Author: Vernon Miles

‘The Freshman’ Launches Pop-Up in Crystal City Shops Ahead of Main Venue Opening

By Vernon Miles
1/4

The Freshman is, both figuratively and literally, a little underground.

The restaurant comes from Nick Freshman, who’s also behind Spider Kelly’s in Clarendon. The Freshman is not planned to fully launch in its permanent home at 2011 Crystal Drive until 2020, but in the meantime the eatery has had a quiet “soft launch” across the street in Crystal City Shops.

The pop-up officially opened this morning (Thursday), at the north end of the shops at 2102 Crystal Plaza, in the former Au Bon Pain space

“We’re in plans and permitting across the street,” said Freshman, “but that process… it takes a long time, even opening in a place that used to be a restaurant. You plan and design and it could take a year.”

The plans to open The Freshman got pushed further back as the building underwent both interior and exterior renovations. Freshman said he had the equipment and a team ready to go but nowhere to set them up.

Their main location and the former Au Bon Pain are both owned by JBG Smith, so when Freshman approached the company about the idea of opening a pop-up in the empty space, the property owner was on board.

The pop-up does not offer The Freshman’s full menu. Freshman estimated it was about 40 percent of what’s to come, with dinner and cocktails planned for the main site, but the pop-up currently serves up coffee and breakfast and lunch options that Freshman said the area seemed in desperate need of.

“There’s no point in doing it if we don’t do it well,” Freshman said. “The challenge is worth it because the community is dying for a viable alternative to [existing] breakfast and lunch options.”

The breakfast and lunch offerings include a tofu scramble with vegan cheese, plus sandwiches or salads for lunch. Prices range from $6 for an egg and cheese sandwich to $14 for a Reuben sandwich.

An unofficial “soft opening ” for the restaurant started on Monday, the same day that Arlington was hit with heavy storms from which the county is still struggling to recover.

“We’re underground, so for a while it looked like we might be underwater, but we stayed totally dry,” Freshman said. “We saw more of a surge [of customers] than expected. But even in dry weather, people use this corridor. If you don’t work or live here, you don’t know about it, but if you do it’s a critical part of your movement.”

Currently, Freshman says the pop-up is planned to stay open through the end of the year, but the stay is largely dependent on how fast or slow progress is across the street.

“Right now, we’re meeting people and listening,” Freshman said. “Every night, we’ve been making tweaks to the menu, but that’s normal opening stuff.”

Nearly $34,000 Raised in One Day for Storm Damaged Westover Stores

By Vernon Miles
1/9

(Updated at 3:45 p.m.) One day after a GoFundMe campaign launched to support Westover stores hit by Monday’s flooding, the fundraiser has passed its initial aim of $25,000 and has moved towards a new $100,000 goal.

Flash floods on Monday left stores on the north side of the 5800 block of Washington Blvd ankle-deep in water, with basements filled to the ceiling with water. Kristy Peterkin, a manager at Ayers Variety & Hardware, estimated the storm caused at least $100,000 in damages to the merchandise. Days after the storm, power still hasn’t been restored and most of the stores on the block remain closed.

As of 3:45 p.m., the GoFundMe campaign had raised more than $34,000 to help Ayers and Westover Market and Beer Garden, two stores that were particularly hard hit by the flooding.

According to the GoFundMe page:

Part of the Westover Shopping Center — Ayers Hardware, the Westover Beer Garden and other shops — was deluged. The businesses’s main levels and storage basements were inundated with water. These businesses are the heart and soul of the Westover community. I am hoping neighborhood residents and folks across Arlington County will contribute to this campaign to help the businesses cover cleanup costs, property repair costs, inventory damage costs and associated loss-of-business costs.

In the comments, donors shared their stories of shopping at Ayers or dining at Westover Market.

“The Beer Garden and Westover folks always took care of us, so let’s take care of them in their time of need,” one donor said.

The shops in Westover Village are still a long way from recovered. Power to the block was routed through the basements of Ayers and Westover Market, which means the flooding has left the entire row of businesses without power.

Ayers is half-lit by power running through a generator in the back. Lights are on at Westover Market but an employee at the store said they were still closed. The Italian Store, the spot furthest east and at the highest elevation on the block, is running on generator power.

Peterkin said nearby cafes and restaurants have been chipping in to make meals for the hardest-hit businesses. It’s been just one part of what Peterkin said was an amazing community response to their crisis.

Peterkin said Ayers was not in any way involved with creating or running the GoFundMe, and said the store would leave the distribution of the funds raised to the person who organized the campaign, noting that it was started after one of the store’s longtime customers who came in and asked permission to launch the fundraiser.

