Author: Jo DeVoe

Arlington County loses pretrial appeal in Missing Middle suit

By Jo DeVoe
An anti-Missing Middle sign in front of a house in Westover (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

(Updated on 1/29/23) Arlington County suffered another defeat last week in the pre-trial proceedings for the Missing Middle lawsuit.

It appealed an earlier court decision that the 10 residents suing Arlington County — alleging the County Board illegally approved the Missing Middle zoning amendments — have standing to do so.

Last Thursday, Judge David Schell denied the latest motion, meaning the court proceedings will continue forward with a trial this July, according to a press release from Arlington Neighbors for Neighborhoods, the LLC funding the litigation efforts on behalf of the 10 residents.

“[The] ruling is another win for Arlington homeowners and another loss for the County, which now has brought in the big guns, hiring at Arlington taxpayers’ expense, Gentry Locke, a Roanoke law firm, to assist with the case,” said Arlington Neighbors for Neighborhoods spokesman Dan Creedon in a statement. “The judge recognized that the County’s delay tactics would harm the plaintiffs as MMH/EHO buildings would be built pending an appeal.”

Schell said that granting the county’s motion could delay the trial for two or more years, per the release. This may not be in the county’s interest, either, the judge noted, musing that, should the county lose at trial, developers may tear down EHO structures — Expanded Housing Option, another term for Missing Middle — built while the case was pending.

Two land use attorneys recently broke down the details of the lawsuit in a panel hosted by the Arlington Committee of 100 last week. They walked through the county’s alleged procedural missteps, as asserted by lawyers for the plaintiffs.

“The reason for the procedural requirements aren’t to create arbitrary processes to do these things. The processes set forth in the code are there to ensure there’s adequate public discourse on the impact of what is being proposed,” said attorney Tad Lunger.

For major zoning map amendments, such as those allowing lower-density multifamily housing in previously single-family-only zones, Lunger says Virginia code requires a public discourse on how the changes would impact transportation and infrastructure and how those costs would be borne by residents.

“These things weren’t discussed at that level in Arlington,” he said.

One Missing Middle proponent, affordable housing advocate Michelle Winters, is optimistic that, should the county lose on procedural grounds, it could re-adopt the ordinance and resume approving EHOs.

“It’s very easy to cure procedural deficiencies. You change your process and re-adopt it. This is exactly what Fairfax County did,” Winters said.

The Virginia Supreme Court struck down Fairfax County’s zoning ordinance early last year but within a couple of months, the Board of Supervisors adopted the same ordinance after fixing the procedural issues. The changes were approved in a virtual meeting in 2021, at a time when virtual meetings were only to discuss essential government functions and services.

Pointing to the ordinances in Fairfax and similar changes Alexandria adopted late last year, she said it is clear these types of changes are here to stay, come what may from a lawsuit alleging Arlington County enacted its ordinance poorly.

“In Alexandria, what is relevant is the reflection of the shift that we’re seeing in America — not only in our region but in America — that this type of change absolutely needs to happen and no matter what you do to this particular ordinance, if this ordinance isn’t in place, something like it will be in place to replace it,” Winters said.

Raighne “Renny” Delaney, an attorney with Bean, Kinney & Korman, argued the lawsuit could have more far-ranging political impacts.

(more…)

NEW: APS warns of data breach from visitor management system

By Jo DeVoe
Person working on laptop (Photo by Burst on Unsplash)

(Updated at 4:55 p.m.) Arlington Public Schools experienced a data breach this week affecting information it collects for visitors to school buildings.

The school system notified people of “externally exposed” data in a message sent this afternoon (Friday). The breach is part of a broader leak, reported this morning, affecting some schools in the U.S. that, like APS, use a visitor management system from Raptor Technologies.

“Arlington Public Schools was contacted this week by our Visitor Management System vendor, Raptor Technologies, regarding the discovery of some APS data that was externally exposed for an unspecified timeframe,” Chief Operating Officer Dr. John Mayo said in the message, which APS shared with ARLnow.

