Lol!!

Why does Eve believe the merchandise is shoddy? From all appearances, it looks to be quality products - is there information that Eve has that we don't know? And I want to echo the comments by other posters - Lake Anne needs to revise their business model if they want to draw traffic. What's clearly not working is this 1970s-era consignment shop/museum/coffee shop model. If they want to continue drawing the current level of customers, fine. But if they want to increase traffic, they need to open it up and make it a place that people want to shop. Hooray for Maria's for bringing something different to the area. Let's hope the merchants change their minds and consider this.

Shoddy Merchandise? Please explain Eve. While you are at it, please also explain what the "re-branding" of the Plaza would entail? Sounds like gentrification to me.

At the risk of sounding too classy, judgmental or moralistic, here is the link to a fine lingerie shop in Vienna VA :http://www.trousseaultd.com/index.html If you were looking for a gift for a special women in your life she probably prefer that it came from Trousseau's.

Small, locally owned businesses, in general, deserve our support and patronage when they can provide the merchandise and service we are seeking. Trousseau's is well-known and well-established, but they, too, had to start somewhere.

Wondering if she would be experiecing this backlash if the name of the store had been different....

Hi Soren,
here’s what the merchants are hoping to achieve. We want Lake Anne to become the place in Reston where people turn to have a unique and high quality experience. We would like to be the home of locally owned businesses and we’d like our businesses to source as much of their product locally as they possibly can manage. We would like to be the home of the very best____fill in the blank. Goat Cheese, Cupcakes, Papusa, whatever it is, we are looking for specialty geeks. We are afraid that if we are common, well, we don’t think we’ll make it. We are not striving to be exclusive. The “brand” is still muddy because we are still the early steps of trying to get ourselves together. Our initial emphasis has been on look and feel issues. Adding to the flowers, adding the umbrellas, adding the casual seating; working with merchants to improve signage graphics and creating the new Lake Anne logo and website. We've also really pumped up the Saturday market. Part of attracting better retail and better retailers is in being able to sell a business on the potential of the place, convincing them that we as a location are worth their investment. This is a poor forum for trying to articulate these things, and it’s always shocking to us the vehemence that Lake Anne seems to trigger, we’re never sure how to react to that but I did want to respond to your comment about gentrification, which is not a part of our agenda.

Bonnie, I was just thinking the same thing....the name of the store is not helping....

What some of you missed was that the article did not say "shoddy merchandise," it said "shoddy subdivision of property.". Big difference there.

"...shoddy subdivision of the property that is not up to code..."

What does this mean? What property (since we all know that Lake Anne is a miasma of various legally defined properties)? And is it the actual partitioning of the space itself that is at issue (which is either a yes/permitted or no/illegal matter to resolve) or the quality of the work and materials used to make the partitions and the space (which could be of shoddy workmanship and/or materials) or something else?

At the risk of sounding harsh, Eve, if you want Lake Anne to offer Reston residents (and non-residents that will make a special trip) "a unique and high quality experience", then you need to rethink the merchants that are currently there. Do the low-rent Latin market and the run-down used book store really convey "quality"? I think not, and the restaurants that are there aren't exactly best in breed either. Based on the lack of quality merchants that currently inhabit Lake Anne, I respectfully suggest that your argument rings very false, and is disingenuous at best.

I actually purchase eBooks for my Kindle from Amazon.

Certainly there are always people in the used bookstore – do you ever see anyone walking out with a bag? I do not.

My point, ultimately, is that the old village center concept needs to be rethought, if our village centers are going to be something other than partially/mostly vacant, run down parking lots. I say this as a Tall Oaks resident who drives by the “For Lease” signs at Tall Oaks Village center every day.

Hard to imagine how an adult store would sully the image of Lake Anne. As a longtime resident, I have seen many shoddy businesses. most of which seemed to be fronts for something else open and close over the years. However, no one on the condo board seemed to be up in arms about that. Any shop that has the potential to bring revenue and new customers to Lake Anne should be welcomed, not greeted with prudish censorship. Best of luck to the owner of Maria's Passion Paradise.

Thank you, and I could not agree more --- a rational mind among us!

We happily patronize almost all of the shops and restaurants in Lake Anne plus the crafts and farmers' market and have done so for years. Unless she has one hell of a sale we will continue to get our underwear from COSCO.

Does anyone know the status of this store? The same panties have been in the window all summer and the dust seems to be growing thicker!