The festival will also include food trucks, a pop-up beer and wine garden, and a visit from the Arlington Art Truck, according to its organizer, the Rosslyn Business Improvement District.
The focus of this year’s musical selections is art and music from the Gulf Coast, the BID said in a press release.
Attendees are encouraged to take the Metro to the Rosslyn station — a five-minute walk from the park — as parking at the festival will be limited.
Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.
There is no actual karate on the grounds of Coding Dojo, but the program does hope to help coders learn to chop through digital obstacles.
Coding Dojo is a boot camp for teaching coding with locations set up across the country. Bobby Bethea, Program Success Manager for Coding Dojo, said its new D.C. area location at Eastern Foundry coworking space (1100 Wilson Blvd) in Rosslyn is a relocation of an original location in Tysons.
“Arlington has always been on our radar,” Bethea said. “The idea to relocate the campus to Arlington was determined after a former student, now a staff member, developed an API which pulled the zip codes from existing applications submitted to Coding Dojo. Once pulled, the zip codes were organized to display a heat map.”
Bethea said the heat map showed that most of the applications were coming from Arlington, so when the lease expired, the school moved closer to the students.
Bethea also said the announcement of Amazon’s move to Arlington also played a role in the move; opening up a new market for Coding Dojo alumni.
“It did factor into our decision to move to Arlington because at the end of the day, our ability to help graduates find jobs is the most important aspect of our business,” Bethea said.
The Arlington location, like the others, teaches Python, MEAN, and C#/.NET. Bethea said the program is designed to be beginner-friendly and to fit with developers of various experience levels.
The 14-week program costs $13,495, though the company offers various payment plans, financing, and scholarships.
“Our dynamic curriculum was first developed in 2008 as an internal training program for small software engineering teams — the first in the industry,” Bethea said. “Ever since, we’ve constantly refined the curriculum and have trained thousands of students to either become developers or refine their skill sets. Today, we provide students with a veteran curriculum, that is proven to work as the most effective approach to training both experienced developers and students new to coding.”
Future Target store under construction in Ballston
The Waycroft under construction in Ballston in August
(Updated at 11:20 a.m.) Target recently filed building permits for its new Ballston location at 750 N. Glebe Road, but there’s still no word on an exact opening date.
The new 41,000+ square foot Target is part of The Waycroft, a towering mixed-use building at the west end of Ballston. The building was originally approved by the County Board in 2016 and construction is still underway at the project. The building is expected to be completed sometime in the first quarter of 2020, according to an employee at developer Saul Centers, Inc.
The building will also have 491 residential units with apartments ranging from studios to three-bedrooms.
A Silver Diner is also planned to be built at The Waycroft.
According to a spokesperson for Target:
I can confirm Target has plans to open a Ballston, VA store. We’re excited to bring an easy, convenient shopping experience to additional guests in the community with this new Target store. Located at Wilson Boulevard and North Glebe Road in the new development from Saul Centers, Inc, the store will be approximately 41,500 square feet. As we get closer to opening the store, we’ll have more specific details to share — including how the shopping experience will be tailored to serve local guests and the grand opening date.
The Arlington County Fire Department’s overtime crisis is having a ripple effect on other programs, leaving training and logistics to take a hit.
Between the 2016 and 2018 fiscal years, the department exceeded its overtime budget every year.
At a meeting yesterday (Thursday) at county government headquarters, County Auditor Chris Horton met with Arlington officials and ACFD staff to review the recent audit of the department’s chronic overtime usage and suggestions to fix it.
One area where all involved parties agreed was that the overtime was the main source of the department’s fiscal troubles.
“Overtime use in the fire department has caused budget management challenges in 2016-2018 fiscal years,” Horton said. “What we did here was to look and see if there was actual, clear evidence mathematically that it was overtime driving the overages in the budget. What we’re seeing is strongly indicative that the callback overtime — that is increasing the overruns with total personnel costs — is increasing the overruns with total department costs.”
There were several issues cited as contributing factors to the overtime overuse, but one of the main problems is insufficient staffing. According to the audit:
At the core of the budget management issues are staffing challenges ACFD experiences throughout the department, including significant attrition in ACFD Operations. ACFD has been operating with decreases in staffing that continue to result in an average loss of more than two employees per month. With the rigorous screening processes and training required for new recruits, it takes almost 12 months and costs almost $100,000 per recruit to recruit, hire and train firefighters… Therefore, ACFD continues to face struggles with deploying adequate staffing even with recent budget increases to fund additional recruit classes.
