September and October will bring retail openings to Marketplace at Tech Center

The retail side of John Lawson’s latest project in Newport News — the Marketplace at Tech Center  — is shaping up with many new openings planned for this month and October.

Starbucks and BJs Restaurant and Brewhouse have opened for business at the 250,000-square-foot retail part of Tech Center, a 100-acre, mixed-use development at the corner of Oyster Point Road and Jefferson Avenue

“We are so pleased to see this emerge as a shopping and dining destination,” Lawson, CEO of W.M. Jordan, the project’s developer, said in a statement.  “This is the first phase of Tech Center, and we anticipate drawing people from the Peninsula and beyond … “

The center is drawing new restaurants and retailers to the Peninsula. For instance, BJs, which offers pub fare and an extensive list of beers, is the first in the region. Café Rio, a Mexican restaurant, is another first for the region.  It’s scheduled to open this month.

Other restaurants coming in September include Jimmy Johns, Zoe’s Kitchen, PF Chang’s and Mellow Mushroom.

Retailers expected to open before the end of the month include DSW, Conte's Bike Shop, Ulta, and Carter's/OshKosh.  

According to the developer, more restaurants and stores are slated to open in October. To track the openings, people can visit www.techcenterva.com.

The Tech Center is anchored by a federal research agency, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab). Other components of the project are a 50-acre Tech Center Research Park and residential sites. S.J. Collins, based in Georgia, is the joint-venture developer. The $450 million project is projected to create more than 5,500 jobs in Newport News when it is totally built out.