Less than a month after opening its Mid-Atlantic flagship location in Tysons Corner—equipped with an in-store food hall, a bar and game room, and an extensive selection of locally supplied products—multinational Whole Foods Market has announced plans to open a second Falls Church location on the corner of East Broad and North Washington Streets.
The lead developer on the project is Arlington-based Insight Property Group, which has recently become a leader in developing residential communities throughout the Washington metropolitan area. According to a November press release from the company, the 50,000-square-foot Whole Foods will anchor a proposed mixed-use project, including residential space, retail and space for nonprofit theater group Creative Cauldron.
While the project was initially approved by the city council in the spring of 2018, with office space from Todd Hitt scheduled to take the 50,000-square-foot space, Whole Foods replaced it, following the imprisonment of Hitt due to investor fraud.
“We spent the last year rethinking the project and could not be happier to have signed a lease with the leading natural and organic grocer in the country,” principal at Insight Property Group Maury Stern said in the original press release. “Whole Foods Market will bring an incredible amount of activity to downtown to both complement and help support the existing and longstanding businesses that make Falls Church so unique.”
Following the county approval and official announcement, a groundbreaking could take place by the summer of 2020, yet the official move-in date wouldn’t be for another few years. If all goes as planned, the storefront will be the second location of Whole Foods Market in Falls Church, just 2.5 miles away from the site in Idylwood Plaza off of Leesburg Pike.
According to Jamie Forrest, corporate communications at Whole Foods Market, the company doesn’t have any further details to share of the store opening “at the moment” beyond the press release.
For more food news and openings in Northern Virginia, subscribe to our weekly Food newsletter.