There is going to be a very big vacancy soon at the Fort Evans Plaza II shopping center in Leesburg. The Ashley Furniture store there is moving out.
Big posters touting a 70 percent off “everything must go” moving sale hang on the front of the store and Ashley moving sale yard signs dot the streets around the center.
We asked the employee who greeted us where the store was moving to — and he said he didn’t know — there hadn’t been any announcement about that yet.
As far as when the store would close, the employee said that was also unknown, but probably by the end of the year.
The departure of Ashley Furniture will leave a empty space of more than 29,000 s.f. in the center. That’s no easy task to fill — especially in this era when many big box retailers have been shrinking their footprints.
But the leasing folks at Fort Evans Plaza II have had good luck recently. When Bed, Bath, and Beyond moved out, they got a Restoration Hardware Outlet store to take the huge space.
And when JoAnn Fabric and Aaron’s Rent to Own closed in the center, they quickly signed HomeGoods and then Trader Joe’s to take their place.