“At this time, we do not know what specific APS information was exposed or if it was accessed by anyone,” he continued.

The leaked information could relate to government-issued IDs.

The visitor management software that Raptor Technologies offers screens each visitor’s government-issued ID card against sex offender registries in all 50 states and “an unlimited number of custom databases,” according to its website.

This information is collected when visitors enter and exit a building, according to someone familiar with how APS uses the system. The technology also scans APS ID badges, for those who have them, and is used partly for substitutes to record when they show up for work.

Visitors receive a badge with their photo, name, role, destination and date and time of entry, according to Raptor.

APS says Raptor took action after learning of the breach.

“Upon learning of the breach, Raptor secured the accessible information and initiated an investigation,” Mayo’s message said. “This issue has affected many school systems nationwide, not only APS. For your awareness, this system is used to manage visitors and volunteers entering our facilities. APS utilizes a limited number of services offered by Raptor, compared to the full range of its capabilities.”

The school system says it is working with Raptor and will give updates as it learns more information.

“The safety of our students, staff and community is our utmost priority, and we will continue working with Raptor to ensure that all necessary steps are being taken to safeguard the information in Raptor,” Mayo said.

This was not the only tech issue that APS faced this week.

It appears APS used up all of its allotted Google cloud storage space — 122 terabytes, or roughly 5 gigabytes per user — according to June Prakash, the head of the local teachers union, Arlington Education Association.

“Some staff could not access email or other documents including plans for the upcoming days,” she said.

On Saturday, APS got to work to resolve issues some users reported, including being unable to save documents, according an email sent to staff. By Monday, “the issue reported with Google has been resolved,” a follow-up email said.

An APS spokesman later said the brief disruption was caused by a “service subscription issue between our retailer and Google,” and the school system worked to ensure the service was restored on Monday morning.

Photo via Burst/Unsplash

New owner takes over Copperwood Tavern in Shirlington

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

Copperwood Tavern in Shirlington is under new ownership.

Viswanath Vasireddy, of Aldie, Virginia, tells ARLnow he finalized the purchase of the restaurant on Dec. 26, after learning the business was for sale from a broker with whom he had previously worked.

“I looked at it and it seemed like a good business,” he said of the New American restaurant at 4021 Campbell Avenue in the Village at Shirlington shopping center.

For now, just the ownership has changed and he retained the restaurant’s employees during the transition, he said. While the menu is the same, he has asked the chef to see if there are any new dishes to introduce.

Vasireddy says he is currently on-site 3-4 hours a day, applying for licenses — a liquor license application filed last week is currently pending, Virginia ABC records show — and transferring account ownership for various vendors.

The restaurant was formerly owned by Reese Gardner, whose Wooden Nickel Bar Company also owns Dudley’s Sport and Ale in Shirlington, Quinn’s on the Corner in Rosslyn and Brass Rabbit Pub in Clarendon. He has plans to open a new restaurant in Tysons while continuing to expand outposts of Greenheart Juice Shop.

“After 10 successful years with Copperwood, it was time to sell and move on,” says Gardner. “The industry has completely changed and the days of having two concepts within steps apart just isn’t realistic anymore. Cost of goods, staffing plus the annual rent increases make it tough enough with just one in each area.”

Wooden Nickel Bar also owned the now-closed Pinemoor in Clarendon, which opened not far from Brass Rabbit just a few months into the pandemic.

Gardner says he had also hoped for success with The Pinemoor and Brass Rabbit close together but the Pinemoor ultimately closed. He attributed this to a concept that did not quite connect with customers, the restaurant and landlord not coming to better terms, and being unable to sell.

This winter, Gardner aims to get his Tysons restaurant — Ox & Rye, next to the Capital One Hall — open soon and aims to open the Courthouse location of Greenheart Juice Shop in February.

Amid those new openings, he is also focused on his existing restaurants “and most importantly, being a dad.”