A comment on the GoFundMe said that the store would not be taking financial contributions, but Peterkin made it clear that was not the case. Others who didn’t want to support the store through GoFundMe have come by and dropped off a contribution in person.

“We’ll take all the help we can get,” Peterkin said.

People have volunteered to come and help clean, but growing risk of mold and mildew has meant anyone journeying down into the waterlogged basement needs a breathing mask in addition to a flashlight.

“An injury lawsuit would really be the last straw,” Peterkin said.

Even as they work to get the store back into working order, Peterkin said palettes of new merchandise ordered before the flood are still arriving, but with nowhere to put them with the basement out of commission.

Ayers faces at least $100,000 in losses just from damaged merchandise in the flooded basement, Peterkin said, adding that there will be additional expenses to repair the basement. The store is not protected by flood insurance.

“We didn’t think we’d need it in Arlington,” Peterkin said.

The Goddard School Plans a Pair of Childcare Facilities on Lee Highway

By Vernon Miles
1/2

The Goddard School — a private early-childhood education franchise — is planning to open a pair of linked childcare facilities 350 yards apart on Lee Highway.

A decision on permits for the facilities at 5328 and 5222 Lee Highway are docketed for the County Board meeting this Saturday, July 13.

The larger of the two projects is a childcare center and school at 5328 Lee Highway, which will host up to 208 children.

“The child care center will serve children ranging from two (2) to five (5) years of age, in addition to before/after school services for school age children ages five (5) to ten (10) years,” says a county staff report. “The applicant proposes to reconfigure the existing office space to create 14 classrooms, one of which can also operate as an indoor gymnasium, as well as several ancillary rooms, including a pantry, teacher resource room, and two offices.”

A portions of the building, which most recently served as an office building, had previously been approved as a child care facility in 2017, but the staff report noted that the proposed facility never opened. The property is attached by a breezeway to United Bank, which the report says is expected to continue operating alongside the school.

Meanwhile, the proposed childcare facility at 5222 Lee Highway will have up to 60 children, ranging from 6-weeks to 2-years-old. The building will replace the former Chevy Chase Bank and drive-thru, which has been vacant for two years.

Under local ordinance, the larger of the two facilities would be required to have 26 parking spaces, but only 18 are available in the parking lot behind the building. The staff report says The Goddard School is asking to have the additional parking be provided off-site at the 5222 Lee Highway location. That proposal has been met by concerns from neighbors.

“Yorktown Civic Association which is adjacent to the subject site, is in support of the proposal, however, has concerns regarding circulation and turning movement around the site,” the staff report says.

The report said pick-up and drop-off would occur from the parking area, accessible via two existing curb cuts, and staff recommended that the County Board find the circulation and parking issues sufficiently addressed.

If approved, the facilities would be the first locations for The Goddard School in Arlington.

Another childcare center — VINCI Early Learning School — has been proposed for 3508 Lee Highway and is also on Saturday’s County Board agenda. Consideration of that facility, however, is expected to be deferred until September “to allow the applicant additional time to meet with the community and address any concerns that they may have with the proposed use.”

Crystal City BID Pushes to Expand to Pentagon City and Potomac Yard

By Vernon Miles

Arlington County is considering a proposal to expand the boundaries of the Crystal City Business Improvement District to incorporate parts of Potomac Yard and Pentagon City, including Amazon’s permanent HQ2 campus.

At its meeting on Saturday, July 13, the County Board is expected to authorize an advertisement for a public hearing on Sept. 21 to discuss expansion of the BID’s coverage area to include 75 new commercial properties.

The BID was originally established in 2006 to improve the area’s marketability and attractiveness to the community in the wake of the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC) — which resulted in 4.2 million square feet of vacant office space and 17,000 lost jobs.

The BID sponsors activities and markets the area to potential tenants, and is in turn funded by a tax surcharge on commercial properties within its coverage area. The BID’s current budget is approximately $2.7 million, but the expansion is estimated to increase the budget by $1.7 million (an increase of 64 percent) to $4.4 million.

According to the staff report, expansion of the BID has been an ongoing priority as the organization works to shift the area’s image away from just government agency tenants. This culminated with the announcement in November that Amazon would be opening a new headquarters in the area.

Even prior to the arrival of Amazon, Crystal City had begun attracting more non-government tenants — including startups, nonprofits, co-working spaces and new retail. The vision and strategy to expand the boundaries of the BID has been revived not only due to new leadership at the [BID] but also upcoming infrastructure, transportation and planning projects expected to transform the nature of the business and residential community in this area.

