Thursday morning, Marsea Nelson woke up to a foreboding text from a friend.
He told her “he didn’t have ‘My Buy Nothing Facebook group got too political’ on his 2023 Bingo card,” she tells ARLnow.
Arguing that a local Facebook group for giving and receiving free stuff had gotten too big to be effective, the page’s volunteer admins have embarked on a process to splinter into smaller, more neighborhood-specific groups. The group currently serves a number of northern Arlington neighborhoods, plus some just outside of Arlington’s borders.
Just as they were about to launch the new groups and archive the legacy one, the group founder, Kayla Owen, stepped in and put a stop to it. She revoked their admin privileges, alleging that they had silenced people who disagreed with the plan while intentionally excluded her from the decision making.
She muted other posts and created a poll: split up or stay together? The admins would be reinstated if a majority wanted to move forward with the breakup.
“I can picture reading this in ARLnow,” said a Dominion Hills participant, who requested anonymity. “I think this is the kind of drama the rest of Arlington should read.”
Buy Nothing is a worldwide movement to help people befriend their neighbors while giving away stuff that cannot be sold or donated to a nonprofit. There are thousands of neighborhood-specific Facebook groups and millions of members, including several groups in Arlington.
“Buy Nothing Arlington (Northwest), VA” was experiencing growing pains. The 3,000-member group had boundaries spanning from north of Route 50, all the way to McLean and then over to I-66 and Glebe Road. Some felt that competing for and picking up free stuff was becoming too difficult and theorized that was why some had stopped participating altogether.
While the admins decided four smaller groups were necessary, Owen’s poll found that 75% of respondents did not want to be divided up this way. Poll results in-hand, she decided “Buy Nothing Arlington (Northwest), VA” will remain and discussions of boundary changes will be shelved for now.
“After reading emotional outpourings from members about their sense of loss, I decided that I had to intervene so the community could determine its future direction,” Owen tells ARLnow.
Nelson says she respects this position but sympathizes with the admins, who worked hard on the smaller groups, called “sprouts.”
“It’s so sad, and so silly, that this community people held so dear got so ugly,” she said. “The majority of people wanted the group to stay together so they’re happy to ignore how this all went down.”
ARLnow reached out to some of the affected admins but did not hear back before deadline. Screenshots ARLnow reviewed indicate admins had supporters who criticised Owen’s maneuver and Owen herself for stepping in even though she left Arlington to move elsewhere in Northern Virginia. (For her part, she says Buy Nothing permits out-of-area admins as a “check” on the system.)
“I’m sure [the admins] are pissed,” the Dominion Hills member said. “They probably feel like there’s been a coup.”
On Facebook, one user said Owen’s tactics will turn off people from responding honestly.
“I think people who are turned off by drama will not respond,” the comment said. “Like others, the first word that came to mind was ‘coup.'”
Independent Policing Auditor Mummi Ibrahim during an Arlington County Board meeting on Tuesday, April 25 (via Arlington County)
Arlington County’s Community Oversight Board and Independent Policing Auditor can now, officially, begin investigating community complaints about police officers.
The incremental step took place on Tuesday after the Arlington County Board approved a Memorandum of Understanding between the oversight board, or COB, and the Arlington County Police Department.
Now, it will begin doing community outreach so people know the oversight board exists and they can reach out if they have a complaint.
County Board members indicated reaching this point required a lot of hard work.
During the meeting, Board Member Katie Cristol thanked ACPD and the oversight board for finalizing their agreement, “which I know was not always the easiest project.”
The MOU outlines what the oversight board can do and how ACPD shares records and data. The board can review public complaints, incidents where police used force and internal investigations. It can then produce reports and make policy recommendations based on this work.
“We have a lot of work to do but what we set out in the Memorandum of Understanding and the work we’ve done so far gives us good marching orders to get started with this very important work,” Independent Policing Auditor Mummi Ibrahim said.
The milestone comes nearly two years after the Arlington County Board approved the creation of the oversight board with subpoena power — a hotly contested authority. Arlington’s Police Practices Work Group, convened after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police, recommended an oversight board with this power.
This COB has seven voting members and two non-voting seats, of which one is currently vacant. Over 100 residents applied to fill a seat and inaugural members were appointed in March 2022.
