Edison Park planned improvements (via Arlington County)
Edison Park (via Google Maps)
Good news if you take your kids to play at Edison Park (213 N. Edison Street) in the Arlington Forest neighborhood: Arlington County is planning to put $822,166 of renovations into the park.
On Saturday, Feb. 22, the County Board is scheduled to vote on funding the project. The total proposed allocation is $904,383, with $82,216 set aside as a contingency.
“The overall project focused on five elements: playground equipment and safety surfacing, paving and access improvements, circulation and accessibility, reforestation and landscaping, fencing and site furnishings,” staff said in a report.
A map of planned improvements shows a new swing set and playground at the center of the tiny park, with a seating area to the west and a toddler play area separated from the main playground.
The far east end of the park, past a grassy open area, is planned for reforestation.
The plans for the park were endorsed by the Arlington Forest Civic Association last April.
Starting next month, the parking lot at the frequently-packed East Falls Church Metro station will be completely closed for up to nine months.
The closure is part of planned summer shutdown to rebuild four stations on the Orange Line — including East Falls Church, Vienna and Dunn Loring in Virginia. While the projects aren’t scheduled to start for another three months, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) said construction crews will need to utilize several parking lots as a staging ground for equipment and materials starting in March.
More from WMATA:
Beginning Sunday, March 15, the surface parking lots at East Falls Church, West Falls Church, and Vienna stations will be closed for seven to nine months, as construction contractors begin the process of moving material and machines into place. Once these lots close, there will be no parking available at East Falls Church, severely limited parking at West Falls Church, and reduced parking at Vienna Station. Parking at Dunn Loring station is not impacted.
The platform work is necessary to address years of concrete structural deterioration that, left unaddressed, could pose a safety risk to riders. Metro will use the time to make improvements that enhance customer experience with a higher level of safety, accessibility and convenience. Key renovations include new slip-resistant tiles throughout the stations, brighter energy-efficient LED lighting and illuminated handrails, new stainless steel platform shelters with charging ports and digital map/information displays, and new Passenger Information Displays (PIDs) with larger digital screens to improve visibility.
NBC 4 reporter Adam Tuss, a veteran of the local transportation beat, noted that the closure will be especially disruptive given that the parking lot is frequently full.
WMATA said the kiss and ride lot will be open only for pick-up and drop-off, while additional parking will be available at the Dunn Loring Metro station.
Krieger is a local attorney with one child currently in Arlington Public Schools. He describes himself as a “social justice advocate” who is, admittedly, “not an educational policy expert.”
Krieger’s platform includes strong opposition to the controversial school swap approved last week, echoing criticism from parents that the shift does little to address school overcrowding. From his website:
Stand Up Against Boundary Changes and Program Moves that Destroy Communities. For Arlington Public Schools to continue its excellence, we must ensure that we have the correct number of seats for our students in the right areas – especially as the county grows and neighborhoods are developed. However, determining exactly where seats are needed, how many seats are needed, when the seats are needed, and how new seats are obtained is a huge challenge. Without this critical information, decisions should not be made. Moving schools and destroying communities should be the absolute last resort for APS – not the first solution attempted.
Other topics on Krieger’s campaign page include working to reduce the disparities between white students and minority students, supporting policies that reduce the schools’ ecological footprint, and getting students more involved in School Board policy.
“For too long, Arlington Public Schools hasn’t paid enough attention to input from students and parents,” Krieger said. “In short, they haven’t listened to us. I’m running for the School Board because that needs to change.”
Mardi Gras is cancelled for Clarendon — again — and it seems increasingly likely that cancellation is permanent.
Elizabeth Crocker, executive director of the Clarendon Alliance, confirmed to ARLnow that there will be no Mardi Gras parade for Fat Tuesday (Feb. 25) this year.
The tempestuous February weather takes some of the blame. Crocker said the parade has been frequently cancelled or postponed because of bad weather, and the organization lost money it had spent. Given this year’s damp winter, unfavorable conditions seem likely to repeat.
Bathroom at Washington-Liberty High School track (staff photo by Vernon Miles)
Bathroom at Washington-Liberty High School track (staff photo by Vernon Miles)
If you’re preparing to go for a run at the popular Washington-Liberty High School track be advised: you should probably use the bathroom before you go.
There is one public bathroom at the track, a portable facility at the south end of the track, but inside the plastic cage is a scene out of a nightmare.
