Langston Boulevard Got Its Errands Back Before Its Towers

For seven weeks this fall, the Walgreens at 3130 Langston Blvd sold no prescriptions. It held paintings. The Arlington Artists Alliance filled the empty store with mini-galleries for more than 40 artists and ran 30 free workshops. On the last weekend, children made Halloween masks with Encore Stage & Studio and paraded through the old aisles in costume. The show closed Oct. 25.

That building is set to come down for the first major project under Arlington's Langston Boulevard Area Plan. The plan calls for more density along much of a 5-mile North Arlington corridor. The new businesses have already arrived, though, and they're not in a tower. They're a supermarket in the shopping center where a Giant operated for 60 years, a coffee roaster with its own parking lot, and a pizzeria in a small bay near Safeway. Between Lyon Village and Cherrydale, the everyday parts of the boulevard filled back in long before any new building went up.

The grocery gap lasted two and a half years

The Giant at Lyon Village Shopping Center closed in March 2024 after 60 years. ARLnow reported at the time that the closing raised questions about the plaza's future. The answer turned out to be another grocery store. Sprouts Farmers Market held its grand opening in September 2026 at 3115 Langston Blvd, in the same center. It's open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

That's about 30 months without a full grocery store at that corner. Sprouts is also a different kind of store than the one it replaced. A large corner goes to produce, from organic mangoes to lion's mane mushrooms and dandelion greens. Quinoa, basmati rice, polenta, chia seeds and nuts are sold by the ounce. The deli counter serves Boar's Head meats and cheeses, and the prepared-food case has whole organic roasted chickens at $15 each. Wednesday brings $5 sushi.

Sprouts runs about 500 stores nationwide, but before this one opened its other four Virginia stores were in Leesburg, Manassas, Herndon and Haymarket. The Langston Blvd store went into an existing shopping center rather than a new mixed-use building.

Three storefronts west, the same pattern at a smaller scale

West of Lyon Village Shopping Center, the newer arrivals repeat that pattern. Two have opened and one is announced, all in existing retail space, and each serves something you'd stop for on an ordinary weekday.

1. Tatiana Pizza, 3610 Langston Blvd. Founder Abu Ali's second location, and his first outside D.C., after a Dupont Circle shop. It took a small retail bay near Safeway that used to be Yummy Thai. The menu centers on 32-inch pies baked at 550 degrees, plus calzones, chicken alfredo, eggplant parmesan and overstuffed subs such as meatball parmesan and mushroom Swiss steak. ARLnow covered the soft opening in late August.
2. Good Trouble Roasters, 3800 Langston Blvd. Owner Mike Greiner roasts beans on site in an all-electric roaster several times a week. The case holds pastries from the Heidelberg Pastry Shoppe and sandwiches from The Italian Store. The shop has dedicated free parking and a rear entrance. Greiner plans to add beer, wine and a small selection of liqueurs for coffee cocktails once he gets a liquor license. In late October, ARLnow listed the shop's full-operation hours as 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
3. Rita's Italian Ice, 3800 Langston Blvd, Unit D. The chain has a location announced for the same building as Good Trouble. ARLnow first reported both in June, as tenants for vacant storefronts at that address. Rita's lists the store on its location page for 3800 Langston Blvd.

Good Trouble's timeline shows how long it takes to fit out even a small space. In June, the shop was aiming to open by August. By late August the target was September. The soft opening came the week of Oct. 23, after more than two years of work, which Greiner described to ARLnow this way: "Pulling down the coming soon signs was cathartic."

Openings like these move slowly. An independent owner fits out an existing storefront and works through construction delays. It draws less notice than a county board vote, and the pizzeria and the roaster are the places you can walk into this month.

The building in between

The empty Walgreens at 3130 is where the corridor plan meets the storefronts that are already open. The Arlington County Board voted 5-0 in April 2026 to approve Rooney Properties' plan to tear down the Walgreens and build a mixed-use building. ARLnow reported that it's the first major redevelopment since the county adopted the Langston Boulevard Area Plan in 2023.

According to the county's project page for 3130 Langston Boulevard and ARLnow's coverage of the approval, the plan includes:

That ground-floor retail space is the part you'll actually use, and it's years away. Until then, the empty building found a use. Rooney Properties lent it to the Arlington Artists Alliance, and volunteers put in 1,800 hours to turn it into galleries and workshop rooms. Kathi Beerbohm got more than 75 restaurants and some supermarkets to sponsor food and drinks.

"People like art and they're looking for it," organizer Sarah Young told ARLnow. Fellow organizer Sandi Chesrown told the outlet that attendance landed in the middle of projections and that most artists who came to sell did well.

How long the in-between lasts

ARLnow expects the Walgreens building to be gone by next fall, and the alliance is looking for a new venue to bring the pop-up back in 2027. The county project page lists the public review steps through April 2026 and marks the site plan as approved.

The tower at 3130 still has demolition and construction ahead of it. Nearby, the storefronts turned over on shorter clocks. The Giant-to-Sprouts switch took about 30 months. Good Trouble's opening slipped from August to late October. The new tower's ground-floor retail comes after demolition and construction. For at least the next year, everyday life on Langston Boulevard between Lyon Village and Cherrydale will run on stores that already existed or moved into existing spaces. The plan's density will arrive later, one site at a time.

Board member Maureen Coffey described that pace at the April vote. "We have to do this site-by-site, block-by-block," she said, as ARLnow reported. "Starting with [this] one is really important because it gets us going."

The rest of the fall along the stretch

The other dates on this stretch's calendar come from groups that have been here for years:

• Cherrydale Farmers Market, Saturdays 8 a.m. to noon at Dorothy Hamm Middle School, 4100 Vacation Lane. The season runs April through November, and the Langston Boulevard Alliance calendar lists market dates through Nov. 21.
• Red Cross blood drive, Friday, Nov. 13, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Lyon Village Community House, according to the Lyon Village Citizens' Association.
• Lyon Village community meeting on development topics, Monday, Nov. 16, in a hybrid format.
• Lyon Village Holiday Party, Sunday, Dec. 13, at Lyon Village Community House.

Put together, a Saturday on this stretch could start with produce at the market on Vacation Lane, then coffee from beans roasted at 3800, a few bulk-bin staples from Sprouts, and a jumbo slice at 3610 on the way home. None of it depends on the tower at 3130.

If you own a home near Langston Boulevard and want to know how a new grocery store, new storefronts and the corridor's first approved tower affect what your home is worth, Hoyos Real Estate can walk you through how buyers are weighing these changes along this stretch. Request a free home valuation, and Franky will give you a number based on these blocks and what's changing on them.