At 2501 Columbia Pike, ground floor of the Penrose Square Apartments, five restaurants have tried their luck in the same space since the mid-2010s. Three of them didn't last three years. The fourth held on for almost a decade. All of them are gone now, and the storefront sits empty again while a fifth concept, an all-you-can-eat sushi spot called MoMoGoGo, puts up hiring signs and waits on permits.
The sequence runs like this. Josephine's Italian Kitchen went first, then Marble & Rye, then RedRocks Neapolitan Bistro, none of them making it past the three-year mark. Takohachi Japanese Restaurant broke that streak. Under chef and owner Tsutomu Nakano, it ran for nearly a decade, longer than the previous three tenants put together. Then sometime this year it went dark. Its Google listing still reads "temporarily closed," the phone number has been disconnected, and nobody from the business has explained why, not to ARLnow, not to anyone. MoMoGoGo has taken over the lease and is hiring for what it calls a reinvented all-you-can-eat model, made-to-order rolls instead of a buffet line. As of the most recent public update in mid-May, it still had no opening date.
A few blocks east, a different story is playing out
Cornerstone, the bar and restaurant that took over the old Rebellion on the Pike space at 2900 Columbia Pike, closed for good in May, just over two years after it opened. Co-owners Pete Fejeran and Kathryn McAbee, who also run the nearby Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse, held a final call on a Saturday and posted a goodbye that read more like a pause than an ending. Fejeran was more direct with ARLnow about the actual reason. "Between the misplanned construction and all the government shutdowns, it's a continued trend," he said.
A few blocks away at the Centro Arlington development, Bluefish Bistro closed in April after less than three years in business, despite carrying a 4.9-star average rating on Google. Owner Andy Park didn't offer a public explanation, and neither did Kimco Realty, the property owner. The timing put Bluefish in the same stretch as Cornerstone, and Centro's other vacancy, the 51,000-square-foot space Harris Teeter left behind, has sat empty since the summer before.
As recently as August, a regional business roundup was still describing both closures as tied to construction disruption and broader economic headwinds along the corridor, a characterization Pike business owners have been making for longer than that.
In spring of last year, Lost Dog Cafe owner James Barnes told ARLnow that sales at his Columbia Pike location dropped 10 percent from 2023 to 2024, with another 8.75 percent drop projected if the trend held. He named the cause directly: sidewalk closures and safety barriers tied to the county's multimodal streetscape project. Acme Pie Co. owner Sol Schott, who relocated his shop from 2803 to 2406 Columbia Pike after roughly two years of restricted sidewalks and roadwork at the old address, said Acme's retail sales fell 50 percent since 2023. He had a name for the whole situation.
"It's like, South Arlington's 'Big Dig.'"
William Jeffrey's Tavern co-owner Adam Luber tied the frustration to something longer-running than the current project, telling ARLnow he doesn't think the county board views Columbia Pike as a valuable piece of its small business plan, a complaint that in Pike business circles tends to loop back to the county's abandoned streetcar proposal.
Why the Penrose Square storefront runs on a different timeline
A restaurant that survives on the Pike for almost a decade doesn't get pushed out by two or three years of sidewalk barriers. Whatever ended Takohachi's run, and whatever ran through Josephine's, Marble & Rye and RedRocks before it, was happening on a different clock than the one Fejeran, Barnes, Schott and Luber are describing. Three tenants failed and Takohachi survived a full decade before any of the current construction complaints existed. The turnover at 2501 Columbia Pike began before the current construction complaints, so it follows its own timeline. The reporting available does not say why each earlier tenant left.
That distinction matters for anyone who's walked past that storefront wondering what's wrong with it. The rest of the Pike has an explanation with a name and a timeline attached. This one address doesn't, and MoMoGoGo is stepping into a spot with a track record the construction project had nothing to do with.
The corridor's own community group didn't see the recent wave coming either. Cornerstone hosted the Columbia Pike Partnership's Monthly Lunch Club in May of last year, a full year before it closed its doors for good.
What's still on the block
The rest of Columbia Pike hasn't stopped serving lunch. The Partnership's Lunch Club calendar moved on to Bangkok 54 in June, Ruthie's All Day in July, Ledo Pizza in August, Boru Ramen in December, Soca Fusion in January, El Pike Bolivian Restobar in February, Pho Saigon in March and Bob & Edith's Diner in April, evidence that the Pike's food scene is reshuffling rather than shrinking. Kabobistan is still slinging kebabs a few blocks down. The Columbia Pike Farmers Market still runs year-round, and the Columbia Pike Blues Festival is still on the summer calendar as the largest blues festival in the DC metro area.
Whether MoMoGoGo becomes the address's second Takohachi or its fourth quick failure won't tell you much about how the rest of the corridor is doing. That answer depends on the county's construction timeline and the government shutdown cycle Fejeran cited. The storefront at 2501 is running its own experiment, one that started years before anyone put up a safety barrier on the Pike.
Coral Gundlach eats on Columbia Pike more often than she cooks at home, and she's been keeping half an eye on that Penrose Square storefront since the RedRocks days. If you want to talk through what's actually changing on your stretch of the Pike, or anywhere else in Arlington, reach out to Coral Gundlach and book a consultation.