As for Copperwood Tavern’s new owner, Vasireddy, he already owns a trio of restaurants in Northern Virginia: New American spot Clarity in Vienna, pan-Asian place Inchin’s Bamboo Garden in Herndon and an Indian restaurant Bawarchi Biryanis in Ashburn.

He says he had experience in the restaurant business back in India, before immigrating in 2008 to the U.S., where he has since worked in information technology.

“I thought about pursuing my dreams a little bit,” Vasireddy said, starting at Bawarchi Biryanis in February 2022 and taking over Inchin’s Bamboo Garden and Clarity last year.

Around the time he was working to close the purchase of Copperwood Tavern, he quit his job at Capital One to focus on restaurant operations full time.

“Business is good,” he said. “I have some expansion plans for 2024 and 2025.”

How the Arlington County Fair plans to accommodate a post-pandemic uptick in attendance

By Jo DeVoe
Scenes from the 2023 Arlington County Fair (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

(Updated at 4:30 p.m.) Post-pandemic, the Arlington County Fair has seen a strong uptick in attendance and with it, new challenges to tackle.

Before 2020, attendance averaged at 65,000 people, according to fair board chair Matt Richard. Between the fair’s reopening in 2021 and the 2023 fair, attendance grew from 85,000 to 150,000.

“Coming out of the pandemic, people just wanted to do stuff and do stuff that was outside,” he said, noting that adding a beer garden, more rides and free entertainment, as well as stepping up outreach and marketing, all drummed up interest.

“We didn’t expect it to grow as much as it had. It just requires more logistics,” he added.

That could look like more shuttles to the fair, at the Thomas Jefferson Community Center and grounds more parking restrictions in the neighborhood as soon as this year.

The fair is down one of its shuttles because of construction at the Arlington Career Center, the location from which it departs. This year, Richard would like to secure attendance parking at (and a shuttle from) the Sequoia Plaza parking lot along Washington Blvd, used by the Arlington County Dept. of Human Services and Arlington Public Schools.

Another change could be more parking restrictions. Fewer parked cars on neighborhood streets would offset increased WMATA and Arlington Transit bus traffic during fair week, when the buses take different side streets to avoid fair-related street closures.

“The fair is an exciting event for Arlington and our neighborhood wants to continue to work with fair board to ensure their event runs smoothly,” says Arlington Heights Civic Association co-president Brian Sigritz. “We appreciate the board has been willing to meet with us and discuss our ideas about how to improve the fair.”

If parking restrictions were to increase, Sigritz said residents also want more advance notice of road closures and parking restrictions, clarity about who is affected and the quick distribution of event parking permits to impacted residents.

In addition, they are concerned about speeding and congestion on side streets, which Sigritz attributed to the rerouted WMATA and Arlington Transit buses.

One previously mulled change, moving the fair, is not on the table.

A few years ago, the fair and Arlington County staff studied alternative locations to Thomas Jefferson Community Center and the middle school, including Long Bridge Park and Virginia Highlands Park.

Rides could not fit in the Long Bridge parking lot, however, due to its configuration and height restrictions near National Airport. Virginia Highlands Park, meanwhile, had few viable options for the fair’s indoor component, potentially creating a “disconnected” fair, Richard said.

Also, surveyed residents generally preferred keeping it where it was. The fair stayed put.

“The end result was that TJ was the best option and probably will continue to be the best option in the foreseeable future,” Richard said. “If you drive around Arlington, there are not a lot of places to put it.”

Beyond logistics, the fair board is also figuring out how to host more than 100,000 people a year as a volunteer-run operation. The board is comprised of 18 volunteer members and, surrounding the week of the fair itself, event volunteers log some 600 hours.

“This is a 150,000 person event. At what point does a professional event management team have to start getting involved in really running this?” Richard asked.

Volunteers are ideal for finding sponsors and entertainers, picking the beer for the beer garden, and executing the competitions — but not as well-equipped at handling parking and security, he said.