“We are very, very lucky to have a cross-section of people with different personal, professional, social, family and economic backgrounds supporting us,” said COB Chair Julie Evans. “It has made for valuable dialogue amongst ourselves about how to organize for this body and how to best serve the Arlington community in the interest of the ordinance vision.”
Ibrahim was hired shortly after, though a veto from Gov. Glenn Youngkin — upheld in a party-line legislative vote — kept her from reporting directly to the County Board. That was intended to give her more independence to issue her own reports. Instead, she and the police department both report to County Manager Mark Schwartz.
When they were not hammering out the MOU, the volunteer board members were training.
Ibrahim said the Arlington oversight board is “probably the most highly trained COB in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I think it’s fair to say, in the nation.”
Collectively, members completed 450 hours of training, including eight hours of ACPD tactical training at the Northern Virginia Training Academy and nine ACPD training courses.
“That was the bulk of our time last year,” Evans said. “While it was very demanding, it was very valuable and will serve us well in sort of creating a root of this work in understanding how ACPD is set up to operate now.”
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
Renderings of 1601 Fairfax Drive (via Arlington County)
The Inn of Rosslyn in January 2021 after it closed (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Although redevelopment plans for the mid-century Inn of Rosslyn pay homage to the motel, the county says the developer could do more.
Last fall, D.C. real estate company Monument Realty filed plans to replace the 38-unit hotel, built in 1957, with an 8-story, 141-unit apartment building with 88 parking spaces. It took over the property after JBG Smith purchased it in December 2020.
This February, the county kicked off a review process that will culminate with a vote by the Arlington County Board. Planning staff already have some suggestions for the developer to comply with recommendations for the site made in the neighborhood’s Fort Myer Heights North Plan.
They say Monument should study adding floors to shrink the overall footprint of the property — located at 1601 Fairfax Drive, fronting Route 50 — match it to heights of other nearby apartment towers.
The designs, meanwhile, should imitate nearby Art Deco and Colonial Revival garden apartments and the developer could incorporate more historic preservation of the property, county planners say.
“The building footprint should be reduced to provide the recommended landscaped green space which is not currently provided,” said planners in a county report. “The proposed building does not incorporate elements of Colonial Revival or Art Deco, as recommended.”
New renderings from Monument Realty depict a building with alternating stripes of lighter and darker brick, offset by wood-like paneling. Mid-century motifs on the balconies and a “50” sign out front pay homage to the architecture of the existing hotel.
A postcard of the old “Motel 50,” later the Inn of Rosslyn (via Arlington County)
The developer’s land use attorney, Nick Cumings of Walsh Colucci Lubeley & Walsh, argued in a January 2023 letter to the county that the project does “compliment and draw from the architecture of the existing building and the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood.”
That includes the retro “50” sign and some of the materials to be used in construction.
“This selection of building materials is appropriate for the neighborhood, which predominantly features masonry, while also introducing a biophilic design with the wood-like paneling,” writes Cumings.
The county also wants the developer to work on “historic preservation elements” for the existing motel, while an attorney for Monument Realty argues that is not necessary.
Within the Arlington County Historic Resources Inventory, Cumings says, the property is designated as “Important” — but less distinctive and/or in worse condition than “Essential.” He added that the neighborhood plan does not call for its historic preservation.
Meanwhile, residents involved in the pro-housing group YIMBYs of Northern Virginia said on social media that their priority will be getting the developer to include more affordable housing in exchange for greater density.
Like staff, they envision the building reaching 12 stories — the tallest the Fort Myer Heights plan allows — so that more people can live in the Metro-accessible area.
Monument Realty already plans to earn some 59,000 square feet of extra density by participating in the Green Building Density Incentive Program, aiming to earn LEED Gold, and by providing some affordable housing. It’s unclear whether the provided affordable housing will be on-site or elsewhere.
Next up in the development approval process, the Site Plan Review Committee of the county’s Planning Commission will review the project twice before it heads to other citizen commissions and the Arlington County Board. No dates have been set for these meetings.
The decision demonstrates the courts are watching local governing bodies for procedural violations in its policy-making. People following Berry say this decision was somewhat unusual and could give the Arlington plaintiffs stronger footing — though a victory is far from guaranteed.