Horton and fire department officials explained that staffing is required to be maintained at certain levels, and if there aren’t enough staff on hand to meet those levels, off-duty firefighters are either called back or asked to stay past their shift to meet those staffing levels. This callback overtime — as opposed to discretionary overtime — has exceeded its budget every year the audit studied.
“It’s very difficult to be fully staffed in public safety,” said County Manager Mark Schwartz. “We have to call people back and they come back. It’s not a healthy cycle for anyone involved. Over the last three of four years, the things that haven’t been done are as much training — that’s the main thing — and logistics. The department tries to get in under budget overall but there are things that get lost in that process.”
The audit notes that cuts had to be made in expenditure categories such as training and equipment to cover overtime costs.
“To stay within our budget, sometimes we have to throttle back stuff that’s not mission-critical,” Capt. Ben O’Bryant, a spokesman for ACFD, told ARLnow. “Training we’d like to send four people to maybe we’d send three, or equipment that we’d like to put in service, maybe we hold back on that. Nothing that’s mission critical for delivery of services… but sometimes we have to adjust our activities. Anything required to provide services to the county, we get that, but sometimes we don’t send as many people to elective training as we’d like to or we hold off on getting equipment.”
We, The Pizza location under construction at 4201 Wilson Blvd.
We, The Pizza location under construction at 4201 Wilson Blvd.
We, The Pizza is still coming to the Ballston Exchange, but a little later than originally planned.
Signs had originally been up at 4201 Wilson Blvd saying the pizza chain would open sometime in fall 2018. But fall 2018 came and passed, and the construction is still underway at the location.
Micheline Mendelsohn, Deputy CEO for We, The Pizza’s parent company, Sunnyside Restaurant Group, said no exact date has been set but the company is now eyeing mid-to-late September for an opening.
We, The Pizza will also be joined by a new CorePower Yoga near Dunkin’ Donuts on the northside of Ballston Exchange.
Summer yoga session held outside the Ballston Exchange (photo via Facebook)
CorePower Yoga in the Ballston Exchange
CorePower Yoga in the Ballston Exchange
4040 Wilson Blvd, future home of VIDA Fitness, under construction
CorePower Yoga and VIDA Fitness aren’t open yet, but they’re offering free classes for anyone looking to get a little more limber in Ballston.
Today (Thursday), VIDA Fitness is offering a “Glow Up! Power Yoga Class” from 6-7 p.m. at the Ballston Freshfarm Market (901 N. Taylor Street). The VIDA Ballston website describes the class as an outdoor yoga class aimed at improving flexibility and reducing stress.
VIDA has been holding free fitness classes the first Thursday of every month since May, with rotating themes and topics. The next fitness event — Pinot and Pilates — is planned for Sept. 5. The free classes are scheduled to run through November.
VIDA is planning to open its new Ballston location in the still-under-construction 4040 Wilson Blvd tower The opening date has not been announced, but staff said VIDA is eyeing an early 2020 opening.
CorePower Yoga, meanwhile, is scheduled to open at Ballston Exchange on Thursday, August 22, and has also been holding a series of free yoga events ahead of its launch.
Next Friday, August 9, the yoga studio will host a sunset yoga event from 5:30-6:30 p.m at 4201 Wilson Blvd. The event is free and open to the public, though attendees are encouraged to bring their own mat and water. Another free yoga class is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 30.
Cheese-less bean burrito with a Baja Fresh Mountain Dew at Taco Bell
Sign outside the Taco Bell at 4923 Lee Highway
Taco Bell at 4923 Lee Highway
Drive-thru at Taco Bell at 4923 Lee Highway
The long-awaited resurrection of the Lee Highway Taco Bell is finally at hand.
The drive-thru Taco Bell next to the Kentucky Fried Chicken reopened today (Tuesday) at 4923 Lee Highway.
The restaurant shut down in September to be torn down and completely rebuilt. The new interior features new self-checkout stations, where staff were helping walk newcomers through the ordering process today. The self-checkout stations feature a wider range of options and customization than what’s featured on the display menus.
Despite little advertising of the reopening visible from the street, the rebuilt Taco Bell still had a steady stream of customers around lunchtime — most of whom were too busy with their meals to indulge interview requests.
Fira Jaya (left) and Kate Murphy (right) in Good Company Doughnuts and Cafe
Doughnuts for sale at Good Company
Godo Company Doughnuts and Cafe
Godo Company Doughnuts and Cafe
Doughnuts for sale at Good Company
(Updated 11:20 a.m.) Bad traffic on Glebe Road is partially to blame for the success of a new donut shop.