The fair board is discussing ways to delegate these responsibilities to the Arlington County Dept. of Parks and Recreation and police department through a new Memorandum of Understanding.

“We as a board want to leave the fair in a place where, if the board dwindles to 10 or eight, the county is in a position to make sure it is executed and the board has people to lean on,” he said.

County seeks public input as Gulf Branch restoration project design nears completion

By Jo DeVoe
1/6

In 2025, Arlington County will embark on a major project to rehabilitate the Gulf Branch stream.

Planning for the project began in 2019. The project was paused during the pandemic due to budget constraints but remained in focus due to the stream’s poor conditions today.

“Gulf Branch is a high-priority stream resilience project because of active erosion, infrastructure concerns and habitat degradation,” the county said.

After a two-year pause, Arlington resumed design work and had 60% complete designs by last October. Now, the county’s Dept. of Environmental Services is seeking feedback on the designs.

Final design work, permit acquisition and procurement are all expected to happen this this year. Construction would then start in 2025.

Arlington County aims to combat future erosion and ensure the stream can handle surges of water during storms. The extent of erosion today can be seen in a county video, below, walking through the most recent project updates.

As part of the project, the stream corridor will be replanted and stone and log structures and step pools will be added behind the Glebe Park tennis courts and near Broyhill Forest Park and the Gulf Branch Nature Center.

Also near Broyhill Forest Park and the nature center, stream beds will be raised to bury exposed sanitary sewer pipes. This is intended to prevent sewage from seeping into the stream and stave off emergency repairs, according to a project webpage.

Excess sediment will be reduced to meet regulatory requirements for what flows into the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, the website said. The work also includes habitat enhancements for the local wildlife and increased public access to the stream.

During earlier feedback periods, some community members urged DES to take a more proactive approach to tackling erosion, according to an online survey. In response, the county says it expanded the project scope to include a dry stream bed that is west of the Nature Center, running the width of Glebe Road Park.

Additionally, residents were concerned about noise and equipment traffic during construction. To limit these impacts, the county decided to create separate temporary construction entrances to the main stem of Gulf Branch — from Broyhill Forest Park and Military Road — according to DES spokeswoman Katie O’Brien.

DES says it also heard from several people concerned about runoff closer to the stream’s source. In response, it proposed four “green street” rain garden projects in the watershed, downstream of Military Road.

The locations are as follows:

  • The N. Piedmont Street cul-de-sac
  • The corner of 36th Road N. and N. Nelson Street
  • The corner of N. Nelson Street and N. Oakland Street
  • 36th Road N. near the stairs to the Gulf Branch trail

The county began meeting with people neighboring the proposed green street projects in the fall of 2022 and has since continued that engagement as well as design work.

Construction on the green street projects is expected to begin in mid-2024.

Residents could start moving into two nearly complete apartment towers in Crystal City next month

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

Two new apartment buildings in Crystal City are almost ready for residents to move in.

Construction started on the two residential towers at 1900 Crystal Drive in 2021, nearly one year to the day after JBG Smith received approval to redevelop the aging office building previously there.

Now, JBG Smith tells ARLnow it expects residents can starting moving into the buildings — a 3-minute walk from Amazon’s second headquarters — this February. The developer has already begun receiving partial certificates of occupancy for certain floors of one tower, dubbed “The Grace.”

JBG Smith said it expects to wrap up construction by the third quarter of 2024.

The 583,000-square-foot north tower, The Grace, and a 567,500-square-foot south tower, called “Reva,” are each 300 feet tall and, across them, have 808 rental units and about 40,000 square feet of street-level retail. A pedestrian-friendly street bisecting the towers will connect 18th and 20th Streets S. and a not-yet-built park.

The Crystal City Sector Plan envisions this park space as the largest in Crystal City, at about 74,000 square feet. The plan says it “would allow for a wide variety of uses, such as passive recreation, exhibitions, concerts, festivals, cafes, some temporary kiosk retail, and evening outdoor movies” among other uses, says Dept. of Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Jerry Solomon.

