Author: Ethan Rothstein

Columbia Pike Church To Be Sold To APAH, Torn Down

By Ethan Rothstein

Arlington Presbyterian Church (via Preservation Arlington)(Updated at 5:10 p.m.) After more than a year of waiting, the sale of Arlington Presbyterian Church to the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing can go forward.

The church’s congregation voted in November 2013 to approve the church’s redevelopment into an affordable housing building with a 7,500-square-foot worship space for the church in future years. Last week, the National Capital Presbytery — the region’s governing body for presbyterian churches — approved the sale of the church building at 3507 Columbia Pike.

APAH must now gather financing and go through site plan approval from the county before the sale can close. According to church project manager Jill Norcross, the sale is expected to close in July 2016, which is also when the church’s congregation is expecting to need to find a new home.

“The congregation is thrilled,” Norcross said. “For them, it’s been quite a process, a multi-year visioning process where they’ve had to walk every step of the way. They’ve remained committed, so having the Presbytery approve it is a huge step for them, and they’re really excited about it. The next step is figuring out where they will worship when they leave the site.”

When the plans were approved more than a year ago, it was with the understanding that the new building would be the church’s future home when it opened. Now, Norcross said, APAH will own the land and the building outright, and the church and developer would have to agree on a new lease when the building is built, no sure thing.

“The church has given up any ownership stake in the building,” she said. “That’s what the Presbytery wanted. The church might come back as a tenant, but that’s still to be negotiated between now and 2016.”

APAH hopes to gain approval for a five-story, 142-unit apartment building with ground floor retail space originally intended for a coffee shop.

Preservationists have called for the building, which was built in 1931, to be preserved instead of torn down. The church decided the need for more affordable housing on Columbia Pike, and the opportunity to sell to APAH for millions of dollars, outweighed the idea of preserving the church and its rising maintenance costs.

“The affordable housing is desperately needed on the Pike,” Norcross said. The surprise cancellation of the streetcar did not have an impact on the congregation or the Presbytery’s decision, she said.

Preservation Arlington’s Eric Dobson said he hopes something can be done to preserve the church, because once Arlington’s older buildings are gone, “they’re gone for good.”

“That building was so important to the development of the Pike,” Dobson said. “The materials of the stone and its design… other communities would consider those assets, but in Arlington we seem to ignore that.”

Photo via Preservation Arlington

Highline in Crystal City Plans Weekend Opening

By Ethan Rothstein
1/9

(Updated at 5:10 p.m.) All that stands between Crystal City’s newest bar and its future, thirsty patrons is an Alcohol Beverage Control Board inspector.

Highline RXR, on the second floor of 2010 Crystal Drive, is built out with reclaimed wood and windows from barnhouses and industrial facilities across the country. Co-owner Peter Bayne said once the ABC inspector comes, he must order about $30,000 worth of beer and liquor and set them all up before opening. He predicts the bar will open this weekend.

Walking up the staircase — designed to look like an industrial train car and painted by a local artist — to the entrance of the large space, you’re greeted with several arcade games, including Monopoly pinball. In a back room, there’s Big Buck Hunter, Golden Tee and Ms. Pacman. The space is open and lined with giant windows.

The bar is broken into a front and back area. The front, where patrons enter, has a space for a stage and the major tap system, which includes 24 standard taps and six beer taps on a separate system that will be rotated more frequently and feature rarer beers. There will also be four red and four white wines on tap. Next to the bar is a custom-built shelf that will have 20 to 30 board games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan.

To enter the back area, patrons must cross through a floor-to-ceiling “window wall,” built with windows from an old factory. The wall can open to create one big space, or close for private parties or when the back room’s windows are open. The windows in the back room can open enough to make it feel “almost like you’re outdoors,” Bayne said. People on the street will be able to see and hear the activity in the bar above.

“Part of the challenge of this place was finding a way to get people up to the second floor,” Bayne said. “By opening this window, it lets us engage with the street so people can really see that activity.”

