Ballston Quarter

This shopping center is located in the heart of the downtown area. It offers a pleasant and well-maintained environment with various dining options and eateries. However, there are many vacant spots in the building. Macy's used to be located here but is no longer present. The building also includes a spacious fitness gym and other retail establishments. On weekends, the area becomes lively due to restaurants and bars.

Good food court, good structure, good couple of anchors (like Regal Cinema), but that's about it. They are suffering from high tenant vacancies. it's gotten so bad that they must have turned the ac way up. I'm sweating as I type this. 🥵💦 Think of the poor ____ doing _____ in this heat. 🫠

Good variety of food for entire family in the food court and “kid” friendly. The bathrooms tho, always have something out of service or missing paper, or something! Good shops for kids too, book store, cooking classes, smoothie shop, skating rink, escape room. And there’s also an outdoor playground nearby with a water feature in the summer. So lots to do on a weekend to keep kids entertained.

Honestly I never go here to shop because the mall is boring and lame. But the food court is delicious and has some great food options ranging from ramen to friend chicken to Korean corn dogs. So good!

One star because the new parking system is broken. The app literally does not work. I have scanned the QR code on 2 fully functional, modern phones, entered all info, and the payment button (GPay) is not responsive. It has happened on 3 separate days over the course of weeks, and it never once worked. There is always a line for the machine, probably because the app is broken, but also because there's only 1 machine at the entrance I use (G3). You used to be able to drive in & out of this garage and it was great. I used to meet groups here because it was so easy to drive or Metro here. Now driving is terrible because of the awful garage. I am not recommending it for group dining for this reason. Fix the garage and I'll be back.

The food court has more variety than the mall has stores, and while that's definitely an attraction, God forbid you need to use the men's rest room (am I even allowed to say that?). It looks like they filmed the bathroom scene from True Lies in there and never went back to fix anything. Half the toilets don't work, sink has the water pressure of a 90 yo with prostate cancer, and they refuse to provide paper towels. This isn't a new phenomenon either, it's been like this for at least a year.

Since we moved to Fairfax, VA we're slowly exploring new places and restaurants. So today we went to 'Ballston Quarter Mall' in Arlington, VA. I'm not impressed with this mall - it's DEAD however it was not your regular mall. The only anchor store was Macy's but not enough popular stores/boutiques that we are familiar with. The food court did not have your usual food court stores, instead it was a combination of fewer high restaurants and low. The higher restaurants like: 'Kung Fun Tea and JINYA Ramen Bar' are hidden around the down stairs going to the street I noticed only 2 tables with people. Outside the mall Mezeh, Rice Crook, Go Poke ... The mall has an indoor and outdoor layout. The indoor is full of empty seats to relax with painted murals and plants. The outdoor/patio is green with some restaurants and places to look at the street. Definitely they need to get more stores or revamp this mall to attract more people, because I don't see any future there. Basically the mall doesn't have a lot to do other than the Regal Theater, or go to the gym. The only good thing is the parking for $1 for 3 hours, very inexpensive for Northern Virginia. There's no reason to go back there!

I still like the mall, but is the new parking system become so strict. It knows exact the time you in and away, if you arrive and not pay in 15 mins, they send someone to ticket you. If you got extra one min delay, they charged you extra hour. Why don’t you just make the payment fully automatic. Why bother let us choose how long we parking.