JBG Smith granted to the county a public park easement of approximately 45,000 square feet to establish this open space, dubbed “Center Park.” The county received the easement understanding that the rest of the proposed public space would come as part of a future development, Solomon said.

JBG Smith also contributed $300,000 for the park’s master planning, a community engagement process where people will weigh in on programmed elements and other features.

“The current [Capital Improvement Plan] envisions the design of Center Park to begin in FY 2025 with construction to begin some time in FY 2027,” she said in an email. “In July 2024, the County Board will be considering the FY 2025-2034 CIP which may contain changes to the potential timelines and funding for public space development within the Crystal City corridor.”

While residents of The Grace and Reva can start moving in February, it is looking like a summer opening for at least some of the six announced businesses move into the ground floor retail spaces.

Per window dressings and Arlington County permits, 1900 Crystal Drive will be home to new outposts of Tatte Bakery & Cafe, a the ice cream shop Van Leeuwen, D.C.’s Chinese-French fusion restaurant Bar Chinois and Cuban café and bar Colada Shop, a nail salon called nailsaloon, and New York City-based botox spa Peachy.

Nailsaloon recently opened a location in Chevy Chase and aims to move into Crystal City this summer, a spokeswoman said.

Colada Shop is also targeting a summer opening, a company spokeswoman said.

The other businesses did not respond to requests for more information about when they might open.

JBG Smith says it still has some retail space to fill, so additional announcements may be coming.

Scooter and e-bike operators leave Arlington amid micro-mobility industry woes

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

(Updated at 2:20 p.m.) Arlington County is losing a pair of scooter operators this year.

California-based Veo — which operated both scooters and e-bikes — is leaving the area due to market conditions while LINK, the service from Boston-based Superpedestrian, is shutting down all of its U.S. operations.

“It was Veo’s pleasure to serve Arlington County,” Veo told ARLnow in a statement. “However, current market conditions led us to make the decision not to seek a permit renewal in Arlington and Alexandria.”

Veo says it will continue to provide transportation options in D.C and in College Park, Maryland.

“We commend Arlington County for its commitment to advancing sustainable and accessible transportation and look forward to serving the community in the future should circumstances allow,” Veo’s statement continued.

The company has recently expanded into some municipalities, including San Antonio, Texas, and limited access in other areas, such as the Bronx in New York City, where scooters would reportedly end up in the river. Also this year, Fort Wayne, Indiana, ended its 4-year partnership with Veo over alleged negligent behavior by riders.

Superpedestrian is out because it shut down its U.S. operations on Dec. 31 and has been auctioning off its 20,000 bright-yellow and silver electric scooters.

In February 2022, Superpedestrian introduced 333 bright-yellow and silver standing scooters and 50 seated ones to Arlington, its second U.S. market after debuting in Baltimore. Its time in Arlington was short-lived, however.

After getting into micro-mobility in 2020 and raising $125 million early on, Superpedestrian was in a lurch by late 2023, pinning its hopes on more funding and a potential merger that never materialized, TechCrunch reports. The outlet attributed the demise of Superpedestrian — and the death of “the shared electric scooter business as we know it” — to “unfavorable city regulations, high operational costs and hiring bloat as a consequence of VC funding.”

Scooter operators that still have permits to operate in Arlington, Spin and Bird, were not immune from slumps this year. Spin began exiting several European and American cities in 2022 before fellow operator Bird acquired it in September.

Bird, once valued at $2.5 billion, filed for bankruptcy this December after a rocky 2023: Its founder and CEO stepped down, it was removed from the New York Stock Exchange for overstating its revenue and was beginning to pull out of dozens of cities.

Financially, Veo seems to be doing better. This year, it started selling a scooter via online retail.

Arlington’s other authorized operator, Lime, also defied the dismal fates of its competitors, reporting profitability in the first half of 2023, Verge reports. The company ended 2022 with plans to go public on the stock market but remained privately held.

