McLean's September Events Meet Old Dominion Drive's New Dining Scene

If you've lived in McLean long enough, you already know the rhythm of this month without checking a calendar. The community center held its parking lot sale on September 12. The Old Firehouse throws its block party. The pumpkin patch shows up on the lawn for Harvest Happenings. None of that changed this year. What changed is everything you can walk to afterward.

Last year, McLean's civic institutions had their moment. The Old Firehouse Center hit its 35th anniversary and cut the ribbon on a renovated building, while the McLean Community Center unveiled a new community mural. This year, that same block party is back on the calendar as its 36th anniversary, following last year's milestone. What's new in 2026 isn't the community center's routine. It's a changing mix of places to visit along Old Dominion Drive.

The Last Three Saturdays of September, Same as Always

The Fall Community Parking Lot Sale ran Saturday, September 12, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the McLean Community Center's parking lot. This year's sale grew to more than 60 vendors, up from roughly 50 who filled the lot in 2025, plus the usual Kids' Row where sellers ages 5 to 15 unload their own gently used toys and games.

A week later, on Saturday, September 19, the Old Firehouse Center throws its annual block party, now marking 36 years since the center opened. This year's edition adds a Children's Business Fair to the usual mix of games, music, food, and giveaways. OFC marked its 35th anniversary on September 20, 2025 with a ribbon-cutting for ADA renovations and a new sensory room. Separately, FFXnow reported on the McLean Community Center's new exterior mural designed by Ohio-based artist Jeremy Jarvis. Residents helped paint it themselves during a community paint day that August, and the finished piece reads "you belong" in multiple languages. The mural was commissioned as part of MCC's 50th-anniversary celebration, which also produced a 1,000-pound mosaic sculpture called "QB," designed by Nevada artist Eileen Gay and installed on the plaza outside the center's main building that same August.

This year, the mural and sculpture remain in place, and the block party returns after last year's milestone celebration.

Then, Saturday, September 26, Harvest Happenings closes out the month in its usual two-hour morning slot, with live entertainment, a petting zoo, crafts, games, and a pumpkin patch where you can buy one to decorate on site. It hasn't changed either.

Three Saturdays, three events, none of them reinvented this year because they didn't need to be. The reinventing already happened, and it happened in 2025. That consistency is worth naming because it's rare. Most of what changes in a neighborhood changes because something forced it to. The parking lot sale and the harvest festival exist because the McLean Community Center has run them long enough that they've become load-bearing parts of how the neighborhood organizes its fall.

Recent Changes Along Old Dominion Drive

Here's the part of the story that has nothing to do with community programming. In early 2022, Café Oggi, a McLean institution that had operated on Old Dominion Drive for more than three decades, closed its doors. The corner it left behind, at Old Dominion Drive and Lowell Avenue, remained vacant for nearly four years, until Town Kitchen & Bar opened there in December 2025.

A mile up the same road, Chesterbrook Shopping Center was also undergoing a renovation. The property, which has served the neighborhood for more than 50 years, had been managed by Federal Realty as a third party before the company acquired majority ownership and began planning a full overhaul. The renovation began around 2022 and proceeded in phases: architectural updates, refreshed storefronts, and widened sidewalks.

In 2023, dining options along this stretch of Old Dominion Drive were more limited than they are today.

New Restaurants Along Old Dominion Drive

Several new dining options have opened along the corridor since 2024.

Town Kitchen & Bar opened December 13, 2025, on the exact corner that Café Oggi left behind. The owner is a longtime McLean resident who had previously run restaurants in Tysons, including Greenhouse Bistro, which matters more than it sounds like it should. For years the pattern in this corridor was Tysons operators staying in Tysons. This was one of the first signs of that pattern reversing. Town seats roughly 100 people inside with a 20-seat bar and a patio built for about 35 more, and it's known for seasonal menus and a bread pudding that's become the thing regulars mention first.

Down the road, Neutral Ground Bar + Kitchen has been running its Sunday jazz brunch since opening in 2024, and it has drawn attention beyond the neighborhood. The Washington Post reviewed it as the most captivating new restaurant in Northern Virginia, praising chef David Guas's cooking and the beach inspired decor that pulls from the Gulf Coast. Guas, a New Orleans native who also runs Bayou Bakery in Arlington, has kept a live jazz quartet playing every Sunday from late morning into early afternoon, and the restaurant has hosted a rotating set of chef collaborations and seasonal menu takeovers through the year.

Then there's Chesterbrook Shopping Center, which has served the neighborhood for more than 50 years. The renovation concluded with a Friendsgiving open house that November, and what came with it was a genuinely different tenant mix. Sweetgreen opened its 13th Northern Virginia location at 6220 Old Dominion Drive on November 11, 2025, in the storefront that used to house a BB&T bank branch. Sorn Thai moved in for sit-down dinner that doesn't require a Tysons parking garage. Call Your Mother, the bagel shop from owner Andrew Dana and James Beard-nominated chef Daniela Moreira, is now serving its towering bagel sandwiches a few doors down from Mylo's Grill, which has anchored that corner for years and isn't going anywhere.

Line up the dates and the timing gets tighter than it looks from the outside. Sweetgreen's opening, Chesterbrook's Friendsgiving reopening, and Town's debut on the old Café Oggi corner all landed within about a month of each other, November 11 to December 13, 2025. Several openings and a reopening took place along the corridor in roughly five weeks.

Where That Actually Puts You This Month

Put the civic calendar and the food corridor next to each other and the geography starts to matter more than either piece alone.

None of these pairings existed in this form two years ago. The community center's calendar didn't need the corridor to function. It ran its events regardless of what was or wasn't open nearby. The corridor saw several openings within about five weeks, adding more nearby dining options.

The Park's Separate Summer Program

McLean Central Park, where Harvest Happenings sets up its pumpkin patch every September, spent its summer doing its own separate thing. The Alden ran its concert series at the park pavilion through the warmer months, a program that exists independent of anything happening on Old Dominion Drive. The park kept doing what it does. The retail corridor around it is what changed.

That's the shape of this September. In 2025, the Old Firehouse Center completed ADA renovations, while the McLean Community Center marked its 50th anniversary with a mural and sculpture. This September, those features are part of the community landscape, and Old Dominion Drive has a broader restaurant mix following several openings in November and December 2025. This year, block-party visitors have nearby dining options along Old Dominion Drive.

Whether you're planning a Saturday around this or just noticing it for the first time, that's the kind of shift worth knowing if you live here. And if you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood closely enough to notice when its restaurant scene catches up to its civic one, you're exactly the kind of person Leslie Hoban likes to talk with about McLean, whether you're settled in for another decade or just starting to wonder what's next.