Last Day Sunday for Capital Bagel Bakery at Bradlee

It's been a tumultuous week for the Capital Bagel Bakery, its landlord Washington Real Estate Investment Trust, and longtime customers of the bagel shop at Bradlee Shopping Center in Alexandria.

If you want to get in one last bagel fix, be sure to stop in on Sunday. That's the last day the shop will be open, the manager said Saturday. (The shop's normal hours on Sundays are 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) The shop was originally going to close its doors for good on Friday.

The bagel shop has been a fixture, under different owners, in the neighborhood for the past 27 years.

Last week, after word got out that the shop owner was asked to leave the shopping center due to some payment issues, customers got irate and attacked the landlord on Facebook.

The brouhaha even entangled a new tenant at the shopping center, The Fresh Market, which issued a statement of their own and also posted a copy of it outside their store near the entrance. The new grocery store even reached out to the bagel shop, inviting them to sell their bagels at the new store.

As the week wore on, customers created signs, sticking them at the shopping center entrance and on the windows of the shop and even handed out bagel samples to passersby as they requested a signature on a petition that grew to about 3,000 names.

The owner Kay Paik said last week that she is hoping to re-locate nearby. Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille and others involved in city economic development efforts stopped in; Paik said she hopes she will find a new location. WRIT also showed her at least two new locations.

Patch will keep in touch with Paik and update with any new information about a possible new location for Capital Bagel Bakery.

Weigh in: What location in Alexandria do you think would be a good new home for Capital Bagel Bakery?