Some new banners proclaiming Columbia Pike as “Arlington’s Oldest and Newest Main Street” could soon pop up along the roadway, with a series of other new pennants close behind.
The nonprofit Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization is looking for the County Board’s permission to start putting up 48 banners along the road over the next few years, as it runs from S. Jefferson Street and S. Orme Street between the area just outside Bailey’s Crossroads and Pentagon City.
The 24-inch-wide, 48-inch-tall banners would be vertically mounted on street light poles along Columbia Pike, in order to “assist in identification and branding of the Columbia Pike corridor,” according to a county staff report.
CPRO is particularly interested in outlining “a Main Street vision” for the area, staff wrote, so the first banners would be placed at five intersections along the road as part of a branding effort along those lines.
In the coming years, CPRO also hopes to post pennants to identify the boundaries of various neighborhoods in the area, like Arlington Mill and Columbia Forest.
CPRO also envisions using the banners to advertise events like movie nights or farmers markets. The organization — which is largely county funded — will pay for the new banners, with a projected cost of $11,280 in all.
The County Board is set to vote Saturday (May 19) on whether to move forward with this project. If approved, the Planning Commission would hold a public hearing on the topic on June 4 and the Board would hold its own on June 16.
Flickr pool photo by Bekah Richards. Banner rendering via Arlington County.
Ballston Quarter mall is unveiling 12 new restaurants with plans to open in the development, bringing the shopping center’s total to 22 confirmed eateries ahead of its scheduled re-opening this fall.
Forest City, the company that owns and manages the under-construction former Ballston Common Mall, announced the line-up of eateries today (Thursday). Some of the restaurants will be located in the development’s 25,000-square-foot “food hall,” while others will be spread throughout the mall or even located in the apartment building attached to the project.
The restaurants announced today include the return of Chick-fil-A, an old staple of the Ballston Common mall, and the first location of D.C. chain Compass Coffee outside the city. Union Kitchen Grocery and Baltimore-based The Local Oyster are also planning a location at Ballston Quarter, as is the previously-announced Ted’s Bulletin.
“Our overall mission for Ballston Quarter is to feature some of the most unique, trendsetting restaurants and reimagined brands possible, with a strong focus on best-in-class regional favorites,” Will Voegele, Forest City’s senior vice president of development, wrote in a statement.
The developer announced the mall’s first retail tenants last month, and several “experience-oriented” businesses in February. Forest City added it plans to announce more restaurants for the development ahead of its opening in the fall.
Full details from a press release on the 12 new restaurants, after the jump.
Chain Bridge Road at N. Glebe Road (photo via Google Maps)
Chain Bridge Road at N. Glebe Road (via Google Maps)
Both lanes of Chain Bridge Road at N. Glebe Road are currently closed.
Arlington Police say a tree fell on power lines in the area, and they’re warning drivers near the D.C. limits to find another route.
TRAFFIC ALERT ⚠️: All lanes of Chain Bridge Road at N. Glebe Road are closed for a fallen tree. @DomEnergyVA is responding due to the tree having made contact with power lines. Seek alternate routes in the area.
Arlington Public Schools could soon free up some space in one of its parking lots by shifting employees to a garage next to Barcroft Park.
The County Board is set to approve a deal with APS this weekend to let school bus drivers park their personal vehicles on the top floor of the Barcroft garage at 4200 S. Four Mile Run Drive.
The school system is looking to make the change because space at the Arlington County Trades Center lot in Shirlington (2770 S. Taylor Street) is rapidly becoming limited, according to a report prepared by county staff. Rising enrollment in APS has led not only to overcrowded classrooms, but a persistent push by the county to add more buses, which has squeezed its transportation facilities.
So long as the Board signs off on the deal, APS employees would be able to park in the 50 spaces on the top floor of the garage from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekday starting on July 1, and the arrangement would last for at least the next five years.
APS buses will no be moving from the Trades Center lot, so the school system also plans to run a shuttle out to the Barcroft garage, which sits roughly a mile away from the center.
County staff don’t expect this change will have any impact on demand for spaces in the garage, which also serves the Barcroft Sports and Fitness Center, as they believe the space is currently “underutilized by the public for parking for recreational activities” during the day on weekdays. The full garage will still be open to the public past 5 p.m. each day.