The staff report noted that the expansion is part of a wider effort to treat Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard as one market — it was dubbed “National Landing” at the time of the Amazon announcement — rather than three separate ones.

Notably absent from the proposed new boundaries is the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City mall, which has “formally requested… not to be included in the proposed expansion.”

Adoption of the ordinance would require the BID to demonstrate 50 percent of greater support throughout the affected areas — evidence that the staff report noted was not currently available. The staff report notes that property owners and managers in the Potomac Yard portion of Arlington expressed concerns that BID would be unable to “fulfill various obligations of the Potomac Yard Property Owner’s Association (POA) site plan.”

Under the terms of the site plan, the POA must fund certain capital expenses and on-going maintenance of various improvements including maintenance of landscaped areas. In March 2019, County staff and the County Attorney’s Office advised [BID] that it should not take on the obligations of the Potomac Yard POA in order to receive support for the proposed BID expansion. Instead, [BID] should demonstrate to the Potomac Yard property owners the value of the other services it currently provides on behalf of the BID in the current and proposed expanded district.

If the BID cannot build the support it needs in Potomac Yard — as happened to a proposed BID in Alexandria in 2017 — the report said it could still be approved as an expansion into Pentagon City. Major property owners in Pentagon City, including Dweck Properties and JBG Smith, are supportive of the proposal.

The potential expansion, if approved, would be the first time any BID in Arlington enveloped new territory.

Map via Arlington County

Storm Destroys Portion of Historic ‘Segregation Wall’ in Hall’s Hill

By Vernon Miles
1/3

The wall once divided the white Waycroft-Woodlawn subdivision from the black Hall’s Hill neighborhood was partially destroyed by this morning’s storm and flooding.

A section of brick wall, which was first constructed in the 1930s to close off the segregated neighborhood, collapsed amid fast-moving floodwaters.

Video showed the floodwaters rushing past the wall and into a garden below.

A nearby marker tells the history of the wall. Much of the wall was destroyed in 1966 when Arlington County purchased nearby properties and dismantled sections of it.

Nearby residents had mixed feelings on the wall’s destruction.

“It should have been knocked down years ago,” said Herb Ramos, who lived across the street from the wall. “They put up the marker, they should have gotten rid of the wall and removed the eyesore.”

But others said they were happy to see school children brought over in recent years to see the first-hand evidence of segregation in the county and were sorry to see that history get washed away.

“We need to remember the past so as not to repeat it,” said Cait, another neighbor. “It was a historic site for a reason. We need to preserve the memory of things the African-American neighborhood went through. It’s not the most beautiful wall, but we need to face that ugliness.”

Hat tip to @tedbloss

Flooding and Power Outage Force Westover Stores to Close

By Vernon Miles
1/8

Update at 11:05 a.m. — Most businesses along the north side of Washington Blvd in Westover are still closed following Monday’s flooding. Ayers hardware is open in a limited capacity. 

Earlier: This morning’s storms and flooding has left stores along the north side of Washington Blvd in Westover Village without power — and some facing extensive damages.

Businesses along the 5800 block of Washington Blvd, from Westover Market (5863 Washington Blvd) to The Italian Store (5837 Washington Blvd), were closed as of 2 p.m. All of the properties were without power and several were flooded.

Westover Market and the Ayers Variety & Hardware at the west end of the block were at two of the lowest points of the slope. At Westover Market and Beer Garden, workers moved tables and soaked beer crates out of the store and into the rain, occasionally with the assistance of people passing by.

“I came down to get a keg and stuff was just floating away,” said Joseph Turner, a manager at Westover Market. “We’re trying to clean and open as soon as possible, but there needs to be fire department and health inspections.”

Turner watched as people carried out soaked boxes from the store and set them into stacks of rubbish.

“I’m just speechless,” Turner said.

Video posted earlier today shows the market flooded and fast-moving water rushing through the outdoor beer garden, damaging the fence and sweeping away picnic tables.

At Ayers Variety & Hardware, water in the storefront was ankle deep, but the real damage took place below — the basement, where the business stores merchandise, was completely flooded. Kristy Peterkin, a manager at the store and daughter of owner Ronald Kaplan, said that staff had been running generators to pump water out of the basement — but then the power cut out.

“We’ve seen nothing like this since 1977,” Peterkin said. “This is catastrophic.”

Peterkin said employees haven’t been able to access the basement to examine the impact but estimated that there would be at least $100,000 in damages.

The Forest Inn, Toby’s Ice Cream, and Rite Aid were all closed and empty. The post office west and slightly uphill from Westover Market was still accepting drop-offs as of 2 p.m., but said they would soon be closing.

