News | ARLnow.com

Washington-Lee Turf Field to be Replaced

Published April 14, 2015 at 3:30PM | Updated April 14, 2015 at 9:29PM

(Updated at 4:00 p.m.) The 10-year-old synthetic turf field at Washington-Lee High School is worn beyond repair and needs to be replaced, according to Arlington’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

The field has been subject to heavy, year-round use by students, recreational sports leagues and in pickup games for a decade, according to a staff report. This Saturday, the Arlington County Board will vote on a contract to replace the field for $609,000, the final piece of the $1.6 million project.

If the contract is approved, the current synthetic turf field will be torn up starting the week of June 7, and construction would wrap up by the first week of August, just in time for the Generals’ sports teams to begin preseason practice.

The project will consist of tearing up the existing turf, but preserving the drainage system underneath. Staff said the existing turf surface and rubber layer will be recycled “to the greatest extent possible.”

Donnellan Recommends Denying Wilson School’s Historic Designation

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 14, 2015 at 11:30AM

The Wilson School in Rosslyn is looking less and less likely to receive a historic district designation that would help it be preserved.

The final decision will be made by the Arlington County Board at its meeting this Saturday, and if the Board follows County Manager Barbara Donnellan’s recommendation, it will reject the school’s historic district status.

The Wilson School was built in 1910, but has since been renovated. Preservations are hoping the County Board will designate it as a local historic district, which would require pieces of the building be preserved before it is bulldozed to make way for a new, 775-seat building to house the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program.

The Arlington School Board and Planning Commission have each recommended against the historic designation, citing cost and time concerns. The new school building is budgeted for $80.2 million and scheduled to open by September 2019.

The building, constructed in 1910 as the Fort Myer Heights school, is the oldest school structure in the county still owned by Arlington Public Schools, and the second-oldest school building overall, behind the Hume School (which now serves as the Arlington Historical Society museum).

The Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board unanimously recommended the school be granted historic district status. According to county staff, it meets six of the 11 criteria needed for historic status, when it only needs to meet two to be eligible. However, staff wrote in its report to the Board, that doesn’t mean it should be granted said status.

“Consideration of a property for local historic district designation is not based solely on the historical and/or architectural merits of the historic resource,” the report states. “There are multiple competing County interests and priorities that must be accomplished within the limited constraints of the existing site, including a larger school, athletic fields, and open space. Coupled with these site demands, the preservation of the historic Wilson School is not considered a viable alternative.”

Despite the staff’s findings — and the county’s growing need for school space — Preservation Arlington is hoping to sway the County Board to change course and grant the historic status.

“Preservation Arlington is disappointed in the staff recommendation to deny the designation,” the organization wrote on its website. “Wilson School is the oldest continuously operating school building still owned by the County. The history of the school is directly connected to our early years as a growing community and a time when we were visited by the President of the United States, which still happens today.”

If the County Board does deny the historic status, staff and the HALRB recommend exploring “the most appropriate ways to memorialize and commemorate the historical and community value of the Wilson School in the construction of a new school facility on the existing site.”

Preservation Arlington is encouraging those in favor of preserving the school to rally at the County Board meeting on Saturday, at 8:30 a.m., in the County Board room on the third floor of 2100 Clarendon Blvd.

Arlington Confident Despite Gloomy Economic Indicators

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 14, 2015 at 10:15AM | Updated April 14, 2015 at 2:23PM

(Updated at 2:20 p.m.) Arlington’s vacancy rate continues to rise, wages and jobs are down, but new Arlington Economic Development Director Victor Hoskins is brimming with optimism.

Hoskins started his new position 10 weeks ago, succeeding the late Terry Holzheimer, who helmed AED for nine years. Hoskins said Arlington didn’t necessarily do anything wrong under Holzheimer and interim director Cindy Richmond, but it could have done more to position itself for the future. The energetic Hoskins decided to quote Wayne Gretzky to make his point.

“You’ve got to be able to go where the puck is going,” he said. “Arlington didn’t do that.”

Because Arlington’s economic development plan was too stagnant and dependent on the federal government, “the bottom dropped out” of the commercial real estate market when the Base Realignment and Closure Act left 3 million square feet of office space vacant. That would leave any jurisdiction in a lurch, but Arlington has yet to recover.