There are 72 total beer taps — with two dozen in the back area as well — and if Bayne decided he didn’t want to duplicate, he could offer more distinct draft beers than any other restaurant in Arlington. But “that would take a lot of coordination.” He paused for a second, “maybe we could do it for an Oktoberfest party. That would be amazing.”

Bayne is the co-owner of Bedrock Bars, which also owns the Continental in Rosslyn, Carpool in Ballston and Penn Social and Buffalo Billiards in D.C. Despite his wealth of experience opening bars in the area, Bayne oozes enthusiasm over his newest venture.

“We just want to be the best bar in the area,” he said. He looks across the street at Disruption Corporation and the new startup economy beginning to breathe life into Crystal City and can’t help but get excited. “They’re bringing a creative, young energy to this area. We hope to give them a fun bar to go to.”

Glebe Road Shut Down After House Fire

By Ethan Rothstein
1/5

Emergency crews have shut down a portion of N. Glebe Road this afternoon after responding to a small fire in a single family house.

The house on the 2500 block of N. Glebe Road, just a few blocks from Marymount University, caught fire at about 2:00 p.m. today. Smoke was coming from a room in the front of the house when fire crews arrived on scene. The flames were quickly extinguished.

There is evident, albeit relatively minor, damage to the exterior of the house near where the fire appeared to have originated.

No injuries have been reported and the cause is under investigation.

Both directions of Glebe were blocked as of 2:30 p.m., with the northbound lanes expected to reopen shortly and the southbound lanes expected to remain blocked off until around 3:00 p.m. or later.

Satellite Data Company Launches from Crystal City

Startup Monday header

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

OmniEarth COO and cofounder Jonathan Fentzke(Updated at 1:15 p.m.) OmniEarth COO and cofounder Jonathan Fentzke says his company likes to stay “under the radar,” an ironic phrase considering its plans to launch 18 satellites to generate data from around the world in a host of different sectors.

Officially launched in February 2014, OmniEarth takes geospatial data and provides analytics for a broad range of companies. This could mean telling municipal water suppliers which parcels are using too much water — crucial in drought-ridden areas like California — or telling oil and gas companies where there are faults along their pipelines.

“More than 80 percent of data these days has a location along with it,” Fentzke told ARLnow.com from his office above the Crystal City Shops this morning. “Remotely sensed data can give you an indication of how things are changing on a global scale.”

Fentzke and his cofounder, CEO Lars Dyrud, have been friends for more than a decade, but both were working in the applied physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins University when they realized their work for the public sector had use for private companies. Hosted payloads, when one entity rents extra space on a rocket being launched into space, were growing more and more common, and Fentzke and Dyrud wanted to bring it to market.

“We did three years of customer discovery, talked with more than 200 potential clients and saw that there really was traction for this business,” Fentzke said. “We sell information to people who know what to do with it, and we sell analytics to the people who don’t.”

OmniEarth logoOmniEarth’s main business model is selling applications of their data to its clients. That can be predictive models for the effects of the weather on a crop to multinational farm companies, where forests are being illegally cut down or even something Fentzke called a Twitter “happiness index,” which takes the mood of tweets and compares it with the location of people tweeting them, drawing maps based on the data.

OmniEarth is barely a year old and has already received about $3.5 million in funding, with partnerships with massive companies like Harris and Ball and local tech companies like Dynetics. They have partnered with Spaceflight to launch a constellation of 18 small satellites, monitoring “multi-spectral data,” with imaging outside of the visible spectrum (i.e. infrared light).

“The satellites are like our utility, and data and analytics is like our plug,” Fentzke said. “If you don’t have a plug, you can’t access the utility, like electricity.”