When the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the changes in March 2021, local governments operating under Covid-era emergency rules could only take action on time-sensitive matters — such as the budget — in virtual meetings, explains Megan Rhyne, Executive Director of the Virginia Coalition of Open Government.
Three months after the decision was approved, state laws were expanded to allow local public bodies to discuss or vote on topics, like zoning, virtually. But the Virginia Supreme Court forced Fairfax to revert to an older zoning code because of this procedural misstep prior to the new laws taking effect.
The 10 plaintiffs in the Missing Middle suit say it is a point in their favor, arguing the state Supreme Court signaled it takes seriously procedural violations.
The suit alleges six ways the decision violated state law, including some procedural errors regarding how the meetings were conducted and how the policies under consideration were poorly explained and distributed. Additionally, the plaintiffs allege one instance where rights under the Freedom of Information Act were violated.
“These are hard cases to win. They’re not often won but we just had one that was a big surprise to a lot of people,” says Kedrick Whitmore, a land-use attorney with Venable, who has represented developers on numerous Arlington projects but is not involved in the Missing Middle suit. “Maybe it’s not as open and shut as you would normally see for challenges.”
Despite the possibly far-reaching consequences of Berry, it seems to have only slowed down Fairfax. The county is already restarting the process to overhaul its zoning code.
A common blueprint
State law says zoning codes serve a variety of purposes, including to reduce congestion, provide for public safety and ensure that natural lands are preserved. The law says officials only have to “give reasonable consideration” to these and other purposes, however.
In practice, this kind of standard can make it difficult for plaintiffs to allege a locality made substantive missteps. Thus, plaintiffs suing over an unpopular decision may find more success alleging procedural and FOIA violations, according to Whitmore and Rhyne.
“Local governments in Virginia are afforded extraordinary deference by the courts and legislation,” Whitmore said. “That makes the substantive road difficult and that’s why procedural might be most effective.”
Rhyne agrees, particularly as it relates to Freedom of Information Act allegations.
“It’s not unusual for a FOIA meeting violation to be alleged after an unpopular decision. Sometimes it’s true — sometimes it has been a violation — but sometimes it hasn’t,” she said.
“While it’s common to take that route, it’s uncommon for it to undo anything,” she continued, making Berry a “super rare” decision.
In the Arlington lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege the county did not post online all the meeting materials that the Planning Commission and Arlington County Board had access to, including a method Board Chair Christian Dorsey would later introduce, which the Board approved, for temporarily apportioning permits based on zoning district.
But the bar for public access requirements under FOIA is fairly low, according to Rhyne. Governments meet the provision if the public is given materials at the same time members of the government receive them, she said.
“If everybody is getting it at the same time, in-person, it’s not useful but it met FOIA,” Rhyne said. “FOIA doesn’t require meaningful time to digest what’s been given.”
This is a finer point than in Berry, which ruled for the plaintiffs because the March 2021 vote occurred when the law did not allow such decisions to be made using virtual-only meetings. This could limit how much Berry applies in Arlington, Rhyne said.
The plaintiffs, however, take a broader view of the principles at stake in Berry.
“Literally the day after the Board enacted densification and changes that are the focus of this suit, the Court reaffirmed the importance of statutory guardrails by invalidating Fairfax County’s zoning overhaul on procedural grounds,” the suit says. “In so doing, the Court affirmed that compliance with Virginia Code’s procedural requirements is not optional.”
The plaintiffs have made no statements about the case and did not wish to comment for this article, an attorney for them told ARLnow. Outreach about the case has been conducted by an LLC formed by residents, “Arlington Neighbors for Neighborhoods,” in the form of a press release last week. The LLC is also raising money to fund the litigation.
Can the plaintiffs even sue?
The first tack Arlington County will take will be to argue the harms these plaintiffs claim they face are not specific to them and thus they do not have “standing” to file a suit, according to Whitmore.
“You could argue that this affects everyone in Arlington County,” he said. “What standing does is it requires plaintiffs to show they have particularized harm.”
The county told ARLnow it cannot comment on ongoing litigation, but it has taken this general approach before, when it sued some residents and the Ballston-Virginia Square Association. The county petitioned the court to find the residents would not experience particular harm from a decision to temporarily park Arlington Transit buses nearby.