The application for scooter operators is currently available on the Arlington County website. The county allows up to 2,000 e-scooters and 1,000 e-bikes at one time. The companies leaving Arlington, meanwhile, are expected to take all of their scooters and e-bikes with them.

“Departing contractors are required to remove their devices, but if anyone sees a device left behind, they can send a message to the Shared Mobility team at [email protected],” said Arlington Dept. of Environmental Services spokeswoman Claudia Pors.

This article was updated to correct where Veo is based and remove a reference to a different tech company by the same name.  

Police investigated another potential overdose at Wakefield High School last week

By Jo DeVoe
Wakefield High School (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

There was another possible overdose at Wakefield High School last week.

Around 1:20 p.m., medics were dispatched to Wakefield for a report of an unconscious person, according to Arlington County Fire Department spokesman Capt. Nate Hiner.

“The patient was transported to Virginia Hospital Center in stable condition,” he said.

Police were then dispatched around 2:15 p.m. to VHC Health, formerly Virginia Hospital Center, for reports of a possible overdose, Arlington County police spokeswoman Ashley Savage said.

“The preliminary investigation indicates a juvenile female was transported from Wakefield High School to the hospital for medical treatment,” she said. “The incident was investigated as an overdose and the juvenile suffered non-life-threatening injuries.”

ACPD did not provide more information, citing Virginia law, which requires law enforcement agencies to ensure juvenile records are not disclosed to unauthorized parties.

Wakefield staff also called ACPD following the medical incident, says school system spokesman Andrew Robinson, noting this is consistent with the memorandum of understanding between Arlington Public Schools and ACPD “when there might be a possibility of a potential overdose in our schools.”

Arlington Public Schools and ACPD began inking an MOU two years ago, after the Arlington School Board voted to remove School Resource Officers from school grounds. The MOU was last updated in September to enumerate the emergency situations that trigger a call to police, including potential overdose incidents. Example emergency situations were not previously included in a previous draft from the spring of 2022.

“The MOU with ACPD is reviewed annually and tweaks are often made to further enhance and strengthen the partnership with APS,” Robinson said.

As for how the incident was communicated to the Wakefield community, Robinson said families received the following message from APS on Thursday afternoon.

This message is to inform you that emergency personnel responded to Wakefield High School briefly today to assist with a medical incident involving a student. The family of the student has been notified. As some of our students observed the first responders in our building, we wanted to ensure you are aware that the incident was resolved, and everyone is safe.

Robinson says the school system has a standard medical emergency message and APS does not disclose the nature of medical emergencies for student privacy and confidentiality reasons.

Since the fatal overdose of a 14-year-old Wakefield student nearly one year ago, APS has stepped up prevention education and counseling, the Arlington School Board permitted high schoolers to carry Narcan and a private treatment facility resumed admitting teen patients.

Still, underage overdose incidents have persisted, including last fall, when two girls survived overdoses at Wakefield, after which police charged a teen and a 19-year-old man with a battery of charges.

(Separately, police were dispatched to Yorktown High School today for what was initially reported to be an overdose. It was later determined to just be a medical emergency, Savage told ARLnow.)

Last November, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed Executive Order 28 requiring schools to notify all parents of school-involved overdoses within 24 hours. He directed the Virginia Dept. of Education to develop guidance for schools as they implement any changes to their communications with families.

Within a month, VDOE posted interim best practices interpreting the text of the executive order. VDOE did not respond to ARLnow’s request for more information about how the state will track whether schools follow the executive order.

Courthouse-based company improving website accessibility for people with disabilities acquires Israeli startup

By Jo DeVoe

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring Three Ballston Plaza. 

A Courthouse-based company that aims to make websites more accessible has acquired another company in a deal valued at $99 million.

The deal between Level Access, of Arlington, and UserWay, a 7-year-old Israeli digital accessibility startup that went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange last year, was announced last week. The Times of Israel reported Level Access is paying $98.7 million to UserWay shareholders as part of a cash deal.