In the latest AED economic indicator report, Rosslyn is reported at 28.7 percent vacant, up from 24.9 percent last year. Ballston is at 19.7 percent, up from 14.7 percent last year. The county as a whole is now at 20.5 percent vacant, up from 19.3 percent last year. The only sector that gained commercial tenants was Crystal City, whose vacancy rate dropped from 23.6 percent to 23.

According to AED Deputy Director Alex Iams, the Department of Defense didn’t just leave Arlington, it left some of the hardest buildings to fill in Arlington.

“The average vintage year of the office space left by BRAC is 1974,” he said. “The buildings that are less than 10 percent vacant are 98 percent occupied. In the buildings with more than 10 percent vacancy is where the bulk of the vacancy lives, about 8.6 million square feet.”

Arlington isn’t just losing office space, it’s losing office workers, too. Total employees in the county were down 1.4 percent in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous year, according to the Virginia Employment Commission; a net loss of 1,841 jobs. Wages also dropped slightly, from a weekly salary of $1,520 in 2013 to $1,511 last year.

Despite these foreboding economic indicators, optimism is high around AED. There are more than 10 million square feet of office space in the development pipeline, including almost 600,000 currently under construction. Arlington’s office costs are cheaper than D.C. and comparable to the other inner suburbs, an AED study found, and the whole region is struggling to gain new tenants to make up for BRAC and sequestration losses.

But Hoskins is presenting a plan he calls “The Way Forward” to drag the county out of its commercial real estate doldrums. It includes an aggressive — and expensive — rededication to economic development. Hoskins’ goal: fill 4.5 million square feet of office space in the next three years.

“You have to think a different way or you will lose,” he said. “We are going after the market. We can’t sit here and wait for the market.”

He has three solutions, which he calls a 100 percent solution, a 50 percent solution and a 25 percent solution. The 100 percent solution includes an additional $3.95 million for economic development every year for the next three years, including a $1.4 million incentive fund and $1.2 million for business development, the equivalent of 10 new jobs.

AED forecasts the return on investment from this solution to be 4,000 jobs a year, and $20.6 million in tax revenue.

At 50 percent, Arlington would invest $1.45 million, not offer any incentive fund, instead focusing the money on business development, marketing and tourism promotion.

Hoskins has already made AED more aggressive. He sent Arlington’s first team to the annual SxSW conference in Austin, Texas, targeting the major tech companies and enticing them to move to Arlington. AED hosted a delegation from China looking to invest in the county, and he’s brashly confident about its possibilities.

“We’ll probably get 20 deals out of that,” he said.

Hoskins was brought in after serving as the head of economic development in Washington, D.C., where he brokered deals with international companies and tech incubators. He worked for less than a year as the economic development chief in Prince George’s County before being hired at the county, and he has interpreted his mission to change the way Arlington does business.

“The institution has to make a decision to change,” he said. “I believe changes are on the way. I have not gone to a place that did not change. That’s what I bring, but change is bumpy. You’re going to have conflict just because you are trying to get better, and that’s okay.

“We were standing still for a while,” he added. “Now we’re going forward.”

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Published April 14, 2015 at 8:55AM | Updated June 29, 2018 at 2:54PM

New Metro Train Debuts on Blue Line — Metro’s new 7000-series train made its public debut on the Blue Line this morning. Riders welcomed the next-generation rail cars with generally positive tweets. [Storify, Twitter]

Home Prices, Sales Rise — The volume of home sales in Arlington in March was 219, which is up 25 percent year-over-year. Housing sale prices also rose. The average sale price of all residential properties was up 1.3 percent to $628,483. The average price of single-family homes sold in March, meanwhile, was $919,858. [InsideNova]

Arlington to Employ Ebola Monitor — The Arlington County Board this weekend is expected to approve the acceptance of a $30,970 state grant earmarked for Ebola monitoring. “Grant funds will support ongoing monitoring and response coordination efforts for travelers returning from Ebola affected countries,” according to the staff report. “The funding supports temporary employment of a Health District Monitoring Coordinator ($29,400) and related office supplies ($1,570).” [Arlington County]

W-L Grad Dies — A student who graduated at the top of his Washington-Lee High School class in 2013 has been found dead after taking his own life. The student was a sophomore at William & Mary and was active in various theater groups. [William & Mary]

Should Metro Be Arlington’s Plan for Columbia Pike?

