Two weeks ago ARLnow.com launched a new website experience for users of smartphones and tablets.
This responsive website design allows mobile users to easily read our articles without having to zoom in and out. It also reduces mobile load times for readers.
While we kept key features on mobile, like our swipe-able photo galleries and Disqus comments section, mobile users may find it a bit more difficult to navigate to some of our pages — like our event calendar or real estate listings — which are now accessible via a mobile menu (button, top right).
Also, in the interest of faster load times and quicker navigation, the homepage now only displays excerpts from articles instead of the articles themselves with photos and full text. Some tablet users have told us they prefer seeing the full homepage.
What do you think? If you’ve checked us out on mobile in the past two weeks, please let us know what you think of the experience below. Also, please use the comments to offer any specific suggestions or requests you might have regarding mobile functionality.
Little Change to Office Vacancy Rate — There was little change to Arlington’s high office vacancy rate in the second quarter of 2015, compared to one year prior. On a neighborhood level, the vacancy rate was up significantly in the Clarendon and Courthouse area but down in Virginia Square. [InsideNova]
Metro Offers Credits for Friday Mess — Metro is issuing a SmarTrip credit to riders who travelled on the Blue, Orange or Silver lines between 5 a.m. and 7 p.m. The credit is being issued automatically, as an apology for major delays caused by a track power issue near the East Falls Church station, among other Metro snafus last week. [WMATA]
Move-In Date Delayed for New Apartments — The move-in date for the new Verde Pointe apartments on Lee Highway has been delayed. Originally planned for Aug. 1, the building opening is now reportedly expected to take place within three weeks. Would-be residents are being told that building safety inspections are still taking place. [NBC Washington]
Dems Move Chili Cookoff — The annual Labor Day chili cookoff organized by the Arlington County Democratic Committee has been moved this year. The event will be held at the Barcroft Community House (800 S. Buchanan Street) rather than the usual venue of the Lyon Park Community Center, which is in the midst of renovations. [InsideNova]
S. George Mason Dr. is closed off starting at S. Columbus Street due to downed wires.
As of 4:30 this afternoon, multiple power lines were down, including one that stretched across S. George Mason. Residents were standing outside their homes watching crews work to restore power.
Traffic lights at S. Columbus Streets were also dark due to the power outage.
As of press time, the cause of the downed wires had not been determined. Dominion Electric is currently reporting that 50 customers are out of power in the area due to a broken pole.
The company predicts power will be restored between 7-9 p.m. tonight.
Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department (Courtesy of Arthur and Judy Branch)
Courtesy of Arlington County Fire Department
Courtesy of Arlington County Fire Department
(Updated at 5:15 p.m.) The Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department was no stranger to challenges.
The first All-African American volunteer fire department in Arlington faced segregation and limited equipment for almost 40 years, according to a history of Fire Station 8 by Arlington Public Library.
The chronological history of the station was published in the middle of a debate between local residents and county government over its proposal to relocate the station farther north to Old Dominion Drive, by Marymount University.
“My neighbors look at that fire station as the heart, the hub, the star on the tree, whatever you want to say,” community member Jim Derrig said at a July 30 meeting. “And what we’re trying to say is you can’t replace the heart with a pacemaker or a bandaid. You have to replace a heart with a heart.”
The county says relocation is necessary for the Arlington County Fire Department to meet their response time goal of four to six minutes countywide.
“We are focused on life saving. That is our mission,” former Arlington County Fire Chief Jim Schwartz said in a county-produced video.
While this would not be the first time the fire station moved, — the Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department was previously housed in smaller fire stations on Lee Highway and N. Culpepper Street in the 1930s — relocation would mean that it would no longer be in the Hall’s Hill community.
Hall’s Hill is a historically African-American community, once the home of freed slaves and separated from the rest of the county by a fence. In 1918, the members of the community formed the Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department with one 60-gallon chemical tank that six men would have to pull along muddy and unpaved roads, according to the library.
When Arlington County was formally established two years later, the county excluded the Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department from the Arlington County Fireman’s Association and did not give the department monthly pay for professional firefighters.
The VFD, which played a central part in the community, slowly built up its fleet of fire trucks and built a station first on Lee Highway in 1927 and then 2209 N. Culpepper Street in 1934. The 1934 fire house also had a basement for a community center.
After the fire department was integrated, it moved to its current home at 4845 Lee Highway and officially opened on June 17, 1963 with 17 paid firefighters. The Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department owned the deed to one of the pieces of land that went into the new station, while the county owned the others.
From today through this Sunday (Aug. 9), Virginia residents will be able to make some purchases tax-free.
Virginians are getting a break from the sales tax this weekend courtesy of Virginia’s General Assembly, which combined three existing sales tax holidays into one longer Tax-Free Weekend this year, according to the Virginia Department of Taxation.
Included in the list of exemptions are back-to-school staples like backpacks, calculators, flash drives and composition notebooks, as well as a variety of sports and recreational equipment.
For items that do not qualify for the sales tax exemption, store owners may still offer them as tax-free by choosing to have the store absorb the cost of the sales tax on behalf of the consumer.
More information about the sales tax holiday for both consumers and retailers can be found at the Department of Taxation’s website.