Founded 25 years ago by CEO Tim Springer, Level Access works to improve digital accessibility for people with disabilities by helping companies comply with an increasing number of regulations surrounding the accessibility of websites, smartphone apps and other digital experiences.

The acquisition of UserWay is the second such business maneuver in two years for Level Access, which merged with Toronto-based eSSENTIAL Accessibility in 2022.

Springer, who says he has spent and his entire career in accessibility, outlined in a lengthy LinkedIn post how incorporating the technology solutions UserWay offers will help Level Access realize improve accessibility across the digital landscape.

UserWay uses automation to make websites more accessible through the use of “overlays” — the same technology used to add pop-up cookie consent tools to virtually every website. These coding scripts automatically fix common accessibility issues and change the appearance and structure of a page to function better for people with disabilities, per Springer’s post.

Level Access CEO Tim Springer (courtesy photo)

The accessibility community, however, has historically criticized overlays for falsely promising a quick, easy, one-size-fits-all solution, he said.

Despite these misgivings, Springer says he has watched this controversial technology grow over the last two decades and today considers it “an amazing part of an overall solution for accessibility.”

“If we’re thoughtful and deliberate in their use — implementing overlays in an ethical fashion — we will drastically accelerate the timeline for the creation of an accessible digital world,” Springer said in his LinkedIn post. “We can remain mired in historical biases against these technologies or use them to accelerate the cause of accessibility. We choose the latter.”

The technology would be especially helpful for smaller website owners who do not have the funds or technical expertise to develop a comprehensive digital accessibility program, he said.

“Level Access can either provide a principled, compelling, cost-effective solution they can say ‘yes’ to today, and get started on accessibility, or keep doing little for these firms,” he said. “If we’re smart about it, that starting point will materially improve the accessibility of these sites today. Now. Not in ten years when they’re big enough to do it ‘right.’ Not when we’ve exhausted their desire to do the right thing with an approach they can’t take on.”

While the digital accessibility industry has seen many technologies come and go — some that worked and some that did not — the need for automated solutions is here to stay, Springer said.

“Millions of websites rely on automated remediation technology today, so this is clearly a requirement the market is demanding,” he said. “We’re excited to play a role in bringing that technology to organizations around the world in an effective, impactful fashion.”

Staples in Virginia Square set to close next month, making way for Spanish immersion preschool

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

The Staples store in Virginia Square is closing next month.

A sign posted on the entrance to the office supply store at 3804 Wilson Blvd says the location is closing on Feb. 23.

“We’re still here for you,” the sign says, listing locations in Bailey’s Crossroads, Falls Church and Alexandria.

It will not be long before a new business moves in. The replacement for Staples is a franchise location of the national Spanish immersion, STEM-focused preschool and daycare called Tierra Encantada.

Franchise co-owner Mustafa Durrani says he is still in the permit review phase but construction could start sometime in April. He anticipates the work will take four months and the school could open one month after that.

“It depends on the permitting process, really,” he told ARLnow. “Once that happens, our construction team is ready, everything is ready, and we’re excited for the Arlington location.”

Once open, the preschool would operate Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and serve up to 150 children. One highlight of the preschool, for Durrani, is the organic food it will serve to students.

“I believe we’re one of the only schools in the area offering organic food,” he said.

Durrani has already opened a Tierra Encantada franchise location in Alexandria. He is working to open one in Falls Church around the same time that the Arlington location opens.

The Arlington County Board approved a use permit for Tierra Encantada this July. A county report at the time noted nearby civic associations had concerns about traffic and noise.

Durrani said traffic engineers were enlisted to help come to traffic solutions, while a fence will be built to reduce noise.

“As far as traffic is concerned, we’re going to have a lot more parking than currently exists,” he said. “We’re also going to have off-site parking where we’ll be leasing from a local garage, so that should alleviate some of the things.”