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 13, 2015 at 12:15PM | Updated April 13, 2015 at 12:52PM

As Arlington grapples with the cloudy future of transit on Columbia Pike, in the wake of the streetcar line’s cancellation, one question has been largely absent: Is Metro the answer?

The Pike, Pentagon City and Crystal City together are projected to account for 65 percent of the county’s population growth and 44 percent of its job growth in the next three decades, and Arlington doesn’t have a long-term transit plan in place for the Pike to accommodate that growth. So far, much of the discussion has revolved around bigger and better buses.

But there is another option, a much bigger, bolder and pricier option than even the streetcar: taking advantage of an existing stub tunnel at the Pentagon Metro station and building a new Metrorail line under Columbia Pike. Such a line was envisioned as a likely expansion by the Metrorail system’s original planners in the 1960s.

When the proposal for Arlington’s short-term plan for the former-streetcar corridor comes before the Arlington County Board next year, two of the five members of the Board will be newly elected, replacing the retiring Board chair and vice chair, Mary Hynes and Walter Tejada.

So far, seven candidates have declared they’re running for the two open seats: Democrats Christian Dorsey, Peter Fallon, Katie Cristol, Andrew Schneider, James Lander and Bruce Wiljanen, and independent Audrey Clement. Will this new crop of Arlington leaders revive the idea of Metro as long-term a solution for the Pike’s growth?

Dorsey tells ARLnow.com that he’s open to Metrorail as part of a more holistic discussion of the Pike’s transportation future.

“We haven’t undergone a process to really do that in a sufficient way, where we’ve looked at a variety of transit options that are possible — not feasible, but possible — and determining whether or not that matches long-range projections,” he told ARLnow.com. “I absolutely think that’s something that needs to be done in consultation with regional partners on heavy rail.”

The county is still planning to install 23 more transit stations along Columbia Pike, for a total of $12.4 million — redesigned to cost far less than the Walter Reed Super Stop prototype — and those stations are designed to accommodate enhanced bus service. However, other than assumptions that more, bigger and fancier buses will be coming to the Pike, it’s unclear how those stations will be integrated. The county has vowed to spend $200 million on the corridor’s transit over the next six years.

Cristol agreed with Dorsey, saying Arlington needs to consider all long-term options in the corridor’s future.

“I believe we need to keep everything on the table as we contend with the forces shaping re-development and transit demand in Arlington,” she said. “Rapid population growth and demand for public transit on the Pike will be a defining feature for Arlington’s coming decades … I will always be for considering and discussing big ideas — even the expensive ones that seem infeasible in the immediate — as we look to address those dynamics.”

WMATA already has a 40-year plan in place for Metrorail’s future development, but that plan, adopted in 2013, includes a connection between Arlington’s since-cancelled and D.C.’s embattled streetcar lines. WMATA has since discussed plans for a second tunnel in Rosslyn and another line in Virginia, but public discussions from the agency have not included Columbia Pike.

Wiljanen said Arlington taking on that discussion would distract from the immediate needs of the Pike’s residents.

“If a Metro line opened tomorrow under Columbia Pike, I would be elated,” he told ARLnow.com in an email. “However, given the current political and budgetary climate, starting the process now will prove to be an exceedingly heavy lift, and the timeline could easily extend 30 years or more into the future. I think we need quicker solutions.”

Clement, a perennial candidate for Arlington public office, thinks Arlington needs to take up these discussions as soon as possible.

“It is definitely time to plan for a Metrorail line under Columbia Pike,” she said. “One of the principal reasons I opposed the Pike trolley was the fact that the trolley tracks would have to be dug up to accommodate the subway, which is the ultimate solution to congestion on the Pike.”

(Fallon, Schneider and Lander did not respond to ARLnow.com’s email asking for comment.)

Dorsey also opposed the streetcar, while Cristol, a Pike resident, and Wiljanen didn’t say whether they supported the project, only that Arlington needs to move on.

