It won’t be the fall of the Berlin Wall, but for store owners in one Sterling strip mall, it may be the next best thing.
Shopkeepers are excited that a brick retaining wall along the front of the out-of-sight Shops at Cedar Lake on Route 7 may finally be coming down after four years.
Delores Zimmerman, the new branch manager of the Greater Atlantic Bank, knew she had a problem with her new location before she even accepted the job. "I knew within five minutes of seeing the property that something had to be done," said Zimmerman, who began in January. "It just wasn’t right."
Like any of the strip malls that dot the Route 7 corridor through eastern Loudoun County, a grocery store and restaurant anchor Cedar Lake. But unlike its strip mall counterparts, Cedar Lake is most notable for the cinder block wall that runs the length of the property, rendering most of the shops invisible from the street. For the phalanx of drivers that creep along Route 7 each day, the Food Lion and International House of Pancakes restaurant are all that can be seen over the top of wall.
AFTER A FEW MONTHS, Zimmerman watched as "mom and pop shops" opened and subsequently closed due to the center’s lack of roadside visibility. Other nearby strip malls did not have similar fortresses, and Zimmerman saw no reason her shopping center should have a wall that essentially shields would-be bankers, shoppers and diners from the Shops at Cedar Lake. Zimmerman was on a mission and the wall was enemy No. 1.
"I just went to management and said, ‘When is that wall coming down?’" she said. "I’ve been hedging my bets ever since, so I just can’t believe that it will finally be knocked down."
At each turn, a new voice told Zimmerman the wall had to be there. It was part of the proffer, someone told her. The county demanded it, another insisted. In April, she was told flatly: "There’s nothing you can do."
The branch manager does not like the word, "No." She went down to the county herself and asked for the file on Cedar Lake. Zimmerman sat down at a table and county staff put the overgrown file in front of her. Some materials dated back to 1992, "It was this big," she said, putting her hands about foot or so apart. "No joke."
After leafing through the file, she was relieved. "No where in there could I find that this wall was a regulation. No where."
In fact, the only thing Zimmerman could find in the file regarding a wall was a stipulation that the future shopping center would need a 75-foot-long, 2-foot- to 6-foot-cinder block retaining wall on the north end of the property. The existing wall running parallel to Route 7 fit that description, save one small detail. The north side is actually in the back of the shopping center. The front of the center faces south. While there is a fence in back buffering the homes from the mall, it is by no means as definitive as the front wall. Laughing, Zimmerman said she assumed it was the handy work of a directionally challenged "young county engineer."
"Who builds a shopping center and then covers it up?" she asked rhetorically. "It makes no sense."
WITH HER FINGERS CROSSED, Zimmerman hopes that the wall, which was erected when the shopping center was built, will be torn down, "hopefully at the start of July." She said the new management company, Smart Management LLC, and the new owners, Kavelle Bajaj and her son Reuben, all insist they want to end the mystery surrounding this "super secret shopping center."
"I would love nothing more than to see that wall gone," she said. "I can’t tell you how good I will feel when it comes down."
Zimmerman said the new management team, whom she praised profusely, is in the final bidding stages for a contract to knock down the wall.
"I understand that the first estimate they received was very high," Scarlett Lovell, who owns a beauty salon in Cedar Lake, said. "If it’s too expensive, I know for a fact that every single shop owner here will gladly take a sledge hammer to that wall, if we have to."
The branch manager said the wall has not only made Cedar Lake, "the best kept secret in Loudoun County," it has unfortunately driven many "mom-and-pop-type stores" to move from the center or out-of-business, altogether. Just in the six months she has been there, three small stores, like the Cedar Lake Cleaners, have pulled up stakes and left, she said. "These are small stores, people trying to make a living," she said. "It’s a sad situation."
Just across the parking lot from Zimmerman’s bank is Lovell’s aptly named salon, Scarlet O’Haira’s. For 17 year’s Lovell’s shop had been across Route 7 in another shopping center. Lovell moved her business into the brand new Cedar Lake Center just across the Fairfax County line when it was built four years ago. Lovell said the access was better and being on the north side of Route 7 would bring in more customers returning from work, heading back into Loudoun County, at the end of the day. Most importantly, "the wall wasn’t in place, when we signed the lease," the businesswoman said. "I’ve been fighting for four long years to bring it down," she said. "It’s a detriment to business. We have people who have lived their entire lives in Sterling or Loudoun County and they have no idea this shopping center exists."
"I feel like I live in Berlin," Lovell said, half-jokingly.
LIKE ZIMMERMAN, Lovell has watched stores come and go with relative regularity. With more than 20 years in the community, O’Haira’s is strong enough to withstand a wall that blocks its view from one of the county’s busiest thoroughfares. In fact, Lovell is currently doubling the size of her business by expanding into the neighboring, and recently vacated, cleaners. Others have not been as fortunate. "There was the Maytag store, the big screen place, and, of course, the cleaners," she said. "The list goes on."
Cheryl Pratt, too, has watched the exodus of stores from her perch in the shopping center. Pratt, the manager, of the Healthway Natural Foods, said countless local residents have no idea the center even exists. Looking out her storefront window, Pratt points to Route 7, just beyond the parking lot and, of course, the wall. "Look," she said. "You can only see the very tops of the cars. How are they going to see us?"
While Lovell’s business is thriving, her lease runs out in February and she was thinking of moving her shop. "No matter how well you are doing, you can always increase your business. So, yes, I was looking at other locations," she said. "That wall is just very disconcerting."
Pratt could not agree more. While standing in her store across the parking lot from the bank and hair salon, she said the wall has definitely been "a detriment to business." Like O’Haira’s, Healthway benefited from its established roots in the community. It, too, originated in the shopping center across the street. Moreover, the store’s owners preferred the north side of the street with its "better evening access."
Like other tenants, Lovell and Pratt were told that the wall couldn’t come down. "It has been a drag on business — everybody’s business — no doubt about it," she said, adding that her store has been in the shopping center since it opened.
Despite her many protestations, Lovell never succeeded in convincing the center’s previous owners or the county to tear down the wall. It had to be there, she was told, time and again. "Nobody, however, seemed to know why," she said.
Lovell heaps credit on Zimmerman for her steadfast desire and legwork to fix the problem. "When Delores came to the bank, everything changed," she said.