Office vacancy rate is leveling out but Arlington is not yet out of woods

By Jo DeVoe
Office buildings, including the Nestle building, in Rosslyn (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Arlington’s office vacancy rate remains high but may be stabilizing after an initial, sharp increase due to Covid remote work policies.

As of the fourth quarter of 2023, the countywide office vacancy rate stands at 24.4%, according to a new report from commercial real estate company Colliers.

Since 2020, Arlington’s overall vacancy rate has risen 4.3% points, per the report, prompted by the pandemic-era shift to remote work and in defiance of return-to-office efforts. The county saw a 3-percentage-point jump between 2020 and 2021 followed by a more modest 1-percentage-point increase over the last year.

“The big story last year was the delivery of Amazon’s HQ2 which drove absorption earlier in the year,” Colliers Research Manager Miles Rodnan tells ARLnow. “Sublet space across the D.C. region has leveled off, which has helped slow down vacancy increases.”

“Additionally, as companies continue to settle into their return-to-office/hybrid policies, the decisions to offload space have been made in many instances,” he continued. “As leases continue to expire, there will be downsizes, but the rate should taper off.”

The vacancy rate in Arlington since 2015 against the average asking rent price (courtesy Colliers International)

(Arlington County also tracks its vacancy rate and, notably, it reported a rate hovering around 21.5-22% this fall. This discrepancy may be because the county and Colliers have different numbers for total office buildings and rentable square footage. Graphs tracking rates over time, from the county and Colliers, have similar trend lines.)

At the end of 2023, the Colliers report says vacancy rate was slightly higher for the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, at nearly 25%, than for National Landing — Pentagon City, Crystal City and Potomac Yard — at 24%.

While the difference is marginal, the rate is trending down in National Landing dropping 0.7% point over 2023, while the rate increased 0.8% point on the R-B corridor, the report said.

Compared to National Landing, where all the new office construction was tied to Amazon, the R-B corridor saw more speculative office projects: 3901 Fairfax Drive in Virginia Square, slated for delivery next year, as well as George Mason University’s FUSE at Mason Square building, which will house university programs in addition to private office space.

Overall, however, these projects contribute less than a million square feet of leasable office space. Rodnan says this could be a saving grace, given predictions that vacancy rates will continue to rise.

“A breath of fresh air comes from the restrained construction pipeline, which will hopefully allow vacancy rates to stabilize in the region as negative absorption is still anticipated in the near future,” he said.

Generally, newer office buildings — which real estate analysts dub “Class A” — are attracting tenants who are willing to pay upwards of $2 more per square foot to get out of dated office stock, or so-called “Class B/C” buildings.

This is a trend playing out across the region, Rodnan said, not attributing the submarket-level upticks to any tenants in particular.

Amid the well-established “flight to quality,” Arlington County is working on several initiatives to make it easier to reposition these obsolete buildings from which people are moving.

“The work is cut out for us: zoning needs to become reasonably more flexible and less burdensome,” Arlington County Board Vice-Chair Takis Karantonis said during his New Year remarks this week. “We need to be innovative and courageous in repositioning and reusing obsolete buildings.”

County Board member Matt de Ferranti spelled out what this office vacancy rate means for the county budget.

“We depend on our office vacancy rate, which leads to a lower tax rate than our surrounding localities in northern Northern Virginia,” he said, noting that commercial real estate comprises a greater percentage of Arlington’s budget than that of neighbors.

Either this month or next, Arlington County will learn the extent of the impact of decreased office property values on the expected budget deficit, which is preliminarily projected around $20-$40 million.

“That will be sobering news, or perhaps hopeful news,” de Ferranti said.

Through April, the 2024-25 budget process will address the ongoing challenge of high office vacancies.

“Why is this budget more difficult than our last? Haven’t we known about the work-from-home paradigm shift for two years?” said de Ferranti. “Well, we have, but the office assessment process and that market is based on 5-, 10- and 15-year leases. So this year, we’re seeing the reality come home to us.”

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