(more…)

Morning Notes

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 13, 2015 at 9:30AM | Updated April 13, 2015 at 11:56AM

DCA’s Growth Hurting Dulles — Arlington’s Reagan National Airport is growing fast — it set a new record for passengers on March 27, with 39,073. Congress has widened DCA’s flight perimeter three times and more and more airlines are scheduling flights. In the meantime, Dulles is more expensive to fly out of and won’t have a Metro line until 2018 at the earliest. Reagan now has more daily passengers than Dulles, and Dulles’ consumer base is shrinking. [Washington Business Journal]

Arlington Teacher Selected For Cuba Trip — Yorktown social studies teacher Tom Lenihan is raising funds to participate in Tulane University’s Cuban Culture & Society Teacher Institute. To ensure his place in Havana, Lenihan, also an adjunct professor at Marymount University, must raise $3,000. Lenihan says he will bring back knowledge and experience to share with fellow educators and his World Affairs class. He has set up a GoFundMe page to raise the money. The program is from June 20-July 4.

D.C. Area to Grow By 1.6 Million People? — The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments projects the D.C. area, including the outer suburbs, will grow from 5.05 people in 2010 to 6.62 million people in 2040. The core area, made up of D.C., Arlington and Alexandria, is projected to have a growth rate north of 40 percent. [InsideNova]

Flickr pool photo by John Sonderman

Arlington to Re-Introduce Paper Ballot Voting

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 10, 2015 at 3:30PM

Voting in Arlington will go back to the future this year when the county introduces paper balloting to replace the touch-screen boxes it has been using for years.

The paper ballots will be digitally scanned and allow more voters to vote faster, and provide a hard copy of ballots in case of technical malfunctions, Arlington County said in a press release. It’s the first time the county has used paper ballots since 1950, county General Registrar Linda Lindberg told ARLnow.com.

The county was forced to make the purchases by a ruling by the Commissioner of Elections recommending the electronic WinVote machines be decertified and prohibited.

“Last week, without any notification to the users, the State Board of Elections said they had found ‘vulnerabilities with the machines,'” Lindberg said. “This late-night press release that they did very publicly without our knowledge has basically killed the machines for us.”

When asked what problems Arlington had encountered with the touch-screen machines, in use in the county since 2003, Lindberg said “nothing.”

Arlington had already planned on purchasing paper ballots and digital scanners next year. A 2007 law passed by the General Assembly requires all localities, when procuring new voting equipment, to eschew electronic machines for paper ballots.

Arlington will now have to come up with $750,000 to purchase 60 digital scanners — one for each of the 53 votings precincts with extras for absentee ballots and training — in the FY 2016 budget, which the Arlington County Board will adopt next week.

“This is the minimal amount we can get by on for the time being,” Lindberg said. Next year, her office will have to spend hundreds of thousands of additional dollars procuring extra machines and equipment for a presidential election year, which means a much greater influx of absentee ballots.

The first election the paper ballots will be used for is the June Democratic primary for County Board. On May 9, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Lindberg’s office will be hosting an open house to explain the new balloting system on the ground floor of 2100 Clarendon Blvd.

In 1950, Arlington switched from paper ballots to the lever machines, where voters had to go into a booth and pull a curtain behind them. In 1991, the county introduced its first electronic machines — bulky, “but very reliable,” Lindberg said — and in 2003 they starting using the touch-screen system that is now obsolete.

Driver in Fatal Rosslyn Crash to Serve 12 Years

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 10, 2015 at 1:00PM

The man who killed a 24-year-old Alexandria resident last January in a drunk-driving collision in Rosslyn was sentenced to 12 years in prison this morning.

Aman Singh Lail was sentenced to 20 years, with nine suspended, for aggravated involuntary manslaughter, plus 12 months for driving under the influence. Lail pleaded guilty to the charges last summer.

The sentence was the maximum allowed upon the plea agreement, and Arlington Circuit Court Judge Louise DiMatteo apologized to the family of the victim, Chowdhury Saqlain, saying no sentence could replace the son they lost.

“I don’t even know what to say to the family seated over here,” she said from the dais. “It’s completely unfair what’s happened to you. It’s wrong.”