The Board will vote on the deal at its meeting Saturday (May 19). The matter is slated for the Board’s consent agenda, so it’s likely to pass without debate.
A push to overhaul Clarendon’s St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church for the first time in nearly 30 years is gaining steam.
The church’s pastor, the Rev. Don Planty, wrote to parishioners in a newsletter Sunday (May 13) that St. Charles is moving forward with a proposal to “redevelop” the parish site, which is located on prime land at 3304 Washington Blvd. The next step is to get approval for a redevelopment from the diocese and Bishop Michael F. Burbidge.
Planty wrote that the parish has spent the last 10 months or so gathering feedback on the issue. One town hall meeting asked parishioners: “If our parish had an empty city block-if we could start from scratch — what structures would you envision that would best support our mission?”
Church leaders found a “consensus that a timely redevelopment of the St. Charles parish campus would better serve the church’s mission in general and the parish’s mission in particular.”
The church’s website says the building was last overhauled in 1990. More from Planty’s letter:
I am happy to report that the consultation phase regarding a potential parish site redevelopment has concluded and that I have submitted a report to Bishop Burbidge. The consultation process revealed a consensus that a timely redevelopment of the St. Charles Parish campus would better serve the Church’s mission in general and the parish’s mission in particular. A strong majority of parish stakeholders, and all diocesan stakeholders, are enthusiastic about the possibilities that a future redevelopment of the St. Charles campus could bring. Having spent ten months soliciting broad feedback from representative parishioners and diocesan officials, according to the plan approved by Bishop Burbidge, I am confident that there is a great desire to redevelop the St. Charles Parish site, and therefore have requested that Bishop Burbidge formally approve further redevelopment efforts.
Other churches in Arlington have funded new facilities through redevelopment of the church property, including Arlington Presbyterian along Columbia Pike and the Church at Clarendon in Clarendon, both of which approved affordable housing developments that were built on top of the new church spaces.
St. Charles leaders are interested in addressing “an aging parish infrastructure,” “the projected growth in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor” and “the need for facilities which better support the parish mission now and in the future,” according to its website.
Del Alfonso Lopez at Indivisible Arlington meeting that was interrupted by protests (via Facebook)
Del Alfonso Lopez at Indivisible Arlington meeting that was interrupted by protests (via Facebook)
Del Alfonso Lopez at Indivisible Arlington meeting that was interrupted by protests (via Facebook)
Del Alfonso Lopez at Indivisible Arlington meeting that was interrupted by protests (via Facebook)
Del Alfonso Lopez at Indivisible Arlington meeting that was interrupted by protests (via Facebook)
Organizers with the group Indivisible Arlington are apologizing for how they handled a town hall meeting that devolved into a shouting match after pro-immigrant activists asked some tough questions of Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-49).
The grassroots group convened a public forum at Arlington’s Central Library last Saturday (May 13) featuring several state lawmakers, but Indivisible organizers felt compelled to call it off earlier than expected, as activists with the group LaColectiVa aggressively pressed Lopez on his past consulting work for a private company that contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In a new statement today (Wednesday), Indivisible leaders defended the decision to end the meeting, as they felt participants were “unable to maintain a constructive dialogue.” However, they expressed regret about the presence of both library security and county police at the meeting, particularly after an Arlington police officer arrived at the meeting and set off a new round of protests from the LaColectiVA activists.
“We recognize the negative impact of their presence on meeting participants, especially people of color,” Indivisible organizers wrote. “We did not request the presence of Arlington law enforcement.”
The group is now urging meeting attendees to reach out to Indivisible to discuss “how we can best move forward together.”
Some people who attended the meeting believe Lopez is the one who needs to take the lead on smoothing things over, given the way he handled the situation.
“It’s very disheartening, because he’s not apologizing or discussing what happened there,” Nelson Lopez, an organizer with LaColectiVA, told ARLnow. “We just want to have a dialogue about this issue, and he’s consistently refused to do so.”
An aide to the delegate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nelson Lopez and other meeting attendees say they want to know whether or not Del. Lopez had anything to do with police officers heading to the meeting.
People at the gathering say LaColectiVA’s activists weren’t being overly disruptive when they first arrived, with one member of the group asking Lopez about his past work for the Immigration Centers of America, which runs an ICE detention center in Central Virginia. Lopez reported on state disclosure forms that the group paid him $5,000 in 2014 and $10,000 in 2015 and 2016, and LaColectiVA has spent the last few months organizing protests around the issue.
