCall, director of government relations for Texas-based Firefly Aerospace

The chamber says the event will also provide a valuable opportunity for networking. Attendees are required to register for the summit, which costs $45.

The summit comes just a week after NASA announced that its Artemis missions will be delayed in response to technical issues. The launch that the agency hopes will return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972 isn’t expected now until September 2026.

The Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce is joining other local chambers and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission to offer help to federal government employees and contractors if the government shuts down.

Local businesses can sign up online to offer a discount in the event Congress fails to pass a budget by this Friday, Nov. 17.

“Northern Virginia’s business community has always been generous in a time of need,” NVRC Chairman and Alexandria Council Member John Chapman said. “This effort is just one way we can let our friends and neighbors know that working together we can help those who are impacted by this unnecessary shutdown.”

Interested businesses can go online to sign up to list a discount. They must provide their location, contact information and a description of the discount offered.

So far, the chambers taking part in the initiative include Arlington, Greater Reston, Loudoun County, Prince William County and Purcellville Business Association.

NVRC is a council of 13 local governments in the Northern Virginia area. According to the organization’s senior regional demographer, Northern Virginia jurisdictions averaged 73,318 federal government jobs, as of the end of 2022, not including the region’s many federal contractors and military workers stationed at Fort Belvoir and other sites.

The federal government was on the verge of shutting down, starting Oct. 1, until lawmakers passed a last-minute, stopgap budget that would keep federal agencies and services like WIC — the program that provides food assistance to women and children — going until Nov. 17.

However, Congress still has not developed a new, longer-term plan to keep the lights on in Washington, as disagreements over emergency aid for Ukraine and Israel, among other issues, have stymied negotiations.

House Republicans unveiled a proposal on Saturday (Nov. 11) that would provide funding in two steps, covering some bills until Jan. 19 and others until Feb. 2, according to NBC News.

“Democrats in both chambers have made it abundantly clear that they hate the idea, as does the White House — all of whom want a simple extension of government funding without any gimmicks,” NBC News said. “Democrats’ unified opposition to the laddered [continuing resolution] could mean the House will ultimately have to swallow whatever clean or relatively clean CR the Senate passes.”

Herndon’s business community expressed overall levels of satisfaction with the town in a recent survey, but some say they want the town to focus more on expanding support for businesses.

Presented at a Herndon Town Council work session on Tuesday (Sept. 19), the results were gathered from a business survey by Priority Metrics Group (PMG), which included 155 respondents, the average of which has been in the town for 17 years.

At the work session, council members emphasized the need for the town to more actively support businesses and expand town events that draw customers — two themes of improvement from the survey.

“They want a more business-friendly government,” Councilmember Donielle Scherff said. “We’ve talked a bit about customer service-centric leadership and staff, and this just sort of buttresses into that.”

Most respondents say they chose Herndon because of its location.

“They like being here. There are amenities and attributes that are here that they like,” said John Barrett, owner of PMG.

Overall, sentiments about the town’s general business environment dipped only slightly since the last survey was conducted in 2018.

Business owners said they were drawn by the access to airports — which expanded last year with the opening of Metro’s Silver Line extension — as well as the overall quality of life and the image of the town. Top concerns included licensing, taxation, regulations, crime rates, traffic and the quality of new development.

Many business owners said they wanted to see more special events in the town — a move that Councilmember Cesar del Aguila said emphasizes the need for the council to focus extra attention on event development.

“What I’m hearing here solidifies my personal belief that we’re on the right track,” del Aguila said, noting a need to focus on branding for the town. He said it was “painful” to hear that some business owners did not feel noticed by the local government.

So far, use of the Mason Enterprise Center — a business accelerator program from George Mason University that launched earlier this year — appears limited, according to the survey. A little over 80% of respondents said they had not heard about the center.

Most respondents — 77% of businesses — said the Metro Silver Line has had no impact or a neutral impact on their businesses.

PMG also recently completed a survey of town residents, who flagged traffic as a top concern.

Photo via Google Maps

Shoppers at the Route 29-adjacent Costco might notice some major changes soon.

The wholesale company is seeking a special exception from Fairfax County to increase the size of its existing retail warehouse at 4725 West Ox Road by around 8,500 square feet and enhance some of the store’s departments.

The new addition would be located to the eastern side of the building.

“The additional space proposed for the existing warehouse building would be utilized for upgrading and expanding the delicatessen and rotisserie area, increasing the size of the refrigerated meat storage space, constructing a new produce cooler, and expanding sales aisles,” the application said. “There will be slight increase in [floor area ratio].”

The application says Costco’s Fairfax area location is a popular one, with around 5,000 customers per day. The expansion is estimated to bring in another approximately 300 customers.

The company also anticipates hiring another 16 employees if the addition is approved, bringing its total workforce for that location to approximately 286 people.

The expansion is expected to result in dozens more vehicle trips to the already heavily frequented site, according to the application:

• 26 AM peak hour trips (14 in/12 out)
• 37 PM peak hour trips (18 in/19 out)
• 63 Saturday peak hour trips (31 in/32 out)
• 417 weekday average daily trips (7,453 Weekday average trips total)
• 753 Saturday average daily trips (8,218 Saturday trips total)

“The proposed expansion of the retail warehouse building will provide a significant improvement to the operation of the facility for Costco’s members,” the application said. “The proposed amendment conforms to the spirit of the Zoning Ordinance and the recommendations of the Comprehensive Plan. Therefore, for the reasons set forth herein, the Applicant respectfully requests approval of this Special Exception Amendment application.”

The county accepted the application for review on Sept. 6, but no hearings have been scheduled yet.

The proposal comes after Costco got the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ approval in March to expand the gas station at its West Ox location from 16 to 30 fuel pumps.

Image via Google Maps