Lail had previously been arrested twice and convicted once of DUI in Virginia. He had also been charged with multiple reckless driving and speeding charges, totaling more than 30 citations and arrests.

On Jan. 24, 2014, Lail was driving on Lee Highway at between 53 and 64 mph — the Commonwealth’s Attorney and Lail’s attorneys dispute the speed and blood-alcohol content of the case — when his Jeep Wrangler slammed into Saqlain’s sedan at the intersection of Ft. Myer Drive. Lail could not complete a field sobriety test and initially lied to detectives, telling them a friend “Moe” had been driving his SUV.

“He drove like a maniac, was outrageously drunk and displayed callousness after the fact,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jay Burkholder said during the hearing. Witnesses said he drank between four and five vodka and orange juice drinks and two tequila shots at a hookah bar in Fairfax County. “Because of perverted fate, the defendant is alive and [Saqlain] is dead.”

Lail’s mother testified that her son had been an alcoholic and told her the evening after the crash he didn’t remember what happened. In the 15 months since the crash, Lail’s attorney claimed he had grown up, and asked for leniency in the sentencing.

“He has changed a lot, he understands and he knows he took someone’s life,” Lail’s mother said. “He is a very nice boy, he is very good-hearted.”

After the hearing, Saqlain’s family and their attorney, David Haynes of The Cochran Firm, held a press conference outside the courthouse and announced they would be pursuing a civil suit against Lail, asking for $20 million in damages.

Haynes said the family hopes Saqlain’s legacy is fewer drunk-driving deaths. They are also calling on state legislators to make bars and restaurants liable in drunk-driving accidents that occurred after over-serving their patrons.

“Without this law on the books, we are unable to hold these establishments responsible,” Haynes said.

During the sentencing hearing, Saqlain’s stepfather read testimony written by his wife — the victim’s mother — who was quietly sobbing in the front row.

“There will be no more birthdays, he will always be 24,” he read. “My heart aches knowing he had no warning, no ability to prepare. He couldn’t say goodbye.”

Can a Tech Startup Save Artisphere?

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 10, 2015 at 10:35AM

While the Arlington County Board enters their final deliberations surrounding the potential closing of the Artisphere, one local entrepreneur is trying to save it.

Pete Erickson is the founder of MoDev, which organizes conferences for mobile software developers. Erickson has hosted a handful of conferences at Artisphere and is planning his latest — MVP (minimum viable product) Conference — for May 18 and 19.

When Erickson heard that County Manager Barbara Donnellan recommended defunding the arts and events venue in Rosslyn, and then realized that no one else seemed to share his vision for its business potential, he could no longer sit idly by.

“I thought I’d wait to see what was going to happen, who was going to come around and just kind of keep tabs on things,” he told ARLnow.com yesterday. “Nothing concrete has come from any other parties. The county is nearing a vote, and they’re under a lot of pressure to cut costs where they can. As that reality began to hit, I sprang into action and said ‘I’ve got a big enough network here to pull together the partners we would need to turn Artisphere into a destination technology, incubation and events hub.’ “

Erickson’s efforts — first reported by Technical.ly — stem from what he’s already been able to do at Artisphere: host events that attract as many as 1,000 attendees. In the D.C. area, there is no place like it.

“It’s hard to find space for a medium-sized conference, which is less than 1,000 people — and 95 percent of all conferences,” he said. “There’s a number of reasons why Artisphere is really well-suited for conferences. Artisphere is a unique space, and you can bring in outside catering, which is a big opportunity, it’s got an IMAX theater, it’s got a black-box theater, an open-air ballroom. It is a good confluence of several things. It’s also hard to find space that’s right on a Metro, close to D.C. and also accessible from the west.”

Erickson is thinking bigger than conferences, too. He has ideas for innovation labs that would bring companies and individuals in during the week, partnerships with incubators like 1776 in D.C. to collocate member businesses. It could turn into its own incubator, and there “could be events happening all the time.”

“One of the downsides with how Artisphere runs currently is everything is linear,” Erickson said. “When a play is happening, there’s not other things happening. When there’s a gallery opening, there’s nothing else that happens.”