A video of the forum posted on Facebook shows that Lopez and some activists briefly argued — Lopez insisted that a nondisclosure agreement bars him from discussing his past consulting work, and he insisted that work is not part of his “public life” in the General Assembly — but the meeting soon returned to normalcy.
Roughly 15 minutes later, a county police officer entered the room, setting off loud protests from members of LaColectiVA.
“The police were preemptively called, and that was what caused the disturbance in the first place,” said Ben Tribbett, a veteran Democratic strategist who attended the meeting. “The kids were petrified when the cops got there.”
Arlington police spokeswoman Ashley Savage says it was library staff who called the department about the arrival of the LaColectiVA protesters. But Tribbett and Nelson Lopez say they are interested in finding out if anyone asked the library staff to contact authorities, a call echoed by Del. Patrick Hope (D-47) and Arlington Commissioner of the Revenue Ingrid Morroy on Twitter Wednesday.
I greatly appreciate @IndivisibleArl strong statement. I’d like to better understand the sequence of events that led to the calling of law enforcement, which was completely unwarranted and unnecessary. https://t.co/IsLLZu9JCs
Attendees are also urging Del. Alfonso Lopez to address an allegation made by another LaColectiVA organizer, Irma Corrado, who says Lopez threatened her as the meeting broke up.
She says Lopez told her “I know where you work, and my friend is a board member,” which she took as a threat that he’d get her fired. She declined to publicly reveal where she works.
Most of all, Nelson Lopez hopes the delegate takes this whole episode as an example of just how frustrated people are over his refusals to answer questions about his past ties to the ICE contractor.
“We just want to have a town hall, a public forum about this, so he can understand it’s not just some fringe group that has these feelings,” Lopez said. “We’re not trying to get rid of him, we’re trying to have a dialogue.”
A slew of improvements are coming to S. Walter Reed Drive (photo via Arlington County)
S. Walter Reed Drive project area (via Arlington County)
The reconfigured intersection of S. Walter Reed Drive and Arlington Mill Drive, mirroring changes proposed for S. Four Mile Run Drive (file photo)
Some long-awaited improvements for bicyclists and pedestrians on S. Walter Reed Drive in Shirlington could soon move forward.
Arlington County has been hoping for years to add a series of new features to the road as it runs between S. Arlington Mill Drive to S. Four Mile Run Drive, and the County Board is poised to award a roughly $1.8 million contract for the construction this weekend.
County planners are looking to improve access to the Washington & Old Dominion Trail and the Four Mile Run Trail along the road, and the county is aiming to add new crosswalks and curb ramps, ADA-compliant bus stops, upgraded traffic and pedestrian signals and additional street lighting in the area.
The plans also call for a slight widening and resurfacing of S. Walter Reed Drive, and the elimination of a westbound turn lane on Arlington Mill Drive to improve the crossing for walkers and cyclists. County officials started testing the latter change last summer, briefly prompting a few traffic back-ups in the area. According to a report by county staff, transportation planners managed to resolve those problems by tweaking the timing of traffic signals around the end of 2017.
The Shirlington Civic Association is supportive of the project. Its president said in a letter that the association hopes, among other things, that the project will improve access to the western end of the Shirlington dog park.
The county is hoping to start construction sometime this spring or summer, pending the Board’s approval of the contract. The Board is set to vote to vote on the matter on Saturday (May 19), as part of its “consent agenda,” which is generally reserved for noncontroversial items that are approved all at once.
The total cost of all phases of the project, including the current contract, is listed as $2.8 million.
(Updated May 16, 9 a.m.) An Arlington County office building in Courthouse that’s home to the county’s 24-hour homeless shelter is cleaning up from some heavy flooding Tuesday (May 15).
A water pipe on the top floor of the seven-story building at 2020 14th Street N. broke Monday night (May 14), according to Jessica Baxter, a spokeswoman for the county’s Department of Environmental Services.
Baxter told ARLnow that “drainage from the broken pipe impacted all areas of the building,” including the county’s Homeless Services Center, other government offices and even the Chelsea Market & Deli and Ragtime Restaurant on the building’s ground floor.
