Update, Friday at 8:30 a.m. — After this article was published, a county spokeswoman told ARLnow that zoning officials were “not aware of the mural at Goody’s.”
“A zoning enforcement inspector will be visiting the site to further investigate this matter,” spokeswoman Helen Duong wrote in an email.
Earlier: Artists are currently hard at work adorning the exterior of longtime Clarendon pizzeria Goody’s with some new murals.
The artwork depicts all manner of ingredients and menu offerings. Mushrooms, tomatoes and basil are all prominently featured, as are gyros and hamburgers.
Goody’s is adding the new exterior artwork roughly six months after new ownership took over the Clarendon institution and fully renovated its interior.
Its previous owners, Nick and Vanessa Reisis, sold the business back in April, leading to a brief closure for the pizzeria. The Reisis’s were long fans of seasonal drawings on the restaurant’s windows, though that artwork generally didn’t include the pizzeria’s walls as well.
Similar murals on Arlington businesses have attracted scrutiny from county zoning officials in the past. The county once tangled with Wag More Dogs on S. Four Mile Run Drive over a mural on its walls, which was deemed to be “advertising” that was therefore not allowed under local sign regulations.
There’s no word yet from a county spokeswoman on whether Goody’s might be subject to similar permitting requirements for its new artwork.