The 62,000-square-foot arts center opened at a cost of $6.7 million in 2010 and has been losing money ever since. It was opened up to non-arts events in 2011 — paving the way for MoDev’s conferences — but still is a budget boondoggle for the county.

The County Board appears ready to support Donnellan’s decision — it voted 4-1 in favor of closing Artisphere at a work session earlier this week — but Arlington Economic Development is hoping Erickson can come up with something concrete before it’s too late.

“Right now, it’s just an idea. It’s not even a proposal,” AED Director Victor Hoskins told ARLnow.com yesterday. “The idea is attractive. How you execute it is the question. That’s a much bigger investment than the $250,000 [D.C. invested] in 1776 in 2011.”

“I think MoDev could pull it off, because that’s what they do,” Hoskins added. “But we haven’t even seen a proposal. That’s what we would be looking for.”

(more…)

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Published April 10, 2015 at 9:40AM | Updated April 10, 2015 at 10:09AM

Arlington Ranks High for Tax Burden — Arlington County has the second highest overall tax burden in the nation, according to stats compiled by the website NerdWallet. Arlington’s high median income and high real estate costs factored heavily in the calculation, which includes federal, state and local taxes. [NerdWallet, Washington Business Journal]

Trevor Noah Performs in Arlington — Comedian Trevor Noah performed his first stand-up comedy show since being named the next host of The Daily Show last night in Arlington. It was the first of seven sold-out shows Noah is performing this weekend at the Arlington Cinema Drafthouse. In writing about the performance, the New York Times described the Drafthouse as “about a half-hour drive outside Washington, with drinks far cheaper than most places in the District.” [New York Times]

Amsterdam Falafelshop Offers Pot Pairings — Amsterdam Falafelshop, which has a location in Clarendon, is offering a “pot pairing menu” in time for 4/20. Also on April 20, the restaurant will offer sandwiches for $4.20. [Washington City Paper]

Arlington Resident in Voice Contest — Tara Cannon, an Arlington resident, is among the singers hoping to get a guaranteed audition for The Voice, via an online voting contest on NBC 4’s website. [NBC Washington]

Fairlington 5K Road Closures — Arlington County Police are planning on shutting down a number of roads Saturday morning for the second annual Fairlington 5K race. The roads are expected to be closed between 7:00 and 9:30 a.m. [Arlington County]

Cherry Blossom Race Closures — Police are planning on closing the Memorial Bridge and Memorial Circle to traffic Sunday morning for the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run and 5K. The closure is scheduled to be in place from 5:00 to 11:00 a.m.

Year-Round Yard Waste Collection Still Up in the Air After Lawsuits

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 9, 2015 at 4:45PM | Updated April 10, 2015 at 10:08AM

Arlington’s once-planned, year-round yard waste collection is back on the table after lawsuits delayed its inception last summer.

Last year, the county approved moving to year-round yard waste collection, which would require Arlington residents to put leaves, branches and grass in new, green tubs to be collected every week alongside trash and recycling.

The yard waste would have increased the county’s recycling rate by 13 percent, then-Arlington County Board Chairman Jay Fisette said.

The county was forced to put the program on hold last June when, after awarding an all-in-one waste collection contract to American Disposal, the county’s former waste contractors, Bates Trucking and KMG Solutions, sued over the bid process, claiming “cronyism.”

The lawsuit from KMG was withdrawn last November, according to court records, and Bates’ suit was withdrawn in January. Neither the county attorney nor Bates Trucking have returned requests for comment on the lawsuits.

Once the lawsuits had been filed, the county canceled its contract with American Disposal and instituted an emergency contract without year-round yard waste collection, charging homeowners $271 per year for waste collection — cheaper than the previous fees when Bates and KMG were providing services.

During budget talks this year, according to county Department of Environmental Services spokeswoman Jessica Baxter, the year-round yard waste question is back on the table.

“Arlington County will finalize a new contract this spring for refuse and recycling services to single-family, duplex and townhouse properties,” Baxter told ARLnow.com in an email. “The County Board will consider whether year-round yard waste will be added to the other waste collection services during its annual budget process.”

The annual fee for homeowners has not yet been determined, Baxter said, nor has the fate of the green cans residents were supposed to receive last year. The County Board will adopt its FY 2016 budget later this month.