Fentzke, an aerospace engineer by training, says OmniEarth is “by scientists, for business users and decision-makers,” and the company is attempting to trademark the slogan “every day, everywhere.” The Board of Advisors reads like a who’s who of the cross-section of industries the company caters to, from a retired U.S. Air Force general to oil and gas executives to a former NASA administrator.

Part of OmniEarth's headquarters in Crystal CityThe company is growing faster than many other Arlington startups, but for what Fentzke and Dyrud have in mind, this is only the beginning. OmniEarth has already bought a smaller company called IRISmaps to leverage its geospatial data and continues to look to expand.

“This is not a get-rich quick scheme,” Fentzke said. “Our goal is to grow something that stands alone. We didn’t just blindly pick this business because satellites are cool. It’s a tool for data, and when you know how to leverage remotely sensed data, you have market-leading information, and it’s legal.”

In another year, the 20-person company expects to double in size and bring in “some big dollars” by the end of 2015. OmniEarth may still fly under the radar as a big-growth company in Arlington, but it won’t be a secret for long.

“The moment I think it’s valuable for us to wave our flag and say ‘hey look at us,'” Fentzke said, “we’ll do that.”

Courthouse Hotel Breaks Ground, Plans 2016 Opening

By Ethan Rothstein
1/8

Snow began to fall as developers and Arlington officials broke ground this morning at the future site of the Hyatt Place hotel at 2401 Wilson Blvd.

The hotel was approved last spring and is expected to be finished by summer 2016, according to the Schupp Companies, which owns the site. What now sits at the corner of Wilson Blvd and N. Adams Street — where Wilson Tavern and Northern Virginia Mixed Martial Arts used to be — is a large, empty foundation with graffiti on the sides.

What will be built, starting on Wednesday, is an eight-story, 161-room hotel that will be the first LEED Gold-certified hotel in Arlington, and the first LEED Gold certified Hyatt Place in the country. Ray Schupp, the owner of the Schupp Companies, planned on building a hotel when he first bought the property in 2007.

“I told Ray, ‘that’s a great idea, the county’s going to love that,'” Schupp Development Manager Jim Villars said. “We got site plan approval in May. It’s been a long seven years.”

The plan for the development fluctuated from a hotel, to a planned apartment building, before its final status as a hotel with four single-family houses behind it, as a buffer to the adjacent community. As part of the site plan approval, the developers will donate $1.54 million for a Courthouse Metro elevator and will install a piece of public art at the corner of Wilson and Adams.

“This is a fabulous example of how we can do this moving forward,” Arlington County Board Chair Mary Hynes said. “The community wanted a hotel here and county staff just needed to find a way to make this work.”

The hotel will be the first Hyatt Place in Arlington, but the brand’s portfolio is rapidly expanding. According to Hyatt Place’s vice president of real estate and development, Jim Tierney, a Hyatt Place is expected to open every other week in the U.S. by the end of the year.

Along with the hotel, the building will have space for a first-floor restaurant — potentially a reincarnation of Wilson Tavern — and two floors of underground parking.

Clarendon Pinkberry Up for Auction

By Ethan Rothstein
1/3

The Pinkberry in Clarendon has been closed for well over a month, with all the equipment inside sitting, waiting, for someone to use it and serve frozen yogurt again.

That day could soon be coming. Pinkberry’s franchise owner, who also owns six other Pinkberry stores in the D.C. area, has declared for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and his stores — including the one at 2930 Clarendon Blvd — are up for auction, according to the Washington Business Journal.

Anyone who wins the bid would have to renegotiate a lease with the building’s landlord and execute a franchise agreement with the California-based froyo chain, the WBJ reports. The chain is hoping to reopen those locations, and the call for bids for the assets valued at $769,000 ends Feb. 9.

Pinkberry’s temporary closure has led to an unexpected frozen yogurt desert in Clarendon. Nicecream Factory is still open and serving their fresh-made ice cream, but after Red Mango closed in 2013, the closest frozen yogurt shops are IceBerry in Rosslyn and FroZenYo in Ballston.