An ARLnow reporter was sentenced to explore the lavatory, following a reader tip, and found the toilet overflowing, the plastic floor smeared with a mix of human feces and unidentifiable materials, and the filth visibly spilling out onto the ground below.
The black seat of the toilet, meanwhile, was crusted over with grime, and the reek inside the room was indescribably foul.
Staff at Washington-Liberty High School have reported the problem to Arlington County, officials said in an email obtained by ARLnow, because the lavatory is the responsibility of the Arlington County Department of Parks and Recreation. A chart on the wall marking service done to the facility is, as one might expect, completely blank.
A tipster said that he witnessed a contractor for a portable toilet company try to access the bathroom, only to be stymied by the a locked gate. It’s a problem that W-L administrators say they have tried to address.
“We have reported this 3-4 times,” a school official said in an email to a resident. “The potties are placed there for public use of the track by Arlington Parks and Rec, not the school system. They have a key to the gate and are supposed to maintain it.”
After inquiries from ARLnow, a spokeswoman with the parks department said the situation is being addressed urgently.
“We have a contract to have the portable toilet cleaned on Tuesday and Thursday,” said DPR’s Susan Kalish. “We’ve notified the contractor of the issue and they are sending someone out immediately.”
In case you forgot, Friday is Valentine’s Day. Wait, before you make a panicked purchase on Amazon and hit “next day shipping,” a market is scheduled this Friday in Crystal City to rescue last-minute shoppers.
The Valentine’s Market is scheduled to run from 4-8 p.m. at The Grounds (1102 S. Eads Street) with a variety of local vendors. If gift-giving isn’t really your style, an event listing said there will also be plenty of activities to turn it into a date night:
Leave your Valentine’s Day shopping to the last minute again, or just looking for a nice outing that doesn’t involve a quiet restaurant? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with the Valentine’s Market at The Grounds!
Join us at The Grounds in Crystal City for wine & beer tastings and shopping from local crafts and treat vendors. There will also be a cash bar and food trucks, powered by Curbside Kitchen, so you can make an evening of it!
Brad Garmon’s honey grown in Arlington (photo courtesy Brad Garmon)
Apiary in Arlington (photo courtesy Brad Garmon)
Local beekeeper Brad Garmon says raising a new generation of farmers is vital to keeping the budding urban apiary industry alive, and it starts in Arlington County.
“If you talk to anyone involved in this space, [they’ll tell you] the need for young minds and younger people getting involved is dire,” Garmon said.
Committed to backing up that buzz, Garmon is hosting a class early next month to introduce students around the 5th grade age range to bees and beekeeping. The class is part of Arlington Public Schools’ Youth Enrichment Program, a new set of classes offered for local students in late-elementary school and middle school to gain new experiences.
“The Youth Enrichment Program course is not so much a technical course on managing the hives, it’s about understanding the importance of bees and getting people to realize that we have a responsibility to be good environmental stewards and the importance honeybees have,” Garmon said.
Raul Matos, coordinator for APS’ Arlington Community Learning program, said the Youth Enrichment Program started this past September. Matos said many of the programs, like the Help the Honeybees class, are aimed at children who’d rather be in a classroom for their out-of-school enrichment activities.
“It got started because we discovered that not all children, when it comes to enrichment, want to be outside playing soccer or being in the pool,” Matos said. “Some want to be in the classroom, in classes like Japanese and video film editing.”
Matos said students don’t need to be Arlington Public Schools students; homeschool students, students enrolled in private schools, and kids outside of Arlington Public Schools can also take classes.
The Help the Honeybees class is $39 for a 90-minute workshop on March 12. The class is from 4:30-6 p.m.
“There’s a lot of misinformation around honeybees, like when people say ‘my kid was playing baseball and got stung by one,'” Garmon said. “So we look at honey bees vs. wasps and yellowjackets. That way when kids are walking around their yard and see a honey bee on a flower, they’ll know it’s not an aggressive insect. It gets them to go back out to their kids and their parents and teach them what they learn.”
Beyond just an elementary apiary education, Garmon said there’s life lessons for kids to learn from the hive. One honey bee only makes one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey, and Garmon said there are a lot of kids can learn about the power of collaboration through that.
“There’s a lot of biomimicry,” Garmon said. “These insects only live a couple weeks, but what they live their entire life doing is serving to benefit their community. You can parallel that to these kids, who may feel small and insignificant. They get little straws and run around ‘pollinating flowers.’ Bring some of that nectar back to the hive. Even though these are small droplets of water, the end result is much bigger than themselves.”