Another recent state Supreme Court decision indicates this is not a slam-dunk strategy for municipalities, though. The Virginia Supreme Court in February overturned a lower court ruling that found residents suing Hanover County over a Wegmans distribution center built in their historically Black neighborhood did not have standing.
A judge wrote that “standing determines who may file a lawsuit — not who can win one. Winning and losing depends on judicial fact-finding and discretion,” a local TV station reported.
Here, Whitmore says the plaintiffs have made efforts to show “they have been or will be harmed in some different particular fashion differently than the ‘every man’ of Arlington.”
All 10 plaintiffs say they will be hurt by higher tax assessments. Each argued how many of the general criticisms levied during the public process — from crowded streets to higher flood risks — represent unique harms for them.
One of the plaintiffs is Marcia Nordgren, who was active in anti-Missing Middle discourse on Nextdoor and published a letter to the editor in the Gazette Leader lambasting the Board and previewing some of the grievances in the lawsuit.
The suit says Nordgren’s neighbor can build Missing Middle homes by-right and she cannot challenge it because the property is under one acre. Others in her neighborhood can challenge developments near them because they need special permits to build such structures on their properties larger than one acre.
Margaret Fibel, who urged the County Board in March to update its infrastructure capacity before making the zoning changes, says Missing Middle development in her neighborhood would result in more street parking and congestion than in other places.
In her area, close to two Metro stations, developers will not have to provide as much on-site parking, meaning her already-crowded street will see even more street parking, she says.
The suit says the following about their plight and that of the eight others.
By singling out these Residential Districts without providing for adequate infrastructure and neighborhood-specific development, the Residents will suffer a particularized harm not applicable to the public generally in the form of increased traffic and parking, intensified stormwater runoff and sanitary sewer use and volume leading to flooding and sanitary sewer backups, tree canopy diminution, and prohibitively expensive tax assessment increases.
Zoning change proponents react
ARLnow previously reported the statements issued by two groups opposed to the zoning changes, Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future and Arlingtonians for Upzoning Transparency, on Friday. They both said they were not involved but watching the proceedings closely.
Afterward, proponents of the change disputed the idea that the county confused residents in its communications.
“This lawsuit claims improper notification and that people were confused, didn’t know what was going on,” said Missing Middle supporter Pastor Ashley Goff in a tweet. “Housing advocates knew EXACTLY what was going on which is why we pushed so hard for the change. Zero confusion on our end.”
Meanwhile, Grace White, Arlington Vice President of the pro-housing group YIMBYs of NOVA, told ARLnow this week that the organization is not fazed by the suit.
Missing Middle is an important yet incremental change that was approved unanimously by the county board after years of study, public comment, and deliberation. YIMBYs of NOVA is concerned at the moment with building on the policy to ensure better housing options for all Arlingtonians. We invite opponents of Missing Middle to join us in spending their efforts advocating for solutions, rather than challenging the validity of a duly enacted law in court.
Independent School Board candidate James ‘Vell’ Rives (courtesy photo)
James “Vell” Rives is entering the race to fill the Arlington School Board seat being vacated by Reid Goldstein.
He will be running in the general election in November against the candidate who wins the Arlington County Democratic Committee endorsement caucus, either be Miranda Turner or political newcomer Angelo Cocchiaro, who both nabbed high-profile endorsements recently.
Voting in the caucus will take place in early May.
Rives, an Arlington resident of 24 years with two children in Arlington Public Schools, ran as an independent last year, nabbing the endorsement of the then-Sun Gazette (now the Gazette Leader). He lost to Bethany Sutton, who had the support of Arlington Democrats and captured 68% of votes on Election Day, compared to the 30% Rives garnered.
“His campaign priorities include school safety, academic rigor, and teacher retention,” Rives’ announcement says.
Some of his previous campaign issues included reinstating School Resource Officers and doing away with standards-based grading, per a video on his website.
Rives is a psychiatrist and past co-chair of the Arlington Public Schools School Health Advisory Board (SHAB). He currently represents SHAB for the Arlington Addiction Recovery Initiative and his website details his policy positions on the twin epidemics of student drug use and mental health issues.
“Substance Abuse has increased since the pandemic among students nationally, and anecdotal reports suggest the same for Arlington,” Rives’ website says. “While continuing preventive education in school, I support aggressive early intervention to change the trajectory for students using drugs.”