The veteran-owned Good Company Doughnuts & Cafe (672 N. Glebe Road) is celebrating a better-than-expected first few months after opening in April.
“We beat our expectations for the first 90 days,” said Kate Murphy, one of the owners of Good Company. “We’re at about 20 percent higher sales than we’d expected.”
“We sell about 400 doughnuts a day and 600 on weekends,” Murphy elaborated. “So that’s about 3,000-4,000 per week, not including orders.”
Murphy said the eatery has also seen higher levels of catering and wholesale accounts than they had anticipated. Plus, Good Company is getting good reviews: ranking 4.5 stars out of 5 on Yelp with 66 reviews.
It all adds up to a promising start for the business, despite being across the street from a big food-centric mall on the less-trodden side of N. Glebe Road, where otherrestaurants have struggled.
Many of the store customers are neighbors. Restaurants that rely heavily on workers as the customer base can tend to see declines on weekends, but Murphy said having neighbors as a reliable source of customers has given them boosted weekend sales.
Murphy once ran a donut shop in New Hampshire before she moved to Arlington. She said Sunday was the store’s least busy day, but at Good Company it’s the busiest.
The embrace from the nearby residential communities is partially because Good Company is one of the few new, independent restaurants in the area on the western side of Glebe Road.
“The neighborhood is really anxious to have something on this side of Glebe Road so they don’t have to play frogger with traffic,” Murphy said.
There are other Ballston-area donut and pastry shops like Dunkin Donuts and the new Sidekick and District Doughnuts in Ballston Quarter. Murphy said her store has had to adapt and incorporate some unique flavors and offerings, but for the most part the shop is the kind of classic donut-and-coffee shop the clientele grew up visiting.
“We’re more traditional,” Murphy said. “People still come for the classics… We roll the dough out and hand-cut each of them.”
Honey Dip — fancy talk for “glazed” — is the restaurant’s most popular item, followed by chocolate frosted with sprinkles. The latter is a particular hit with children.
But Murphy isn’t a donut-luddite. Maple bacon donuts are now a staple of the store, and while Murphy said her old shop had maple donuts, they wouldn’t have thought to add bacon.
One of the biggest challenges the restaurant faced early on was building a quality staff, which Murphy attributed to the low unemployment rate in the area. But now, Murphy said she has assembled a team that lives up to the store’s name and is more comfortable handing the reins over to catch a break during the day — critical given that the baking starts at midnight or earlier for the following day.
5th Road N. adjacent to Mosaic Park (map via Google Maps)
Overhaul work underway at Mosaic Park in Ballston
Overhaul work underway at Mosaic Park in Ballston
Overhaul work underway at Mosaic Park in Ballston
Utility work on the under-construction Mosaic Park will close a road in Ballston for the next three weeks.
County crews are closing 5th Road N. between N. Quincy and Pollard streets on weekdays from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. The closures kicked off yesterday (Monday) “to accommodate utility work” for the park and are set to wrap up on Friday, Aug. 16, according to an Arlington Alert.
The road is just south of the Gold’s Gym in Ballston, on the southern edge of Mosaic Park.
The utility work is the start of a long-planned effort to overhaul Mosaic Park, with a new playground, athletic court and water feature, among other upgrades. The park, once largely a grass field with some playground equipment, is currently fenced off and mostly mounds of dirt and construction equipment.
Concept rendering for Metropolitan Park Amazon HQ2 (Image via ZGF Architects)
Ground floor layout for Metropolitan Park Amazon offices (image via ZGF Architects)
Typical office layout for Metropolitan Park Amazon offices (image via ZGF Architects)
Amazon’s designs for a new headquarters need to do more to become true landmarks for the Pentagon City skyline, say members of an Arlington County planning committee.
At the first Site Plan Review Committee meeting for HQ2 last night (Monday), Amazon and ZGF Architects pitched the new 2.1 million square foot project in Pentagon City. The meeting, held in Shirlington, primarily focused on the design and architecture of the buildings, with other concerns about Amazon’s arrival saved for future meetings.
Amazon’s proposal involves the construction of two new office buildings at the corner of 15th Street S. and S. Eads Street — almost the perfect midway point between the Pentagon City and Crystal City Metro stations. The project is part of the first phase for Amazon’s permanent offices opening in Arlington.
Metropolitan Park Phases 6 and 7/8, as the project is dubbed in reports, consists of a pair of buildings with outward-facing retail and restaurants, and the Amazon headquarters portion of the building facing inwards towards a central park.