Pinkberry opened in the summer of 2011.

Hat tip to Peter Golkin

Open Houses in Arlington This Weekend

By Ethan Rothstein

The weather is supposed to be cold on Saturday on a wintry mess on Sunday before the Super Bowl. If you can brave the elements — and want to get in some pre-football real estate shopping — there plenty of open houses to choose from.

See our real estate section for a full listing of open houses. Here are a few highlights:

1903-key-blvd1903 Key Blvd
2 BD / 1 BA condominium
Agent: Michael Yalove, Keller Williams Realty
Listed: $348,000
Open: Saturday, Jan. 31, noon to 4:00 p.m.

3835-9th-street-n3835 9th Street N.
1 BD / 1 1/2 BA condominium
Agent: William Gaskins, Keller Williams Realty Falls Church
Listed: $427,500
Open: Sunday, Feb. 1, 1:00-4:00 p.m.

1111-19th-street-n1111 19th Street N.
1 BD / 1 BA condominium
Agent: Barbara Guynn Johnson, Long & Foster Real Estate
Listed: $525,000
Open: Saturday, Jan. 31, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.

5932-3rd-street-n5932 3rd Street N.
3 BD / 2 1/2 BA single family detached
Agent: A. Casey O’Neal, Re/Max Allegiance
Listed: $599,999
Open: Sunday, Feb. 1, noon to 3:00 p.m.

2016-n-buchanan-court2016 N. Buchanan Court
3 BD / 2 1/2 BA townhouse
Agent: Elizabeth Rea, Optime Realty
Listed: $709,900
Open: Sunday, Feb. 1, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

1517-n-edison-street1517 N. Edison Street
5 BD / 4 1/2 BA single family detached
Agent: John Plank, Long & Foster Real Estate
Listed: $1,549,900
Open: Sunday, Feb. 1, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Central Library Machete Attacker Sentenced to Life in Prison

By Ethan Rothstein

Derrick Sutherland (photo via ACPD)(Updated at 11:30 a.m.) A jury has sentenced a man to life in prison without parole for the June 2013 machete attack on two homeless brothers outside Arlington Central Library.

Derrick Sutherland, 30, was convicted of aggravated malicious wounding for attacking twins Brian and Tim Kern while they were sleeping outside on June 24, 2013, sending both to the hospital with serious injuries. Sutherland was also homeless at the time, and he was “known to carry a machete,” according to police.

Arlington Circuit Court Chief Judge William T. Newman will hand down Sutherland’s final sentencing in an April 17 hearing, according to Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney John Lynch, who tried the case along with Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Lindsay Brooker.

“What broke this case open was some great police work,” Lynch told ARLnow.com this morning. “Officer Stephanie Rodriguez was on the ball that night, she went to where Brian was. She remembered that 48 hours earlier, she went to that very same place and encountered a guy with dreadlocks, a Jamaican accent and a pink shirt, and he was homeless.”

After searching for several hours, police located Sutherland near Wilson Blvd and N. Piedmont Street, a few blocks from where the attack took place. Within the previous six months, Sutherland had been convicted twice on weapons charges, once for carrying a concealed Bowie knife and once for brandishing a machete or Bowie knife, Lynch said.

Just days before the attack, three officers had encountered Sutherland and confiscated a machete, which Sutherland said he needed to protect himself. At two separate points since the attack, Lynch said, Sutherland was ruled mentally incompetent and had to be treated at a state mental facility in Staunton.

According to the Washington Post, Tim Kern suffered a broken collarbone and an injured knee during the attack. He also required staples in his shoulder and stitches in his arm. Tim also suffered a cut on the back of his neck that went through “his skin, his fat, his muscle all the way to the muscle surrounding the spinal cord,” Lynch said. “It was deep and it was long. I categorized it as an attempt to decapitate him.”