Earlier this year, a 14-year-old student died of a drug overdose at Wakefield High School, which one of his children attends. APS has since stepped up education and increased the availability of the overdose reversal drug Narcan but some teachers say they do not feel heard when they report concerns to administrators.
“We must also rebuild connectedness among the school community by promoting athletics, performing and visual arts, and physical education that involves exercise and play,” he said.
The budget that the Arlington School Board is teed up to adopt later this year includes a handful of additional substance abuse counselors and a psychologist and social worker to maintain current staffing levels.
Rives says he also supports the position of SHAB that APS should adopt a policy requiring students to keep personal devices off and stored during school hours. A handful of schools have independently adopted this but SHAB says it needs to be systemwide to be enforceable. Some current School Board members support such a policy, while others oppose it.
As for the Democratic candidates, Turner has also staked out positions on mental health, such as more teen programming and tighter controls on APS-issued devices, as well as greater academic rigor, especially calling for more math interventionists.
On substance use, Cocchiaro says he would like to add more counselors.
Pickleball at the Walter Reed Community Center (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Pickleball at the Walter Reed Community Center (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Pickleball at the Walter Reed Community Center (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Pickleball at the Walter Reed Community Center (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Pickleball at the Walter Reed Community Center (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Pickleball restriping plans for Fort Scott Park (via Arlington County)
Pickleball restriping plans for Marcey Road Park (via Arlington County)
Pickleball restriping plans for Hayes Park (via Arlington County)
Pickleball restriping plans for Virginia Highlands Park (via Arlington County)
One person’s vacant building is another’s future pickleball facility.
Not to be topped by a County Board candidate’s suggestion to put pickleball facilities at the condemned Key Bridge Marriott, Board Vice-Chair Libbey Garvey mulled whether vacant office buildings could be retrofitted for courts.
“We’ve got these office buildings that are kind of empty, and we’re trying to figure out what to do with them,” she asked at the Board’s Tuesday meeting. “Is that a possibility?”
Already recognized in some rankings as a great place to play pickleball, Arlington County is looking to add more courts in response to the sport’s booming popularity. But it has found itself in a pickle, balancing pressure to add courts with pressure to address pickleball-related noise and land use concerns from some neighbors.
During the Arlington County Board conversation with the Dept. of Parks and Recreation, members took a diplomatic approach, in contrast to the threats of legal action, accusations of bullying and public urination, and late night TV lampooning that have characterized the ongoing local pickleball battle.
In addition to Garvey’s vision for pickleball taking over vacant office buildings, others floated nudging private clubs to get in on the fun. They said private courts could ease the burden on the local government to add facilities, mute the “pop” the paddles emit and help address the stubborn office vacancy rate.
Such possibilities would require working with Arlington Economic Development, said Dept. of Parks and Recreation Director Jane Rudolph.
“There’d have to be an evaluation with others who understand layouts of office building and warehouses and things and with [Arlington Economic Development] colleagues about what we could be doing in existing private spaces and if they could be built out,” she said.
Arlington Economic Development’s Director of Real Estate Development Marc McCauley told ARLnow that zoning changes the Arlington County Board approved on Saturday do open up opportunities for private pickleball facilities in vacant retail and commercial spaces.
“These private facilities, such as national operator Chicken N Pickle” — a sport, restaurant and event space — “are emerging concepts that could theoretically relieve some demand pressure on use of pickleball courts in public facilities,” McCauley said. “Challenges may include ceiling height, floor plate size and noise attenuation, but those issues would need to be studied by a property owner and potential tenant on a case by case basis.”
Another example is Kraken Kourts, with two locations in D.C. that offer pickleball, axe throwing, roller skating and a rage room — a place to break things to let off steam.
Board Chair Christian Dorsey asked whether DPR has considered how the the county could “encourage some operators to set up some pickleball facilities so that this doesn’t become solely a government responsibility.”
In communities known for their pickleball amenities, Dorsey observed there are major, private indoor-outdoor facilities which sometimes have “really substantial membership costs or drop-in fee costs.”
This includes, Board member Takis Karantonis noted, “some very private places with a lot of tennis courts — a lot of new tennis courts, actually.”