Brian Earle, the project architect with ZGF Architects, said the focus of the design was integrating the building into the neighborhood.
Design Evolution, Color Revolution
There are no rooftop signs planned for the project, and the exterior design is terracotta masonry and glass — an inoffensive design that will feel familiar to anyone who has seen the new Marymount buildings in Ballston or the Wharf in D.C., Amazon’s architects said.
The project drew the most praise where it stood out, and most of the criticism was focused on where the project seemed unambitious. Earle played up the modernist and art deco influences of other buildings on the block, like The Gramercy and The Bartlett, but to the untrained eye, they seem to have the same tan and dark glass facade.
“These are the tallest buildings in the area,” Planning Commissioner James Lantelme said. “It’s handsome, but I’m wondering if more can be done with the crown. Some buildings don’t have a formal crown but a distinctive top. This is just a continuation of the block going up. Is there anything that can be done to make it a centerpiece of this area?”
Committee members were mainly impressed with the polychrome glass planned for the building, with colors ranging from fuchsia to teal across the buildings.
“I’m always excited for colors,” said Planning Commissioner Nancy Iacomini. “It’s always been beige or grey. Rosslyn is a sea of grey and it’s just as bad as Ballston beige. I’m happy to see the terracotta as grey but a lot of polychrome.”
“People are getting tired of seeing the same beige building,” Lantelme agreed. “I’m hoping this is the start of a different design trend away from the beige. We may have an emergence of a colorful district.”
Retail Tensions
Plans for ground floor retail in the Amazon buildings was also a focus of some excitement — and concern. Brick and mortar retail is suffering, ironically in no small part due to the building’s primary tenant, and committee members expressed concern that the project could have too much ground-floor retail that it wouldn’t be able to fill.
Earle said the idea is to have a 50-50 split between restaurants and community-serving retail, like barber shops and pet stores, on the ground floor.
“One of Amazon’s strategies is they design the in-house food service [to serve] only 25 percent of the lunchtime traffic to encourage employees to go to other restaurants,” said Earle.
Commissioners also couldn’t resist little jabs at the Amazon-versus-retail tension, particularly the middling reception the company’s physical bookstores have gotten so far.
“A Busboys and Poets would be great there,” said Planning Commissioner Jane Siegel, “with their book store.”
The next meeting for the project is planned for September 23 at 7 p.m. in the Parks Operations Building (2700 S. Taylor Street).
The campaign started the day after the flood by a customer at Ayers Variety & Hardware (5853 Washington Blvd) with an initial aim of $25,000. As of today, the campaign has raised $77,231 out of a new $100,000 goal.
The first $70,000 collected for the campaign is planned to be released sometime this week, according to the GoFundMe page, with Ayers set to receive 41 percent of the proceeds while Westover Market and Beer Garden (5863 Washington Blvd) will receive 35 percent of the proceeds. The two businesses were the most heavily hit by the flooding.
Additionally, the Forest Inn is planned to receive 15 percent of the proceeds, while Grand Hunan Restaurant, Blue Groove Soundz, and Pete’s Barbershop will all receive 3 percent.
The GoFundMe page pledged that 100 percent of funds collected will be delivered directly to the merchants by cashier’s checks drawn on a Wells Fargo donation account.
On the surface, business as usual has resumed in the stores on the north side of the 5800 block of Washington Blvd. But all of the stores faced days without sales, and some are still dealing with the damages invisible from the street.
An employee at Ayers Variety & Hardware said the staff is still working to clear away flood-damaged items from the store’s basement, which held all of the store’s stock and was filled to the ceiling with water. Behind the store, rows of ruined merchandise are stacked near the trash disposal.
Kristy Peterkin, a manager at Ayers Variety & Hardware, estimated the storm caused at least $100,000 in damages to their merchandise.
Staff at Pete’s Barbershop said the store was without power — and without business — for five days.
The campaign is scheduled to end in August.
Meanwhile, a fundraiser for the Westover merchants is planned for 5-9 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 4 at Whitlow’s on Wilson (2854 Wilson Blvd) in Clarendon, according to manager Jon Williams.
Tickets to the Whitlow’s event are $20 at the door. Raffle prizes, food and drink specials, and live music planned for the occasion.
A fundraiser for the Westover residents is planned this coming Friday, Aug. 2, from 6-9 p.m. at the Westover Market and Beer Garden. The event will feature live music and a tap takeover by Founders Brewing.