Brian Kern lost the vision in one of his eyes, and both of his wrists and three fingers were broken in the attacks. He also suffered large wounds to both of his hands, and Lynch said he had to learn how to write left-handed because of the injuries to his right hand.

Tim Kern died in a homeless shelter two months after he was attacked, but the machete wounds he suffered “did not contribute directly to his death.” He and his brother were 26 at the time. Brian, now 28 and living with a family friend, testified against Sutherland during the trial.

“The victim showed a lot of patience,” Lynch said. “June 24, 2013, was a long time ago. He showed courage throughout. Just surviving and getting up and testifying showed a lot of courage.”

County Receives $600,000 for Safety Improvements in North Arlington

By Ethan Rothstein

APS Walk and Bike to School DayAshlawn and Discovery Elementary Schools and Williamsburg Middle School will soon be easier for students to walk to.

Arlington received $400,000 — and will pledge an additional $100,000 — in federal grant money to improve the walking and biking routes to the three schools in North Arlington.

The funds will go toward building new trails and sidewalks in Bluemont for Ashlawn students and will fund sidewalk improvements at the intersection of N. Kensington and 36th Streets around Discovery and Williamsburg, which are on the same property. Discovery is still under construction, but is expected to open for the 2015-2016 school year.

From the same federal program, the MAP-21 grant, Arlington will also receive $200,000 to bring sidewalks and streets in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor up to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to a county press release, a county study from 2012 identified more than 1,000 locations in the corridor that were “inaccessible to persons with disabilities.”

The county will chip in $50,000 in pay-as-you-go WalkArlington funding to help fund improvements to these areas, which will be handled in order of severity.

“We’re delighted that we can use local funding to leverage federal dollars to help two key groups of Arlingtonians move more safely and easily: Arlington students who walk or bike to Ashlawn, Discovery and Williamsburg, and persons with disabilities in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor,” County Board Chair Mary Hynes said in a statement. “We welcome the federal government’s funding of these very important projects to improve safety and accessibility for all.”

Both improvement programs will continue identifying other sites around the county where safety and accessibility need to be addressed.

File photo

Hope’s Medicaid Expansion Bill Defeated

By Ethan Rothstein

Del. Patrick Hope speaks at a ribbon-cutting for the new Route 50/N. Courthouse Road interchange(Updated at 11:40 a.m.) Del. Patrick Hope (D) says Virginia can no longer afford not to expand its health coverage to cover the currently uninsured.

But the estimated 400,000 state residents who do not have health insurance will have to continue to wait after Hope’s healthcare bill, HB 2212, was defeated by voice vote by a House of Delegates subcommittee.

“Disappointed my bill [to] expand access to 400k Virginians was defeated,” Hope tweeted yesterday. “The uninsured aren’t going away; neither am I.”

Hope has been the lead delegate in the House of Delegates’ Democratic Caucus on health care, with efforts again focused on expanding Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. The issue is one of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s priorities for this legislative session.

Speaking to ARLnow.com last week, Hope said he believed bipartisan support was possible for his bill, either in its proposed form or after amendments.

“I’m optimistic we are going to pass this bill or a version of it,” he said. “Virginia is getting closer and closer to that day. We really can’t ignore the economics of this. It’s mainly because we’re really double and triple taxing our residents every single day if we don’t do anything.”

The state’s wealthier residents are already paying taxes to fund federal Medicaid expansion, Hope said, and if Virginia doesn’t expand Medicaid, the money “goes right to Washington, not us.” In addition, Hope said, hospitals that care for uninsured patients who can’t pay their bills pass on the expenses in the forms of higher premiums and costs to those paying for insurance.

Hope said expanding Medicaid would inject $2 billion into the economy by covering holes in the budget, creating Medicaid-related jobs and lowering premiums. The state budgets $200 million for prison reform, mental illness and indigent care, Hope said, all of which would be covered by Medicaid and the federal government.

