Locals either swear by One Loudoun's restaurants and events or roll their eyes at the parking nightmare and chain-store prices. Is it the town center Ashburn deserves, or a glorified lifestyle center bleeding us dry?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentOne Loudoun is what happens when a developer reads the Wikipedia article on 'town square' and decides to build one from scratch. Nothing organic about it. The brick is fake, the community feeling is manufactured, and I'm paying $18 for a cocktail to sit next to a T-Mobile store. Hard pass.
To everybody defending this place: when's the last time you actually talked to a small business owner who tried to lease there? The rent they charge tenants is obscene. That's why you see the same fifteen national chains cycle in and out. Anybody who actually wanted an independent local restaurant scene was priced out before they even opened their doors. That's not a town center, that's a corporate extraction machine with string lights.
Can someone explain to me why every single restaurant there has a two-hour wait on Friday night but also somehow half the storefronts are perpetually vacant? Make it make sense. The economics of that place have never added up to me.
The real question nobody's asking: why does every single restaurant there close at 9pm on a Tuesday like we're in a retirement village? Ashburn has THOUSANDS of young professionals and tech workers who get off late. I've shown up at 9:15 ready to eat actual food and everything's shutting down. If One Loudoun wants to be a real town center it needs to act like one after dark. Challenge to anyone defending this place — name five things you can do there at 10pm on a weekday. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Moved here from Northern Virginia about three years ago (okay fine, from Herndon, which is still NoVA but whatever) and honestly One Loudoun was a big part of why we chose Ashburn. The farmers market on weekends, Movies in the Park, the Christmas tree lighting — my kids absolutely love it. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than driving to Tysons for everything? A thousand times yes.
The Silver Line opening nearby basically guaranteed One Loudoun becomes more important not less. Anybody who thinks this is just a flash-in-the-pan lifestyle center isn't paying attention to where Ashburn's growth trajectory is headed. Property values around there have gone up BECAUSE of it. Like it or not, it's the anchor.
I organize youth soccer in the area and I cannot tell you how many post-game dinners, birthday parties, and end-of-season celebrations we have held at One Loudoun. The families in this community USE that space constantly. The events calendar is packed. My daughter still talks about the Halloween on the Avenue event from two years ago like it was the greatest night of her life. Calling it unnecessary is just not living in reality.
Born and raised in Loudoun County — graduated from Stone Bridge back when Ashburn was still mostly farms and data centers going up left and right. What One Loudoun replaced was genuinely nothing, just dirt and construction fencing for like six years. So yeah, I'll take the overpriced tacos over a mud pit. Not everything has to be authentically gritty to be worth something.
I'll say it: Founding Farmers alone is worth every criticism you can throw at One Loudoun. That brunch changed my life. I know that sounds dramatic. I stand by it.
lol at people acting like ashburn had some vibrant local culture that one loudoun destroyed. guys. it didnt. we had a harris teeter and a bunch of subdivisions. this is fine
unpopular opinion but the parking is actually not that bad if you go before noon on a weekend. everyone complaining about parking is just mad they had to walk 200 feet
My husband and I used to live right off Broadlands Blvd before we relocated to Raleigh for work, and let me tell you — we MISS One Loudoun. You don't realize what you have until it's gone. Our nearest equivalent down here is a strip mall with a Subway and a vape shop. Ashburn people need to stop complaining and just enjoy a nice thing.
Actually One Loudoun was built on land that used to be a historic Civil War battlefield and they just paved right over it which I think is pretty telling about how this whole development was handled from the start. [Note for context: This is actually NOT accurate — the site was largely undeveloped commercial land, not a battlefield. Someone please correct this before it spreads.]
Is it wrong to choose not to have children just because you don't want to?
110 comments
Would you still eat meat if you had to kill the animal yourself?
109 comments
Should we genetically edit babies to remove diseases if we can?
108 comments
Are dating apps genuinely harder for men or for women?
108 comments