U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) speaks at a press conference announcing new flight patterns to mitigate noise on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 (courtesy photo)
A group photo from a press conference announcing new helicopter flight patterns to mitigate noise on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 (courtesy photo)
U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) poses with federal agency representatives and a Fairfax County official (courtesy photo)
The federal government says it will direct helicopters to fly higher and on new paths to spare residents of Arlington and neighboring locales from excessive noise.
These changes respond to years of noise complaints about helicopters buzzing overhead, many of which are going to and from the Pentagon.
The new measures were announced yesterday (Tuesday) morning at a press conference at the Fairlington Community Center. The event featured remarks from elected officials, federal agency representatives and the helicopter industry, which were later included in a press release from U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
“Since I took office over eight years ago, helicopter noise has been a constant source of complaints from constituents across Northern Virginia,” Beyer said in a statement. “Here in the nation’s capital with military, medical, commercial and other aviation, aircraft noise will always be with us — but there are things we can do to help reduce the impact on residents.”
He said the actions taken yesterday directly respond to community input.
“I thank the many people whose efforts helped inform the actions we are announcing today, as well as our partners across levels of government who are acting to reduce helicopter noise in Northern Virginia,” he said.
Meanwhile, a system for logging complaints — developed last year from recommendations in a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report — will be sticking around so residents can continue filing complaints.
Arlington County and neighboring jurisdictions will jointly pay to keep the complaint system operating.
Local elected officials in attendance included Arlington County Board members Katie Cristol, Matt de Ferranti and Takis Karantonis and Vice-Chair Libby Garvey, who gave a speech.
“We are especially pleased that our residents could participate meaningfully in this process, and now will continue to,” she said. “In a democracy it is crucial that people have a voice in how their government affects them.”
Arlington County Board Vice-Chair Libby Garvey speaks at a press conference announcing new flight patterns to mitigate noise on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 (courtesy photo)
Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson said the system is “far more than a nicety to assuage frustrated residents.”
“This tool gathered data that was used by the [Federal Aviation Association] to make important changes that will mitigate helicopter noise across our region,” he said. “Our residents weren’t just listened to — they were heard.”
The FAA reviewed data the system collected last year as well as studied by the GAO, Arlington and Montgomery counties, and the Dept. of Defense, which suggested helicopters could fly higher.
After studying this body of work, the FAA and the Helicopter Association International decided to draft new, higher flight patterns.
“It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we’re all in the same room with the same access to information and working toward the same goal,” Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Policy, International Affairs and Environment Peter Hearding said in a statement.
Jeff Smith, Chair of the Helicopter Association International Board of Directors, agreed.
“Best practices from this program, along with the data collected from this new initiative, can and will make a noticeable difference in this community,” he said. “This pilot program is a perfect case study for how government and industry can work together to address issues and deliver tangible results.”
In his remarks, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Real Property, Ronald Tickle, said the Pentagon is committed to being a good neighbor.
“The Department looks forward to further collaboration to mitigate helicopter noise in the National Capital Region, while continuing to meet mission requirements,” Tickle said.
A water main on N. Glebe Road set to be replaced (via Arlington County)
A 96-year-old water main along N. Glebe Road near Ballston is set to be replaced, starting later this year.
The pipe segment runs about a third of a mile from N. Randolph Street to N. Pershing Drive, between the Buckingham and Ashton Heights neighborhoods.
Arlington County says that this work is needed to improve the flow of water to area fire hydrants, dubbed “fire flow,” and support demand in the neighborhood. Over the weekend, the Arlington County Board approved a contract for $2.1 million with A&M Construction Corporation to execute the project.
The county included some $424,400 in contingency funding in case the contractor finds “unsuitable soils or unknown existing underground utilities,” among other risks, according to a county report.
This project is “part of [the] county’seffort to replace old unlined cast iron pipes which are subjected to internal and external corrosions that reduce the fire flow capacity,” the document said. “In the past few years, the main had an excessive number of breaks that prompted the need for replacement.”
Arlington Dept. of Environmental Services spokesman Peter Golkin tells ARLnow that there is currently no construction schedule, “as it takes some time for [the purchasing department] to execute such a contract.”
“But based on previous comparable projects, this one won’t begin until this summer and more likely in the fall,” he said.
