Halls Hill

Set for early 2024 completion, Fire Station 8 taking donations that document its storied past

By Jo DeVoe
1/2

With work beginning to wrap up on the new Fire Station 8 in Halls Hill, the county is asking residents to share mementos from the station’s past.

The artifacts, which can be donated temporarily or permanently, will go on display in the station’s public lobby exhibition dedicated to the history of Fire Station 8.

Fire Station 8 was the only station in segregation-era Arlington with Black firefighters, all volunteers, who responded to service calls that fire stations in white neighborhoods would not take. The station, which did not receive county support back then, raised the money for equipment with cookouts.

Now, the forthcoming, newly-built Arlington County Fire Department station at 4845 Langston Blvd will have updated amenities and sustainable features such as a “green” (vegetated) roof and rooftop solar panels. In addition to the lobby exhibition, it will have a plaza and pathway honoring the legacy of their fire station, which Halls Hill residents shared during the design process.

“You’ve shared memories, stories, anecdotes, and most of all, the love and respect that flourished between you, your neighbors, and the tireless dedication of the firefighters who worked, overcame, and achieved so much for and on behalf of the Halls Hill community,” according to a letter soliciting donations. “We would love to display your photographs, awards, artifacts, mementos, and more.”

The donation call is ongoing and the county does not have any pieces to share with the public yet, says Alyson Jordan Tomaszewski, a spokeswoman with Arlington’s Dept. of Environmental Services.

Suggested donations she shared with ARLnow include:

  • Candid photos
  • Programs or invitations for events sponsored by the station
  • Artifacts from individuals (e.g., parts of uniform, helmet, buttons, pins, awards)
  • Artifacts from the station (e.g., banners, signs, tools, equipment)

As for construction, Tomaszewski said most of the interior finishes on the new station have been completed. Through mid-winter of 2024, crews will focus on installing sidewalks, curbs and gutters.

After this work is complete, ACFD plans to start operating from the new building, where the old station formerly stood. Firefighters will move out of the temporary station next door, at 2217 N. Culpeper Street, where they have been working since December 2021.

Just prior to spring, crews will remove and store the temporary station, do landscaping work and add a parking lot, Tomaszewski said.

“Once this is complete, there will be a grand opening event for the public,” she said.

VHC Health debuts women’s health center in new $250M outpatient facility

By Jo DeVoe
1/6

(Updated at 11 a.m.) VHC Health, formerly Virginia Hospital Center, debuted a new women’s health center Monday afternoon that handles everything from pregnancy to menopause to breast health.

The Charlotte S. Benjamin Center for Women’s Health is located on the fifth floor of the hospital’s new, $250 million outpatient pavilion that opened in the Hall’s Hill neighborhood in June.

It is the last section of the pavilion — which has floors for outpatient surgery, endoscopies, physical therapy and imaging services, as well as a pharmacy — to open. The 26,000-square-foot center began seeing patients Tuesday.

There, women can receive care related to obstetrics and gynecology, maternal-fetal medicine, general health and wellness through menopause, genetics, breast health, urology, cardiology, advanced radiologic imaging and vascular diagnostics.

The center is named for Charlotte Benjamin, an Arlingtonian who was active on the VHC Health Board of Directors for decades and served as its chair. She attended the ribbon-cutting on Monday.

A female-led physician team, including Women’s Health Center Chief Dr. Kelly Orzechowski, helped design the center and its continuum of services. She tells ARLnow that having an all-in-one center is intended to help busy women streamline their visits and make the most of their appointments.

“I think one of the challenges we have as women is that we’re caring for other people in our lives — our children, our spouses or our elderly parents,” Orzechowski said. “If you have a busy schedule, you put others’ needs before your own. If you have to go around to different places [for appointments], you’re less likely to do them or do them on time.”

For instance, women might make their annual physical but never get around to the mammogram their physician ordered because this involves going to a different facility, farther from home and with more limited hours, she said.

“Our goal was to streamline and coordinate appointment times so if someone has to take off work, our goal is to get all those services done in one half-day,” Orzechowski says.

That extends beyond the women’s health floor, too, she noted. If patients need radiology, cardiology or rehab services, they are an elevator ride away, rather than in a different facility elsewhere in the region. Orzechowski says she believes having these services in one place boosts in-person camaraderie among providers and will “deliver superior care to patients.”