Garmon said he hosted an initial class when the Youth Enrichment Program started in the fall and it filled up quickly. There’s only a few slots open left in the March session, but Garmon said he hopes to host another one in May.
Other classes being offered over the next few months include an animation class and a guide to making fascinators. Matos said he’s particularly excited about the math strengthening classes, but those are currently full. This summer, Matos said the Youth Enrichment Program plans to offer STEM-related classes like “Programming through Minecraft” and “Building Fortnite Games.”
A plan is currently in process to transform the Arlington Court Suites hotel into an apartment complex, but at a Transportation Commission meeting last week the project hit a small snag as commissioners unanimously agreed the project might have too much parking.
The plan would convert the 187 hotel rooms in the Arlington Court Suites into a 180-unit residential property called Park Arlington at Courthouse. The current plans do not call for any major demolition work and staff said the proposed residential units would likely be less expensive than new construction at the same site.
The applicant could maintain as hotel use, staff said, but this project would help meet the demand for mid-rise housing at a middle-income level.
While the project is only two blocks south of the Court House Metro station, the parking ratio would increase in the new plans. Currently, there are 153 parking spaces and the proposal would elevate that to 171 spaces. Many of those would be located on a surface parking lot, with the rest in a garage under the building. The plan also calls for 76 bicycle parking spaces.
Transportation Commission member Audrey Clement, who earlier in the meeting had expressed opposition both the Veitch Street redevelopment and the Missing Middle housing study, shared her general support for the Park Arlington project, with one main objection.
“I really do support this project,” Clement said. “This is right up my alley. It does not involve the demolition of an existing property… I’m very impressed with this project, but in one respect it is not consistent with County policy, and that is the parking ratio.”
In 2017, the county adopted a new policy that said the parking ratio should be reduced from one space per unit to as low as 0.2 spaces per unit in certain areas near Metro stations.
“I do believe this project would be more consistent with county policy if it reduced the number of parking spaces and what I’m particularly interested in is the surface parking. Has the developer considered replacing some or all of the surface parking with green space? This would be a benefit to the residents of this facility.”
Am I going crazy? Is Audrey Clement really asking a developer to build *less* parking??
“It is a huge parking lot and the only way to get into the building is through the parking lot,” said Transportation Commission member Jim Lantelme. “It’s still way too auto-oriented… This parking lot is just enormous and it really doesn’t work for me. There’s nothing like this site anymore. If we’re going to have adaptive reuse, we have to adapt it to the current requirements.”
The agreement on the Transportation Commission took some of the members by surprise.
“I never thought I would hear myself say this, but I 100% agree with everything you just said,” said Transportation Commission member Richard Price. “I never thought I would hear myself say this, but Commissioner Clement hit it right on the head… All I see is ugly surface parking and I’m glad you’re going to address it. There are lots of sites that all you have to get the front entrance is walk through a parking lot. That is disturbing and that needs to change, and it needs to start changing now.”
Others said that along with the parking lot reduction, the sidewalk needs to be widened.
The developer said that an alternative plan could eliminate the surface parking, but more market research needs to be done. If the building winds up as condos, the developer said there would be a higher demand for parking. The developer noted that the widening the sidewalk on N. Courthouse Road, however, is complicated by things like utilities and a retaining wall.
Ballston Quarterfest — the event that replaced Taste of Arlington last year — is coming back this summer with some new features.
This year’s festival — now dubbed the Quaterfest Crawl — has been scheduled for May 16, along Wilson Blvd. between N. Taylor Street and N. Randolph Street. The event is scheduled to run from 12-8 p.m. rain or shine, which are extended hours compared to last year.
Unlike Taste of Arlington, restaurants don’t come to Quarterfest’s main drag and set up tents. The Quarterfest Crawl is a for-purchase wristband that gets the visitor access to free tastings and special discounts on meals at dozens of restaurants around the neighborhood.
The event is free and open to the public, but a wristband is required to participate in the restaurant crawl and to get drink tickets for the street pub — a pop-up bar serving beer, cider, wine and cocktails. The Quarterfest Crawl wristband is $45 online before May 1, though there are other prices for other types of packages.
This year, the event is set to feature a new “culinary discovery” and expo pavilion at the center of the festival, also on Wilson Blvd.
“Think of the culinary discovery pavilion as a live cooking demonstration area with classroom seating and additional seating for people to stand and socialize,” Ballston BID spokeswoman Catherine Roper said said. You’ll also be able to try what’s being cooked.
“Think of this as Quarterfest’s Kitchen Stadium,” Roper said.