Golkin says the county expects the work will take 1.5 years to complete and will affect 26 properties: 19 residential and seven commercial.
“Water interruptions will be coordinated in advance with those impacted,” he said.
The replacement work will require single-lane closures on Glebe from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday.
Crews will likely work overnight once they reach an intersection. More information on these traffic impacts will be relayed to residents via the project website, which will launch closer to the start of construction, and through the Buckingham and Ashton Heights civic associations, per the county.
The pedestrian bridge over N. Moore Street in September 2021 (via Google Maps)
Demolition at the RCA building on April 5, 2023 (staff photo)
The RCA building at 1901 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn in March 2023 before demolition began (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Rendering of 1901 N. Moore Street (via Arlington County)
The pedestrian bridge connecting the Rosslyn’s RCA building to another building (and bar) across N. Moore Street is set to be demolished soon.
The demolition process will start on Saturday and last two weekends: April 29-30 and May 6-7, per a letter to residents of the Central Place apartments, shared with ARLnow.
Jefferson Apartment Group, one of the developers leading a joint venture to redevelop the RCA property at 1901 N. Moore Street as an apartment tower, confirmed that the information shared was correct. The letter provided some details about expected traffic impacts as a result of the demolition.
“Please note that North Moore Street will be completely closed off to pedestrian and bus traffic during this period, except for cars that need to access the garage entrance for 1911 Fort Myer Drive,” the letter said.
The bridge connects the old office building to the retro pool hall Continental. Demolition could impact the buses and shuttles that pick up people in front of the bar’s beer garden and take them to D.C., such as the shuttle between Georgetown University and the Rosslyn Metro station.
“All parties of bus routes that stop at the corner of North Moore Street and 19th Street N. have been notified of the work, and they will notify all customers of any route changes,” the note to residents said.
Demolition began earlier this month, Axios reported. Rather than an implosion, Jefferson Apartment Group previously told ARLnow that the building will be dismantled bit by bit.
The county approved plans to replace the concrete-cladded office building with a 27-story, 423-unit apartment building in June 2021. Construction is expected to take three years.
Like the RCA building itself, pedestrian bridges in Rosslyn are relics of a mid-century planning belief that bridges make pedestrians more comfortable by separating them from vehicular traffic, noted a 2014 Washington Business Journal article.
Forty years later, these were already out of vogue, per a scathing passage in a 1999 study of Rosslyn.
“To the planners of the early 50’s and 60’s, presumably it seemed orderly and logical to separate the pedestrian flow with its erratic, unpredictable movements, from the fast-moving steel machines of the road,” wrote the local architecture firm the Lukmire Partnership in the study.
Publications from that time illustrated these passageways as wide, open, landscaped spaces that were somehow “strikingly devoid” of any signs of a vibrant urban streetscape, the report continued.
“Buried in the back of the planners’ minds perhaps lingered images of the piazza at San Marco in Venice or those of Rome,” Lukmire Partnership concluded. “If so, in the instance of Rosslyn, something was lost in translation.”
Washington-Liberty High School senior Ava Schwarz at work (courtesy photo)
The Washington-Liberty High School team sending technology into space (courtesy photo)
The Washington-Liberty High School team sending technology into space (courtesy photo)
Excited Washington-Liberty High School students pose in their science lab (courtesy photo)
In one year, a group of Washington-Liberty High School students built a subatomic particle detector from scratch, teaching themselves everything from a new coding language to how to solder.
Now, that hardware and software are set to get launched into space this week, though a date has yet to be set.
“I feel ecstatic,” senior Ava Schwarz tells ARLnow.
Their project, originally scheduled to launch on Friday, will help scientists who are researching particle physics understand the kind of atmospheric radiation that rockets experience on flights just under the line between “space” and “outer space,” which is 62 miles above sea level.
Currently, scientists know that there are electron-like particles called “muons” that form when x-rays and gamma rays produced by stars, including the sun, react with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. Someone even invented a detector to figure out the strength and magnitude of the muons.
What scientists want to know is where exactly these muons get formed — and that is what the students set out to discover. They proposed building detectors and launching them into space to measure the altitude where they are formed and NASA accepted the project.