“County contractors are on-site cleaning up the water, repairing the pipe and recharging the chilled water system to restore HVAC services on floors 4-7,” Baxter wrote in an email. “HVAC services for the lower floors were not impacted.”
Baxter says the flooding has not impacted services at the shelter, but it has forced county employees working on the first and fifth floors to temporarily relocate to the other offices.
The county bought the building for $27 million in 2012, in part to open a new, year-round shelter for the homeless. The shelter opened in 2015.
Courthouse Metro tunnel elevators on Clarendon Boulevard (photo via Google Maps)
Courthouse Metro tunnel elevators on Wilson Boulevard (photo via Google Maps)
Court Square West building in Courthouse (photo via Google Maps)
Arlington County could soon embark on a $1.8 million effort to replace four elevators around Courthouse.
The County Board will vote at its meeting this weekend on a plan to fully overhaul two elevators in Arlington’s Court Square West building (1400 N. Uhle Street) and two more that connect to the Courthouse Metro station underground.
The elevators in Court Square West, a building that holds some county offices, travel seven stories each. The Metro station elevators travel just two stories, and are located at each end of an underground access tunnel linking to the station — one is at 2200 Clarendon Boulevard, the other at 2111 Wilson Boulevard.
The County Board is set to vote to award a contract for the work on Saturday (May 19), as part of its “consent agenda,” which is generally reserved for noncontroversial items that are approved all at once.
A FBI agent helped break up a scuffle last week between a tow truck driver and the owner of a car he was towing at a Crystal City gas station, according to Arlington County Police.
Police have charged 33-year-old Arlington resident Norman Mitchell Brawner, Jr. with malicious wounding in connection with the brawl last Thursday (May 10) at the Exxon station near the intersection of 23rd Street S. and Route 1. Police believe a man confronted Brawner as he began to tow his car, then a fight broke out between the pair that resulted in Brawner stabbing the man.
While Arlington police initially reported only that a federal law enforcement officer witnessed the confrontation, spokeswoman Ashley Savage now tells ARLnow that an FBI agent at the station intervened when he saw the two men start fighting.
“An FBI agent witnessed the incident and gave commands to cease the assault while displaying his firearm,” Savage wrote in an email. “The suspect left the scene and the tow company contacted police with the suspect’s location. The FBI agent remained on scene with the victim until police arrived.”
Savage says the victim was taken to a nearby hospital with “serious but non-life threatening injuries.” She would not confirm which towing company Brawner was working for, but WJLA reports that it was Advanced Towing — which has faced persistent allegations of predatory towing practices and which made national headlines in 2015 after video emerged of then-ESPN reporter Britt McHenry berating an Advanced employee.
The company’s owner, John O’Neill, did not respond to requests for comment on the incident, though signs at the Exxon alert drivers that anyone parking illegally will be towed by Advance Towing.
Brawner is set to appear in Arlington County General District Court on June 22 for a preliminary hearing.
Rosslyn wine bar and market Bistro 360 is closing up shop at the end of the month.
Owner Art Hauptman says he plans to shutter the restaurant, located at 1800 Wilson Boulevard since the fall of 2014, by May 25. While he has yet to sell the place to someone else, he says he’s received enough “good offers for the space” to decide to move on.
“We appreciate all the patrons we had here, but it felt like the right time,” Hauptman told ARLnow. “It didn’t go gangbusters or else I’d be staying, but it was worth a try.”
Hauptman added that his chef and general manager for the last few years is moving out of the area, so he felt it made sense to shut things down now rather than wait any longer.
He plans to “consolidate” most of the restaurant’s wine offerings and specials over at the other Arlington eatery he owns: Cassatt’s Kiwi Café and Gallery, at the Lee Heights Shops off Lee Highway.
In the meantime, Hauptman says Bistro 360 will stay open Tuesday through Saturday from 4-9 p.m. each night, with a big “blowout” party planned for Thursday, May 24.
“I think we gave a lot of people a nice local joint,” Hauptman said. “We tried to make it conversational where people could actually hear themselves talk, and I think we succeeded in that.”
The 24-inch-wide, 48-inch-tall banners would be vertically mounted on street light poles along Columbia Pike, in order to “assist in identification and branding of the Columbia Pike corridor,” according to a county staff report.