That doctors, particularly women doctors, had any input on the design of the center is a novelty, says Sharon Brickhouse Martin, who consulted on several hospital facilities projects before becoming the Vice President of Health Services Integration for VHC Health. She said the “old school” way of doing things relegated healthcare to doctors and design to specialized professionals.

“It is rare for a hospital organization to involve their doctors in the design and layout of workflow when a new building is under construction,” she said.

Doctors — “the people doing the work” — were at the forefront of designing the women’s health center, down to each exam room, Martin said.

“It has made a huge difference: not only do we feel we delivered a better project, but I’m proud to say we did it in record time. From concept to move-in, in 12-13 months, is unheard of,” she said.

(more…)

Residential investors are especially interested in these five areas of Arlington

By Jo DeVoe
Construction on an upsized home on N. Dinwiddie Street in Halls Hill (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

In Green Valley, resident Portia Clark says she and her neighbors are bombarded with calls and letters from realtors and potential investors about buying their homes.

“We were once a very stable community of homeowners who bought our homes to live here and pay them off,” she said. That increasingly seems to be changing.

There, as in Halls Hill — also known as High View Park — homes are being changing hands as the older generation passes away and their inheritors decide to sell. Some want to buy in more affordable areas, while others cannot afford to make necessary repairs or take over the mortgages, she said.

“At one time, we were the last affordable neighborhood in Arlington to buy a house in,” said Clark, president of the Green Valley Civic Association. “Investors are buying affordable homes, to tear them down and rebuild or have been building townhomes, condos or homes they are renting out.”

Green Valley and Halls Hill — both historically Black communities — are among a handful of Arlington neighborhoods with higher investment rates, according to a home ownership report published by the county in October. The report analyzed home-ownership market trends and barriers to buying.

The county report looked at the number of home loans for investors versus the total loans lent out for every census tract in Arlington. Pentagon City and Aurora Highlands, Radnor-Fort Myer Heights and Halls Hill had investment rates exceeding 12.5%. Investor purchases made up between 10% and 12.5% of financed purchases in Green Valley and Lyon Park, while other neighborhoods had lower rates of investor interest.

Loans issued to investors in 2021 by neighborhood in Arlington (via Arlington County)

Neighborhoods like Clark’s are have lower owner-occupancy rates and higher rates of property purchased for investment purposes, but overall 86% of Arlingtonians in single-family homes are owners, according to Erika Moore, a spokeswoman for the Dept. of Community Planning, Housing and Development.

Reasons for higher investment rates vary by neighborhood, per the report. The county attributes investment in Pentagon City and Aurora Highlands to Amazon’s HQ2, and investment in Radnor-Fort Myer Heights to interest in the River Place co-op, where an expiring ground lease makes properties more attractive to investors than to individual homebuyers.

When asked if staff had any guesses as to why Halls Hill, Green Valley and Lyon Park attracted more investors, Moore said the data staff collected was unclear.

Realtor Eli Tucker says these neighborhoods all have “pockets” of less expensive properties, typically multifamily homes, and many of the investors in Arlington are builders. That tracks with Arlington’s consistent rate of homes torn down, rebuilt and sold at a premium.

Tear-down and rebuild trends since 2012 (via Arlington County)

In Halls Hill, Green Valley and Lyon Park, the less expensive options include apartments and smaller duplex and townhouse properties, which often have no or low HOA fees. These neighborhoods also attract renters.

“[These] are very good rental locations and properties, but tend to be passed over more by principal buyers,” he said. “They can generate higher return-on-investment for investors than many other locations and property types that generate a lot more competition from principal buyers.”

Owner-occupancy rates by neighborhood (via Arlington County)

As for River Place, Tucker says it attracts investors whereas most cooperatives tend to restrict investors looking for rental income. The ground lease set to expire in 2052 creates two investor-friendly conditions.

First, the timeline means fewer mortgage options, which means buyers must pay with cash, which favors investors. Second, it means unit values are going down, instead of up.

(more…)

New historic marker honors final resting place for early Halls Hill community

By Matt Blitz
1/3

(Updated at 8:50 p.m.) A new historic marker has gone up at the 138-year-old Mount Salvation Baptist Cemetery, honoring the final resting place for a number of early Halls Hill leaders.

The county installed a historic marker in October at Mount Salvation Baptist Cemetery on N. Culpepper Street in the Halls Hill neighborhood, also known as High View Park. A brief unveiling ceremony was held in late November and attended by Board Chair Katie Cristol, local historian Charlie Clark, Black Heritage Museum president Scott Edwin Taylor, and others.