At Pete’s Barber Shop, the staff cleared away waterlogged mats but were otherwise sitting around, waiting for power to come back.

The Italian Store on the end has no basement and fared a little better than its neighbors. Owner Rob Tramonte said they were working with contractors to get a generator running, to allow the business to open again soon or at least keep the food from spoiling. Tramonte noted that his Lyon Village location remains open, despite flooding at the nearby intersection of Lee Highway and N. Kirkwood Road.

Jeremy Slayton, a communications specialist for Dominion Energy, said power was estimated to be back on by tonight, though it’s unclear whether power will be able to be restored before the floodwaters could be pumped out. Store owners said they were told it could be a week before utilities are back online.

Ashley Hopko contributed to this story

Arlington Startup Develops Easy-to-Read Cybersecurity Scorecard

By Vernon Miles

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.

Fueled by a recent investment, Courthouse-based startup DivvyCloud unveiled a new suite of features to help identify potential cybersecurity weak spots at a glance

The most high profile of the new features is a new “heat map” scorecard to help companies visualize where their cybersecurity defenses are strongest and where they are most vulnerable.

According to a blog post:

This new feature delivers a visual representation of risk aligned with regulatory standards, industry standards, or your own corporate standards; through an interactive heat map.

With fast paced changes in infrastructure, and the need to have flexibility for deployments into cloud platforms, it has become increasingly challenging to remaining compliant to industry standards. DivvyCloud’s Compliance Scorecard helps you audit compliance and identify risks in your cloud environment in a simple, transparent way.

The accounts are listed on the y-axis, while insights — specific behaviors, conditions or characteristics of cybersecurity — are listed along the x-axis. Accounts with less than 85 percent compliance to security standards are listed in red.

In the sample scorecard above, “Bob” has stale Application Program Interface credentials — coding that allows communication between two applications — meaning Bob has access to a program but his credentials to do so may be out of date.

The feature is designed to assist teams, like auditors or security management, in identifying areas where there are potential gaps in cybersecurity coverage. The scorecard can also recommend guidance for potential problems and direct the viewer to the relevant resources.

Other improvements include a new threat detection system that utilizes machine learning and anomaly detection technologies. DivvyCloud listed cryptocurrency mining, credential compromise behavior, and calls from known malicious IPs as potential threats the technology helps to identify.

DivvyCloud recently announced that it had achieved $19 million in funding in a recent growth round, bringing the total capital raised to $29 million.

Sloppy Mama’s Now Open on Lee Highway

By Vernon Miles

Sloppy Mama’s Barbeque is now open at 5731 Lee Highway.

The location is the first full bricks-and-mortar restaurant for the popular D.C. food truck. The barbecue joint does have an outlet in the Ballston Quarter Market food hall, but co-owner Joe Neuman told ARLnow the Lee Highway restaurant handles much of the cooking for the Ballston Quarter location.

The Lee Highway restaurant also offers a wider array of barbecue options not available in the Ballston Quarter location or the food truck due to size constraints. So if you’re interested in a full slab of cooked meat, the North Arlington eatery is the Sloppy Mama’s to go to.

The restaurant is open from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. today (Friday) and Saturday, and from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sunday, then will be closed on Monday to review the first few days and make some final tweaks, Neuman said. The restaurant was also open on the Fourth of July, and said via Facebook that it was “crushed” by crowds of customers.

Come for the bbq stay for the Mrs Pac-Man…. In case you didn’t hear we opened the door at 5731 Lee Hwy yesterday and…

Posted by Sloppy Mama's BBQ on Friday, July 5, 2019

“Thanks to all the friends, family and loyal Sloppy Mama’s BBQ lovers out there that have helped us get here we hope to see you sometime soon for some proper BBQ,” the company said in a press release.

Inside the Heroic — and Notorious — History of Chain Bridge

By Vernon Miles
1/9

Today, Chain Bridge is a sleepy three-lane crossing between Virginia and D.C., but the bridge and its predecessors have played a prominent — if curious — role in the nation’s history.

“Most modern-day Arlington commuters who use Chain Bridge in their daily trek to and from the District would be astonished to learn how prominent the area at Pimmit Run at the Virginia end of the bridge was in the early days of our fledgling country,” Jim Fearson wrote in his “Chain Bridge: A History of the Bridge and Its Surrounding Territory from 1608-1991.”

Long before ferries ran from Virginia to the budding village of Georgetown, there was reportedly an American Indian village at the mouth of the Pimmit Run near Chain Bridge. It was also the furthest point up the river reached by explorer and Disney hero John Smith on his 1608 journey up the Potomac.