“Virginia families all over the commonwealth are one accident or one illness away from financial ruin,” Hope said. “The economics are so overwhelming, and I just don’t see how much longer we can walk away from $2 billion because people will still be getting sick.”

On the phone from Richmond this morning, Hope was defiant about expanding Medicaid, saying Republicans are putting “politics before economics” in a year every member of the General Assembly is up for re-election. Thirty states have voted to expand Medicaid, he said, 10 of which have Republican governors.

“Virginia’s just not there in an election year,” he said. “I think it’s just going to reach a point where we can no longer let our politics get in the way of what’s right. I generally have a policy of when I see $2 billion on the ground, I pick it up.”

County Board Rejection of TJ Elementary School Leaves APS Scrambling

By Ethan Rothstein

The proposed Thomas Jefferson elementary school site, put on hold by the Arlington County BoardIt’s back to the drawing board for school administrators trying to keep up with soaring elementary enrollment in South Arlington.

A County Board vote Tuesday night threatens to turn elementary schools south of Route 50 into virtual trailer parks — as Arlington Public Schools administrators scramble to come up with ideas, studies and public support for new school construction.

The County Board voted 4-1 to say “not now,” to the School Board’s request to build a new elementary school on county-owned land next to Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Libby Garvey, a former School Board chair, cast the dissenting vote.

The School Board previously vowed to provide 725 new elementary school seats in South Arlington by September 2018, but last night’s decision has put that goal in doubt. Those voting against the school said APS didn’t make enough of a case to the community that the TJ site was the best option.

“I don’t think the School Board organized the data and presented the data in a way that everyone in South Arlington can say ‘I see what they’re doing… this is the best they’re going to be able to do,'” County Board Chair Mary Hynes, also a former School Board hair, told ARLnow.com today. “The broader community does not understand that.”

Garvey, however, blasted the decision.

“South Arlington needs a new elementary school and they need it now,” she told ARLnow.com.

According to a press release, the School Board can re-submit their request to the county to build next to TJ, but only after it provides a full analysis of sites and potential additions in South Arlington, including “feasible non-construction strategies.” The analysis must include, Mary Hynes said, “tradeoffs with parking, green space and traffic implications.”

The School Board must also have “as close to final estimate” of what funding it needs from the county on top of the $50.25 million approved in the 2014 bond referendum. Initial estimates peg an underground parking deck at $7 million, money not included in the bond question.

The School Board has already approved an alternative plan for South Arlington elementary schools: building additions onto Randolph and Barcroft elementary schools. But School Board member Abby Raphael told ARLnow.com that it’s far from certain that the Board will move forward with those plans.

“In light of what the County Board’s decision is, the School Board is going to have to consider what our next steps are,” Raphael said.

Yorktown High School classroom trailersIf no permanent seats are built by 2018, elementary schools south of Route 50 will be over capacity by 894 students, according to APS projections. If no alternative, temporary solutions are found, that would mean 45 more relocatable classrooms would have to be installed at South Arlington elementary schools, more than double the 38 currently in use.

In APS’ presentation for the County Board last night, schools staff laid out the realities of South Arlington’s enrollment growth. Based on current projections, the area needs either two new elementary schools, one new school and three additions on existing schools, or six additions by 2024. APS projects that 1,384 additional students will need elementary school seats in South Arlington in the next 10 years.

“I thought the schools did a spectacular job in their presentation and clearly addressed the concerns that had been expressed,” by opponents, Garvey said today. “I was extremely disappointed… We’re building a new school in North Arlington and now we’re telling South Arlington ‘oh well, never mind.'”

Raphael said the County Board’s decision was “frustrating” and felt the School Board had done more than enough to inform the community and justify its decision.

“I’m not sure that the County Board and maybe some of the community have a full appreciation of the work we’ve been doing since 2011,” Raphael said. “There’s extensive documentation on all the feasibility studies we’ve done. I don’t know what else the county is expecting us to do for that.”

(more…)

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