The marker reads:

“The Mt. Salvation Baptist Church trustees have maintained this cemetery since June 7, 1884 when they bought the property for $80. Reverend Cyrus Carter cultivated the congregation which began at the nearby home of Isabella Washington and Moses Pelham, Sr. The cemetery contains 89 known burials from 1916 to 1974, although earlier burials were likely.

This is the final resting place of many community leaders, including those who were formerly enslaved and their descendants. Members of this church provided stability and social support throughout segregation and served as a pillar of Arlington’s African American community. The cemetery became an Arlington Historic District in 2021.”

The cemetery was designated as a local historic district last year and the marker was approved by the county’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) in April 2022.

“Being a Local Historic District (LHD) is not required to request a marker, but we thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our newest LHD and provide a small glimpse into the history for those enjoying the neighborhood,” county historic preservation planner Serena Bolliger wrote ARLnow in an email.

The cemetery is the final resting place for at least nearly 90 early residents of Halls Hill, a fact known thanks to a ground-penetrating probing survey that was done in October 2019 with permission from the church. The probing also revealed potential grave markers and borders.

Buried at Mount Salvation are a number of influential Arlingtonians including Lucretia M. Lewis, Moses Pelham, and Annie and Robert Spriggs.

Scott Edwin Taylor, president of the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, told ARLnow that what also makes Mount Salvation special is that it’s a great example of how traditional African American cemeteries were laid out and designed prior to the turn of the 20th century. Graves are often oriented east to west, with the head point westward. Burial plots tend to be shallow, no deeper than four feet, with plantings.

“Some anthropologists have suggested that marking graves with plants may have been rooted in the African belief in the living spirit,” reads the county’s report on the cemetery.

Some graves even have seashells.

“A lot of Black Americans, before the turn of the [20th] century, used seashells. It was… like asking angels to watch over the graves. A couple of the graves still have those seashells on there,” Taylor said.

Mount Salvation is one of two still-remaining, church-affiliated, historic African-American cemeteries in the Halls Hill neighborhood with the other being Calloway Cemetery on Langston Blvd.

It’s important to preserve these sites for generations to come, Taylor explained.

“The gentrification that’s going on in Arlington is moving at the speed of light,” Taylor said. “When we have landmarks like [this], we need to cherish them because it shows the real African-American experience.”

Redevelopment has changed the fabric of Halls Hill. Do residents think ‘Missing Middle’ would help or hurt?

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

The following in-depth local reporting was supported by the ARLnow Press Club. Join today to support local journalism and to get an early look at what we’re planning to cover each day.

Marguarite Gooden, who is now in her 70s, remembers the day that her grandfather, “a sage man,” as she describes him, told her something that would forever alter her family’s course.

“Keep the land,” he said.

When she could afford it, she purchased her first childhood home, which her father built on her grandfather’s property. She then purchased her second, larger childhood home, which her father built across what’s now named Langston Blvd, then Lee Highway, when his wife became pregnant with twins.

“I own both properties and I have had the wherewithal to make sure they’re in trusts, and that my kids and grandkids cannot sell them,” Gooden tells ARLnow.

Gooden, who shared her anecdote during a county-facilitated conversation on the Missing Middle housing study, said in an interview with ARLnow that she is glad she could help her kids stay in Arlington if they wanted. She said she wants teachers, firefighters and nurses at the nearby Virginia Hospital Center to be able to afford to live here, too.

But all around her, new construction in Halls Hill is increasingly unaffordable — a new six-bedroom, single-family home with a modern design recently went for $1.7 million compared to a circa-1995, three-bedroom townhouse went for $825,000. Another new construction, single-family detached home on a dead-end street is listed for sale for $1.9 million.

There are still some relative bargains to be had in the neighborhood, like the five-bedroom rambler that sold for $735,000, but with each “fixer-upper” sale comes with the chance that another huge house from a local builder will replace it.

The pricier homes came at the expense of this historically Black community, Gooden said, as neighbors moved away for more space or cheaper property taxes and sold the property they inherited from their parents and grandparents.

“That completely changed that neighborhood,” Gooden said. “We don’t even know all our neighbors anymore. I used to know everybody.”

After all this upheaval, could the county’s plan to allow two- to eight-unit buildings in single-family neighborhoods create more attainable homeownership opportunities in Halls Hill? Could it prevent future displacement?

It’s unclear.

