Village Square At Urbana Finally Filled Its Last Empty Storefront

For more than two years, the storefront at 3290 Bennett Creek Avenue sat dark. It used to be Manina, a wood-fired pizzeria that described itself as "an American wood-fired pizzeria with house-cured meats, seasonal plates, and creative cocktails." When it closed, the space became the one gap in an otherwise built-out shopping center, the blank window everyone driving toward Route 80 passed without quite noticing anymore. It had been empty long enough to stop registering as news.

It is not empty now. Vesuvius Italian & Wine Bar moved in, and its arrival closes out something bigger than one more restaurant listing. It marks the practical completion of Village Square at Urbana, the retail center at the corner of Bennett Creek Avenue and Route 80 that Natelli Communities has been assembling in phases for years. If your mental map of that plaza still has a "still under construction" asterisk on it, that asterisk is out of date.

What "finished" actually means here

Village Square didn't open all at once. It filled in over several years, building by building, tenant by tenant, the way most shopping centers do when a developer is leasing space as fast as construction allows. When Starbucks opened as the center's newest building, with a drive-through and an outdoor seating area, Natelli Communities' own announcement framed it as the capstone:

"The completion of our final retail building rounds out the synergy of operators at Village Square."

That's a developer's way of saying: we're done building. It doesn't mean every square foot is leased. The center's own leasing plan still lists two small suites, one at 1,617 square feet and one at 1,697 square feet, as available, alongside a still-unbuilt second phase sized at 3,557 square feet. So "finished" here means structurally complete and functionally full, not fully leased down to the last door. For a resident, the distinction barely matters. The parking lot that used to have visible gaps now reads as one continuous, occupied plaza.

What's actually there right now

Here's the full tenant list from Village Square's current leasing plan, which is worth seeing all in one place because most residents only know it in fragments, whichever storefronts they happen to park in front of.

Fourteen occupied storefronts, two open suites, and one phase that hasn't broken ground. That's a shopping center at something like 85 percent build-out by square footage, which is a different picture than "still filling up," the phrase most people default to when they haven't driven past in a few months.

The restaurant that replaced the gap

Vesuvius describes itself as an upscale-casual Italian spot built around handcrafted pasta, fresh seafood, and a curated wine list, open for lunch and dinner daily. Reporting on the space from spring 2025 noted that work was underway with no confirmed opening date yet. Reviews posted as recently as this February and this summer confirm it's been open and running a full lunch and dinner service for a while now. One early reviewer summed up the neighborhood reaction plainly: "So glad this is a new addition to Urbana area."

The location itself has some history worth knowing if you're the type who remembers what used to be where. It's the same building that housed Manina, and before that it was simply the one storefront in Village Square that never quite got its second act. Now it has one.

The older layer of Urbana's food scene

Village Square gets the attention because it's new and visible from Route 80, but it isn't the only place people in Urbana actually eat. A separate cluster of sit-down, independently run spots sits a short drive away, mostly along Worthington Blvd and around the Villages of Urbana. The Urbana Lodge, a family-run restaurant on Worthington Blvd, runs a full bar with a Sunday NFL package across eight TVs and a full brunch menu on weekends, the kind of standing weekly plan a plaza food court doesn't really support. Atlantic Grille, tucked into the Villages of Urbana, runs a "Pick 2" lunch menu that regulars order specifically for the Maryland crab soup. Round out that list with So Thai, Habanero Mexican Food Bar & Grill, Pumpernickel + Rye, and Black Hog BBQ, and you've got a second, older food scene that most "what's new in Urbana" content skips entirely because none of it is new.

That's the actual split worth knowing. Village Square is where you go for a fast pickup order or a coffee run between errands. The Worthington Blvd cluster is where you go when you want to sit down, know the server, and stay a while. Most people who live here already sort their own habits this way without ever naming it. It's just useful to see it laid out.

Where to walk it off

If dinner at Vesuvius or brunch at Urbana Lodge leaves you wanting a walk afterward, Urbana District Park at 3805 Urbana Pike has trails, two soccer fields, a little league field, picnic shelters, and a Veteran Memorial, all a few minutes from either cluster. It's not a hidden spot. It's just the obvious next stop that a lot of "what's new" content leaves out because a park with ball fields doesn't generate headlines the way a restaurant opening does.

Whichever list you pulled from this week, Village Square or Worthington Blvd, the underlying point is the same: Urbana finished changing shape sometime in the last year, and most of that change happened quietly enough that only the people paying close attention noticed. If you're the kind of resident who tracks that sort of thing, or if you're weighing what your own house might be worth now that the neighborhood around it looks a little more finished, Troyce Gatewood & Partners puts together free home valuations with a guaranteed cash offer option, no obligation attached, just a number to work from.