Meanwhile, at the expo pavilion, visitors can turn in a fully stamped “Crawl passport” to be entered to win two free tickets to a Washington Capitals game. Registration is now open for local businesses that want to sign up as exhibitors at the expo pavilion or as sponsors for the event.
In addition to food, drink and exhibitors, attendees will also be able to enjoy some live music. The following bands are scheduled to play throughout the event.
Arlington County is currently working through a plan to add more options for housing through zoning changes, but there was disagreement during a recent Transportation Commission meeting over whether greater diversity of housing types will actually help with affordability.
Staff at the Transportation Commission noted that what’s being built these days are typically either condos and apartments or huge single-family homes. Townhouses and smaller, “starter” homes are more rare, resulting in a shrinking supply of housing accessible to young families.
“Neighborhoods are changing,” staff said. “Even without any intervention that will continue to change. New construction is either very large homes or smaller units in Metro corridors. Only 6% are three bedrooms or more, and that creates some tension as people seek to find housing for growing families.”
While affordable, mid-size units are in demand, the most lucrative options for developers are the higher-priced, luxury housing. Without some sort of intervention, staff said the neighborhoods will continue to become more expensive.
A shared definition for the term “missing middle housing” for Arlington
A set of policy options to support preservation of existing Missing Middle housing stock and production of new Missing Middle housing types for County Board consideration
Identification of additional considerations relating to the Comprehensive Plan and other County policies and practices to be further reviewed in support of the goals of this process
The ability for new housing type alternatives to be built that meet Arlington’s definition of ‘missing middle housing”, offering greater affordability and design that is complementary and compatible with the scale and style of their intended neighborhoods
Part of that framework also dealt with “locational factors” for missing-middle housing.
“Building more housing… where people shop and work and have easy access to transit is one of the few things we can do in a small community to lessen our carbon impact,” said Transportation Commission member Chris Yarie. “Really drive the pedal down on that a lot, please.”
Transportation Commission member Audrey Clement was more wary of the plan, saying that it calls to increase types of housing but says nothing about affordability or equity. Instead, Clement echoed concerns of some in Arlington that the plan is an effort to quietly curtail single-family zoning.
“This is about the densification of the county and further gentrification of the county,” Clement said. “Given that is implied in the goals, to implement such a plan would require upzoning. Therefore it is disingenuous to say this is not about upzoning because that’s precisely what would be required to increase housing in residential neighborhoods.”
Clement pointed to the Veitch Street home to be replaced by several townhouses, discussed earlier in that same meeting.
“We’re really replacing every million-dollar home with up to seven million-dollar homes on residential lots,” Clement said. “That will serve the purpose of densifying the county, but it won’t provide more affordable housing and it’s a misnomer to call this a Missing Middle plan.”
Clement’s concerns are echoed by Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future, a group “concerned about Arlington County’s accelerated population growth and density” and its effect on water infrastructure, schools and transportation systems.
Plans for the 1731 N. Veitch Street townhouses (photo via Arlington County)
Site map for the 1731 N. Veitch Street townhouses (photo via Arlington County)
1731 N Veitch Street (photo via Google Maps)
Plans to build seven new townhouses on N. Veitch Street in the Colonial Village are are moving forward, replacing a farmhouse built in 1920.
Seven townhouses would fill the parcel of land at 1731 N. Veitch Street, each four-stories tall. The new townhouses aren’t part of the Colonial Village development but are considered part of the Colonial Village neighborhood.
The homes are planned to face north and south with a 26-foot setback from the street. In the rear of each building will be a rooftop deck, a balcony on the second floor, and a two-car garage connected to the existing Colonial Village parking lot.
The plans were reviewed last night (Thursday) by the Transportation Commission, where most of the dissent on the project stemmed not from transportation issues, but preservation.
While not typically in the purview of the Transportation Commission, Commissioner Audrey Clement raised concerns about the historic nature of the building being replaced. The staff report notes that the existing single-family farmhouse on the property was constructed a century ago.
A staff report said the development did go to the HALRB in June, but only as an informational item to receive feedback that led to some redesigns. While the property is surrounded by Colonial Village, which is designated as a historic district, the property itself is not marked as historic and feedback from the HALRB focused on keeping the design compatible with other nearby historic properties.
The townhouses were approved in an 8-1 vote by the Transportation Commission, with Clement voting against the project. The project is scheduled to go to the Planning Commission on Monday, Feb. 10, before being considered by the County Board.