A town was planned in 1772 on 100 acres of land on the Virginia side of where the bridge is today. It was to be named Philee after Philip Ludwell Lee, the owner, but the town never materialized.

After the American Revolution, the removal of restraints on trade between states led to an increase in traffic across the Potomac and made a bridge necessary. The first bridge, built in 1797, was tolled — from 3 cents for pedestrians to 25-50 cents for horses and wagons — but ultimately collapsed in 1804 under the weight of a heavy load of cattle.

Another succession of bridges appeared in the 10 years that followed, including a short-lived, single-span suspension bridge from which the bridge derived the name it still holds today.

It was across one of these bridges that, on Aug. 2, 1814, the Declaration of Independence and other national relics were smuggled out of Washington, D.C. during the burning of Washington. They were reportedly hidden in an unoccupied grist-mill on the Virginia side of the river, according to documents in Arlington’s Center for Local History.

Later that month, the papers were moved to Leesburg, where they remained until being brought back to the city following the departure of the British navy.

The Virginia side of the bridge was also a popular dueling ground in the early 1800s. A historical marker commemorates the spot where a duel between Secretary of State Henry Clay and Senator John Randolph took place at the Virginia side of the bridge.

Control of the bridge was critical during the Civil War, during which a Union outpost was established on the Virginia side. After the war, the foundations of the outpost would be used as the basis for a casino, beginning the criminal descent of the Virginia side of the Potomac.

During the prohibition era, Fearson said the Virginia side of the bridge became something of a red-light district.

“Local lore had it that the tavern at the end of the bridge was a drop-off point for rum-runners during prohibition,” Fearson said in his history of Chain Bridge. “Supposedly they came up the river and put into Pimmit Run which joins the river directly behind the tavern.”

The bridge was rebuilt a few times throughout the mid-1800s, but by the 1920s heavy auto and truck traffic was starting to put a strain on a bridge built for carriages. Severe weight and speed limits were put into place. Eventually, the strain became too much. Following a flood, in 1939 the bridge as it mostly exists today was built on top of stone piers constructed for the 1850 bridge.

The last building at the Virginia side of the bridge was a service station, which last appeared in a 1955 Arlington County directory. In the early 1980s, the deck of the bridge was rebuilt to increase the width of the roadway by 10 feet, creating the final form of the bridge that is there today.

“A walking trip along the banks of Pimmit Run reveals little of what was there; a few possible foundation stones near the bridge, the early abutment,” Fearson said. “Further upstream the abutment of an early bridge that used to carry Glebe Road over the Pimmit, a large depression and stones that may have been a building site… nothing of substance to indicate more than 200 years of man’s involvement.”

Photo [1, 2] via Wikipedia

VDOT Plans Meeting Next Week About I-66 Widening Project

By Vernon Miles
1/2

(Updated at 10:50 a.m.) A meeting is planned for Wednesday, July 10 in Arlington to provide an update on the I-66 widening project.

Work is underway to add a third travel lane to eastbound I-66 between the Dulles Connector Road and Fairfax Drive, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) website.

The meeting, scheduled from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Yorktown High School (5200 Yorktown Blvd), will discuss a planned noise wall replacement, among other topics:

Work will begin in the coming months to add and replace noise walls in many locations along the project corridor as well as build a new ramp connection between two existing ramps at Route 7 to allow direct access from eastbound I-66 to the West Falls Church Metro Station. The open house will include a presentation and opportunity for attendees to view plans and talk with project team staff.

VDOT had previously announced plans to replace deteriorating sound walls along I-66 in Arlington as part of the widening project. A report in January noted that at least three segments of the wall were in a state of disrepair.

Photo (1) courtesy Del. Patrick Hope/Twitter, (2) via VDOT

Naked Lunch Closed on Lee Highway

By Vernon Miles
1/2

Naked Lunch, an organic vegetarian and vegan eatery attached to the MOM’s Organic Market at 1901 N. Veitch Street, has closed.

According to staff at the grocery store, the location — along car-oriented Lee Highway, a long walk from Courthouse — meant that Naked Lunch never got the kind of traffic it needed and the restaurant closed last Monday, June 24.

The signs on the storefront have been taken down and through the window, the last of the kitchen supplies can be seen being packed into boxes.

Naked Lunch opened on Lee Highway with MOM’s Organic Market in 2015. The restaurant served salads, soup bowls, sandwiches and more, along with organic juices.

The next closest Naked Lunch locations are at 3831 Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria’s Arlandria neighborhood or 8298 Glass Alley in Fairfax’s Mosaic District.

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