The Arlington County Police Department is looking for a man suspected of trying to sexually assault a woman on the W&OD trail last weekend.
The victim was running on the Glencarlyn Park area of the W&OD trail when the suspect allegedly grabbed her from behind and threw her to the ground. The suspect tried to cover her mouth with his hand, but she was able to scream, causing the suspect to flee, police say.
The woman worked with a sketch artist to provide a sketch of the suspect. He is described as “a dark skinned Hispanic male between 20-30 years old, approximately 5’6″ tall, weighing 140 pounds,” according to police. At the time, he was wearing long, baggy gray shorts and was not wearing a shirt.
Anyone with information can contact Detective K. Bercovicz at [email protected] or 703-228-4235. Those wishing to stay anonymous can call the Arlington County Crime Solvers at 866-411-TIPS (8477).
The attempted sexual assault on the W&OD trail was the first of two such incidents in Arlington that weekend. A woman was also grabbed and thrown to the ground while she walked home near the intersection of N. Thomas Street and N. Pershing Street in Buckingham. A sketch has not been released for the suspect.
Last week police released a sketch of a suspect in another sexual assault incident near Courthouse.
Kitchen Fire at Zaika — A kitchen fire closed Zaika restaurant at Market Common Clarendon last night. Firefighters had to ventilate smoke from the Indian restaurant after quickly extinguishing the small blaze. [Twitter]
Nude Glebe Road Runner Identified — Police say the man arrested for running naked along Glebe Road while screaming at passing cars is Timothy Lowe. Lowe was previously arrested for doing pushups in the buff, in the middle of a street in the Nauck neighborhood. He also spoke out against alleged police harassment at a community forum last year. Police found a “large quantity of crack” after Lowe was arrested yesterday, said Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck.
History of Arlington View Co-op to Be Preserved — Arlington County is working on a plan to help preserve the history of the George Washington Carver Cooperative Homes in the Arlington View neighborhood. The circa-1945 cooperative is set to be razed to make way for a new townhouse development after residents agreed to sell it to developer Craftmark Homes. [InsideNova]
East Falls Church Profiled — The Washington Post profiles the real estate market of East Falls Church, which will be undergoing some changes as the area around the Metro station eventually develops into a “neighborhood center district” over the next couple of decades. [Washington Post]
New APS Teachers Hired — Arlington Public Schools has hired 325 new teachers this summer to keep up with rising enrollments and staff retirements. [InsideNova]
It is another morning of big problems for Metrorail commuters.
Just as Metro was recovering from yesterday’s derailment in D.C., a train became stranded between the East Falls Church and West Falls Church stations around 6 a.m. due to a reported power problem.
Arlington firefighters helped to unload passengers, who walked down the tracks to the East Falls Church station.
Orange and Silver Line service was suspended between the two station for more than an hour. Trains are now single-tracking between the two stations, with delays in both directions. The train that lost power is still sitting helplessly on the track.
Orange and Silver Line commuters weren’t the only ones affected by Metro problems this morning. A Yellow Line train suffered a reported brake problem at National Airport around 7:30 a.m. The train was offloaded and taken out of service, but not before causing delays.
Comedian Kevin Hart ran an impromptu 5K through part of Arlington this morning.
The funnyman is in town as part of his “What Now” standup tour, which is at Verizon Center for a second performance tonight.
Hart organized the 5K with sponsor Nike and quickly gathered about 1,500 participants, who began running just past 7:30 a.m.
The route took runners from Georgetown, over the Key Bridge, through a small slice of Rosslyn, before getting on the Mt. Vernon Trail and taking the Roosevelt Bridge back to D.C.
Arlington County Police were reportedly only made aware of the 5K while it was going on.
A man stripped down and was running naked down the middle of S. Glebe Road this morning before being taken into custody by Arlington County police.
The incident happened around 10:30 a.m., on Glebe near 20th Street S.
Police say they initially received several calls for a man in his 20s or early 30s jumping on the hoods of cars in the area. Then, they received the first report of a naked man in the middle of S. Glebe Road yelling at passing cars.
The man was taken into custody without incident after police arrived on scene. His clothes were found in the median, according to ACPD spokesman Dustin Sternbeck.
The arrest was witnessed by numerous drivers. The man, reported to be a habitual PCP user, was transported to Virginia Hospital Center “for observation.”
Just saw #arlingtonvapd apprehend and cuff a naked man on south glebe road on the way home. Kinda crazy! @ARLnowDOTcom
Update at 9:35 a.m. — ART buses are delayed too, Arlington County says, due to Metro-related traffic delays.
If you were commuting from Arlington to D.C. today, or vice versa, chances seem pretty good that your commute was awful.
Major delays were reported on Metro’s Orange, Blue and Silver lines, after service was suspended through much of downtown D.C. due to a derailed non-passenger train.
As if the Metro chaos wasn’t bad enough, a couple of crashes and perhaps an influx of would-be Metrorail riders has turned the length of I-395 into a virtual parking lot, with slow-moving traffic from the District to Springfield.
Also, Route 50 is reported to be backed up to Pershing Drive.
So, if you commute to or from D.C., just how bad was it this morning?
Two weeks ago ARLnow.com launched a new website experience for users of smartphones and tablets.
