For close to two years, the end unit at Village Square sat dark. The windows at 3290 Bennett Creek Avenue, Unit A, kept their paper covering long after every other storefront around it had a name on the door. If you've driven Route 80 through Urbana in the past year, you've passed it. It was the one gap in an otherwise full shopping center, and it stayed that way while thirteen other businesses opened around it.
That gap just closed. Vesuvius Italian & Wine Bar moved into the space that used to be Manina, and the order in which everything around it filled in tells you something real about how this stretch of Urbana actually functions.
What Was There Before
Manina described itself as an American wood-fired pizzeria with house-cured meats, seasonal plates, and creative cocktails. It closed in 2023. For roughly two years after that, the corner of Village Square where Bennett Creek Avenue meets Route 80 near the I-270 interchange sat empty while the rest of the center kept building out around it.
Frederick City Media picked up on the change in May 2025, when "coming soon" signage for Vesuvius first went up in the window. At the time, sources told the outlet that work was underway and the restaurant could open before the end of the year. Reviews on Yelp and Tripadvisor place the actual opening sometime after that, with feedback already rolling in by February 2026 describing it as a new addition to the Urbana area.
Two years is a long time for a single retail unit to sit vacant in a shopping center that was otherwise leasing fast.
What Filled In While That Space Stayed Dark
Village Square didn't wait around. While the Manina space collected dust, Natelli Communities, the developer behind the center, brought in a full roster of counter-service and errand-driven tenants. By the time Vesuvius opened, the rest of the plaza looked like this:
- Coffee and drive-through: Starbucks, which got its own grand opening from Natelli Communities as what the developer called the completion of the center's final retail building
- Quick-service dining: Chipotle, Panera, Popeyes, Domino's, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and Jersey Mike's
- Sit-down but fast: Big Greek Cafe and Akira Ramen & Izakaya
- Errands: The UPS Store, Urbana Nail Salon, and Eyes and Smiles
- Treats: Lil Cakes and Creamery
Thirteen storefronts, all filled, all operating, while one corner unit sat empty with paper in the windows. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's a pattern.
The Kind of Restaurant That Took the Longest to Prove Itself
Every other tenant that opened at Village Square during those two years fits a specific mold: order at the counter, eat fast, or grab something on your way somewhere else. Even Akira and Big Greek Cafe, the two closest things to sit-down dining in the center, are built around quick turnaround rather than a reservation and a bottle of wine.
Vesuvius is a different animal. It's an upscale-casual Italian restaurant with a wine list, open for lunch and dinner daily, the kind of place built for a slower table. One Yelp reviewer summed up the local reaction simply:
"So glad this is a new addition to Urbana area."
That reaction, glad relief rather than mild interest, tells you the demand was there the whole time. What took two years wasn't finding customers. It was finding a tenant and a build-out that matched what a wine bar actually requires, in a center that had spent its first wave of leasing on drive-throughs and quick counters. The fast-casual model is a known quantity for a landlord and a franchisee. A wine bar with a real kitchen is a bigger bet, and bigger bets take longer to close.
Sit-Down Dining Was Never Actually Missing From Urbana
Here's the part that complicates the easy version of this story: Urbana never lacked places to sit down for a full meal. It just lacked one inside Village Square specifically.
Across Route 80 and up toward Fingerboard Road, The Urbana Lodge has been running as a family-owned restaurant with a full bar, a Sunday NFL package on eight televisions, and a menu built around ribs, a Reuben, and a house salad. It sits in the spot that used to be a Buffalo Wild Wings, at the corner of Fingerboard and Worthington Boulevard, and it never went dark the way the Manina space did.
Jasmine Al-Sham Mediterranean Grill and Pumpernickel and Rye round out the sit-down and counter-hybrid options that have kept locals fed while Village Square worked through its lineup. None of these needed two years to find their footing.
So the real story isn't that Urbana couldn't support a wine bar. It's that Village Square, as a planned retail center built around anchor tenants and quick-turn leases, took longer to attract the kind of restaurant that isn't built around a drive-through window. The demand was already proven a mile away. The center just hadn't caught up to it yet.
What This Means If You Eat Here Every Week
If you've been ordering the same rotation from Chipotle and Panera for two years because that end unit never had a light on, you now have a reservation-worthy option in the same parking lot. If you've been driving to The Urbana Lodge or Jasmine Al-Sham for anything that requires a fork and a slower pace, you don't have to anymore, at least not exclusively.
The bigger takeaway is about how this particular corner of Urbana fills in. Quick-service national chains move fast here. Starbucks got a grand opening and a press release. The slower, more specific concepts take longer to land, even when the neighborhood is clearly ready for them. That's worth remembering the next time you notice an empty storefront in this stretch of town. It's not necessarily a sign nobody wants to lease it. It might just mean the right tenant hasn't finished their build-out yet.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like Urbana actually offers day to day, beyond what shows up on a map or a listing, this kind of detail is the difference between guessing and knowing. Adam Murphy spends enough time in Frederick County to notice when a storefront finally turns its lights on, and he's always glad to talk through what a specific block, corridor, or community actually looks like in practice. Let's Connect if you want that kind of read on any neighborhood in this area.
