Park on the top level of the Springfield Garage on the right summer evening and you'll hear something you don't expect from a commuter facility: a kids' band playing to a crowd of lawn chairs. That's not a glitch in your GPS. Fairfax County picked the rooftop of this six-level, $58.38 million parking structure at 7039 Old Keene Mill Road as one of only four new venues added to its 2026 Arts in the Parks series, the county's free children's entertainment lineup. A parking garage now shares a summer concert calendar with Nottoway Park and Mason District Park.
That's the real story behind what's happened to Old Keene Mill Road since 2024, and it's bigger than any single restaurant opening. This corridor hasn't just refilled its empty storefronts over the past two years. It's picked up a genuine reason to linger after the errands are done, and the newest reason to linger sits on top of a parking garage.
Whole Foods Left. Here's Who Actually Showed Up.
The most visible change sits at 8424 Old Keene Mill Road, the Old Keene Mill Shopping Center, where Whole Foods pulled out and left a roughly 24,000-square-foot hole. Trader Joe's stepped into the anchor role on Sept. 12, 2024, relocating from its former spot down the road in Springfield Plaza. The vacated space got carved into six smaller suites, and the tenants who filled them tell you something about who the shopping center's owner, Federal Realty, thinks West Springfield wants to eat, wear, and get dry cleaned by.
Zips Cleaners opened first, in a 1,397-square-foot suite at 8402-D. Franchise co-owner Jeff Levine said the choice was straightforward:
"The intersection of Rolling Road and Old Keene Mill Road where we're situated is one of the busiest in West Springfield."
European Wax Center held its own ribbon-cutting the same weekend, a few doors down at 8402-C. Days later, on Oct. 15, 2024, Kanji Sushi opened an all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant at 8430-A, next to Planet Fitness. By early 2025, McAlister's Deli had signed for a 2,925-square-foot space near the Rolling Road entrance, and Crimson Coward, a Nashville-style hot chicken chain, took its first Fairfax County location in the same row. Honeygrow followed on March 21, 2025, opening its fifth restaurant in the region at 8426 Old Keene Mill Road, tucked between Massage Envy and Visionworks.
| What was there | What's there now | When it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Whole Foods (grocery anchor) | Trader Joe's | Sept. 12, 2024 |
| Vacant suite, former Whole Foods footprint | Zips Cleaners | October 2024 |
| Vacant suite, former Whole Foods footprint | European Wax Center | October 2024 |
| Vacant suite near Planet Fitness | Kanji Sushi | Oct. 15, 2024 |
| Vacant suite near Rolling Road entrance | McAlister's Deli, Crimson Coward | Early 2025 |
| Vacant suite, Planet Fitness row | Honeygrow | March 21, 2025 |
Six tenants in about eighteen months isn't a slow trickle. It's a shopping center rebuilt almost store by store, fast enough that anyone who last took real stock of this strip in 2023 would barely recognize today's tenant roster.
The Storefront That Sat Empty for Five Years
A few blocks down, a different kind of vacancy is finally getting solved. The two-story building at 6909 Old Keene Mill Road went dark in 2019, when the adult boutique that occupied it closed. For five years it sat as a quiet gap in an otherwise busy corridor.
That gap is closing. A secondhand furniture, clothing, and home goods retailer called Remix Market signed a five-year lease on the 6,250-square-foot building in early 2026, marking the brand's first expansion into Fairfax County. The company is targeting an opening later this year, though an exact date hasn't been announced. A portion of Remix Market's sales benefits the Sweet Julia Grace Foundation, which supports children with complex medical needs.
It's a small detail, but it matters for how the corridor reads day to day. A building that's functioned as a blank spot on the drive to Trader Joe's for half a decade is about to become somewhere people actually walk in.
Even the Pizza Place Is Growing Up
Ledo Pizza West Springfield, at 8324 Old Keene Mill Road, filed for a Virginia ABC mixed beverage license earlier this year, seeking approval to serve beer, wine, and mixed beverages for both on-premises and off-premises consumption. That's not the kind of filing that makes headlines. It's the kind of quiet signal that tells you a corridor is shifting from a place you stop for takeout to a place you might actually sit down for dinner and a drink.
The Real Surprise Is on the Roof
Here's the part that wouldn't have made sense two years ago. Fairfax County broke ground on a commuter parking garage at 7039 Old Keene Mill Road back in 2021 to replace the informal slug lines that had operated on that site for decades. It opened to the public on Sept. 14, 2024, with about 1,100 parking spots and a transit center serving seven bus bays. County planners built a "green roof" plaza into the top deck from the start, with the stated intent that it double as community space: arts performances, exercise classes, corporate events, other outdoor gatherings.
That intent became real in 2026. Fairfax County Park Authority named the garage's rooftop, officially called the Springfield Overlook, one of four brand-new locations added to its Arts in the Parks series this year, alongside Lorton Community Center, Spring Hill Rec Center, and Strawberry Park at Mosaic District. The rooftop hosts the series' children's programming, listed on the county's schedule as Kid's Concerts on the Green. Access runs through the sixth floor, and the space also takes private bookings when it isn't hosting a county show.
Think about what that means for a stretch of road best known for grocery runs and dry cleaning. A parking structure built to move commuters onto the express lanes now doubles as a free entertainment venue on summer evenings. That's not the kind of amenity most corridors pick up, and it didn't exist here at all until this year.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
- Check the county's Arts in the Parks schedule before assuming the rooftop show only happens somewhere else. It's a West Springfield venue now.
- If you haven't walked the Old Keene Mill Shopping Center lately, the tenant mix has changed enough that a fresh look is worth the ten minutes.
- Keep an eye on 6909 Old Keene Mill Road. Remix Market hasn't set an opening date, but the building's five-year dark stretch is ending.
- Ledo Pizza's pending license is a small tell that more of the corridor's restaurants are angling for a sit-down crowd, not just takeout.
None of this changes what West Springfield fundamentally is: a commuter-friendly, family-oriented stretch of Fairfax County built around a busy road and a lot of long tenures. What's changed is what that road offers once the errands are done. Two years ago, the honest answer was not much. Today it includes a free concert on top of a parking garage, which isn't a sentence anyone would have written about this corridor in 2023.
For more on how West Springfield's daily rhythms line up with what's happening in the local housing market, Rachel Knapp knows this stretch of Old Keene Mill Road block by block. Let's Connect.