The team from W-L did so as part of the inaugural NASA TechRise Student Challenge, which was designed to engage and inspire future STEM professionals. The students comprise one of the 57 winning teams to receive $1,500 to build their experiments and receive a NASA-funded spot to test them on suborbital rocket flights operated by Blue Origin or UP Aerospace, per an Arlington Public Schools press release from last year.
The W-L students essentially started from scratch.
“A year ago, I didn’t know what a muon was,” Schwarz said. “I started completely from ground zero and took a crash course in particle physics, electrical engineering — the whole works.”
Senior Pia Wilson was a teammate with, comparatively, substantial coding experience. Suddenly, she was knee-deep in professionally created code using a language she had never worked with before.
“It was definitely a lot of Googling, lot of scouring forum posts in all the coding forums and a lot of help from professionals as well,” she said. Wilson added that she never expected learning how to solder electronics while in high school.
When they needed an expert with whom to talk through a problem, they spoke with associates of their school supervisor, Jeffrey Carpenter — who got into teaching after a 20-year career in space operations — as well as the person who invented a muon detector, Massachusetts Institute of Technology research assistant Spencer Axani.
“It was a very ‘two steps forward, one step back’ process,” Schwarz said. “We were going into a high-level project without a foundational skill set, which we obtained through trial and error.”
Whenever the detector malfunctioned, she said they troubleshooted by eliminating what the problem was not.
“There were many, many afternoons that turned into evenings spent after school, just working for hours, figuratively banging our heads against the wall,” she said.
As the experiment dragged into the summer last year, they kept hitting technical setbacks, particularly with the weight of the detector. They sometimes worried they would not finish in time for launch.
All six taxi companies authorized to operate in Arlington County are asking for rate increases.
The companies say this would help offset rising business costs — including fuel and insurance expenses — and keep them competitive with rideshare operators. Arlington, which regulates taxis (while rideshare drivers are regulated by the state) last raised rates in 2016, per a county report.
The Arlington County Board voted over the weekend to a hold a public hearing on whether to increase the rates on Saturday, May 13. If approved next month, the higher rates would go into effect on July 1.
Riders could see increases of $1.70 to $6.50 per trip, the county report said. Specifically, the county proposes increasing the initial trip cost by 50 cents to $3.50. The current rate for every 1/6th of a mile and for every minute drivers are kept waiting, $.36, would increase to $.40.
“The increase is lower than the overall rise in inflation, but the taxicab industry feels that keeping prices competitive is very important,” per a county report.
Arlington’s Transportation Commission agrees.
“Given the significant increases in costs for drivers since the last fare increase, the support of the industry, and the report from the companies that they have done what they can to support their drivers by significantly lowering stand dues, the Commission is supportive of the fare increase,” Chair Chris Slatt wrote to the County Board.
“The Commission believes that the taxi industry in Arlington plays a valuable role as a reliable mobility operator with transparent pricing and a lower technological barrier to entry than Transportation Network Companies,” he continued.
Six authorized operators owned a total of 477 taxis in 2022, of which 8% were wheelchair-accessible, per the most recent available data. Friendly, Red Top, Arlington Yellow and Blue Top, which provide dispatch service, own 405 taxicabs or 85% of the entire fleet. Hess and Crown operate mainly at airports and taxi stands.
Number of taxicabs operated in Arlington per company (via Arlington County)
The number of cabs operating in Arlington has declined from a peak of 847 in 2017 to 477 vehicles in 2022, per a county memo. Wheelchair-accessible vehicles decreased from 97 in 2017 to 39 in 2022.
Taxi operations — already facing stiff competition from app-based ride options like Uber — were hit hard by the pandemic, with the number of dispatches and airport trips plummeting more than 60% between 2019 and 2021.
Calls for taxi dispatch in Arlington from 2019 to 2021 (via Arlington County)
Rides from Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport recovered slightly from 2020 to 2021 after a precipitous decline, according to county stats.
Rides from the airport in taxis (via Arlington County)
Data from 2022 and 2023 will be collected next year, according to the county.
“We track ridership data for the Certificate Determination Report analysis on a biennial basis,” says Dept. of Environmental Services spokeswoman Katie O’Brien.
If the rate changes go through, Arlington’s initial charge for a trip would become on-par with neighboring jurisdictions, but the cost for a trip — particularly a 10 or 25-mile one — would be higher, according to an analysis conducted by staff.
