The Burn reported on August 24 that the landlord has confirmed Lidl as the new anchor tenant at Plaza America, filling the box Whole Foods emptied last summer. The center sits on Plaza America Drive off Sunset Hills Road in central Reston, a few minutes from the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station and the Dulles Toll Road. Credit where it belongs: The Burn has now broken both ends of this story, having first reported the Whole Foods move back in November 2022.
A 25,000-square-foot store carrying about 4,000 items
Lidl keeps its stores deliberately small, targeting a footprint of about 25,000 square feet and roughly 4,000 items, against the 35,000 or more a full-line supermarket stocks. A complete shop takes about twenty minutes. The chain runs its U.S. operation out of Arlington, opened its first American stores in 2017, and now operates more than 200 locations across nine East Coast states and the District.
The shorthand for Lidl is cheap groceries, and the prices are in fact low. That description undersells the store. Lidl builds its business on a private label lineup that collects awards, European imports that rarely show up on a conventional shelf, and an in-store bakery running bread and pastries through the day, including a 49-cent butter croissant and a rotating monthly bakery special.
That combination attracts a broader shopper than the word discount suggests, and the company’s own siting decisions in Northern Virginia show it. The chain already operates in McLean, Vienna, Chantilly, and two locations near Falls Church.
The Falls Church precedent
Idylwood Plaza offers the closest read on what happens next. Federal Realty leased 23,485 square feet of the 29,556-square-foot former Whole Foods there to Lidl, subdivided the remainder into three small suites, and the store opened on August 12 of this year. Over the same stretch, that center signed First Watch, Kajiken, Mumbai Central, Quickway Japanese Hibachi, Potbelly, Qdoba, and South Block. A Lidl anchor did not pull the center downmarket. It refilled an anchor vacancy and the smaller tenants followed.
The Plaza America box also happens to be the right size. The Whole Foods there opened in 1996 and ran roughly half the square footage of the 46,000-square-foot store the grocer built at The Spectrum. Lidl’s preferred format lands close to what Whole Foods left behind.
What it means around Sunset Hills
Grocery access comes up on nearly every tour we run, and it carries real weight for the condos, townhomes, and apartments along the Sunset Hills corridor and around Reston Station. An empty anchor also drags on the rest of a shopping center, since the smaller shops depend on the traffic the grocery store generates. Plaza America has carried that vacancy for a year.
Herndon offers the local template for how quickly this can come together. Lidl opened at 2110 Centreville Road in October 2025, taking about 29,000 square feet of a redeveloped Kohl’s alongside Hobby Lobby and Planet Fitness. That store was the company’s eleventh in the Fairfax area.
What we are still watching
The lease is new and no opening date exists yet. Three things will tell the story from here: when Lidl announces a date, whether the landlord subdivides the leftover square footage the way Federal Realty did in Idylwood, and which tenants follow the anchor into the center. We wrote about the earlier round of changes at Plaza America last year, and this fills in the biggest open question from that piece.
We will update this post when an opening date is announced. If you are weighing a move near Plaza America, Reston Station, or anywhere along Sunset Hills, reach out and we will walk you through how the retail picture is changing block by block.