One prevailing attitude is “something is better than nothing,” but concerns remain that Missing Middle will increase development in Halls Hill without bringing down the price. Certain streets already allow low-density multifamily units, and given the recent sale of two duplexes for $1.2 million apiece, they’re worried new “middle housing” won’t be attainable and won’t stem the tide of gentrification.

“People who live here are worried Halls Hill will be targeted, not more north in Arlington, where options are needed,” said community leader Wilma Jones.

Some developers, meanwhile, are excited to tap into buyers who want homes that feed into Yorktown High School and still have lower property values, at least to compared to other North Arlington neighborhoods.

“There’s such little supply, people want to be anywhere in North Arlington,” said Charles Taylor, the head of acquisitions for Arlington-based Classic Cottages. “It’s pretty schools driven. A lot of times, we don’t granularly pick and choose ‘We want to be in this block or that block,’ it’s like, ‘Hey, this is a lot in North Arlington, it feeds into Yorktown, let’s go there.'”

(more…)

NEW: Police investigating false report of shooting in Halls Hill

By ARLnow.com
Response to a false report of a shooting in Halls Hill (courtesy photo)

Police swarmed Arlington’s Halls Hill neighborhood today after a caller falsely reported a shooting inside of a house.

The incident happened along the 1800 block of N. Dinwiddie Street, in the historically Black neighborhood also known as High View Park, just before 5 p.m.

A caller told 911 dispatchers that he had just shot his wife inside of a home, according to scanner traffic. Shortly after a large police and fire department response arrived on scene, the report was determined to be false.

The circumstances suggest an instance of “swatting” — or harassment by way of making a false report that sends a large police response to someone’s address.

The Arlington County Police Department says that officers “remain on scene investigating the circumstances of the call.”

Work continues on pace for Fire Station No. 8, with completion set for late 2023

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

(Updated 11/07/22 at 2:30 p.m.) Ongoing foundation work at the new Fire Station No. 8 is slated to wrap up in two months.

Construction on the long-anticipated new station at 4845 Langston Blvd began this summer, after the old station was demolished in June.

Now, workers are pouring the concrete footings and laying masonry foundation walls for the 20,522 square-foot building, says Dept. of Environmental Services spokeswoman Katie O’Brien. They are also laying the conduits for the underground electrical, plumbing and other systems.

So far, the recent rain “has not adversely affected the schedule,” O’Brien said.

Next, construction crews will begin making the building’s steel floors and roof next month, and framing the walls sometime around next March.

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing work will begin sometime after January 2023 and continue through the summer, while building finishes will be installed next summer and fall.

O’Brien says the county expects to complete the project near the end of 2023.

Work hours are 7 a.m to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday. There will be some Saturday work scheduled between 10 a.m and 3 p.m.

Since December 2021, firefighters have been working from a temporary station next door, at 2217 N. Culpeper Street. The permanent station is located where the old station formerly stood.

In addition to updated amenities, the new fire station will boast sustainable features such as a “green” (vegetated) roof and rooftop solar panels.

The building’s design includes a “legacy plaza” and a historic pathway, and other features, to recognize the history of the station.

During Segregation, Fire Station No. 8 was the only station in Arlington staffed by African-Americans — members of the Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department. The volunteers served the historically Black neighborhood, which was walled off from an adjacent white neighborhood until the 1960s.

Arlington’s historic Crown Cab is Hartman Reed’s legacy

By Matt Blitz
1/2

Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared in the ARLnow Press Club weekend newsletter. Thank you to Press Club members for helping to fund our in-depth local features.

The phone rings on a stormy afternoon in Halls Hill and 92-year-old Hartman Reed swivels in his chair to answer it.

“Hello, Crown Cab,” he says.

Reed first started working for the long-running cab company back in 1958 as one of the first Black cab drivers in Arlington. He picked up customers in a Chevy. Today, more than six decades later, he owns the company, making it one of two Black-owned cab companies in Arlington.

Reed had a second notable job as well. He was also a firefighter at famed Fire Station No. 8 in Halls Hill. It’s believed he was one of the first paid Black firefighters south of the Mason-Dixon line.

“As I grow older, I now know how important it was to be first at things,” Reed tells ARLnow. “I now know what we did made it possible for others behind us to advance.”

For decades, Halls Hill had only a volunteer firefighter department. Even when the county started allocating money to other neighborhoods to pay their first responders in 1940, Arlington declined to do the same for Halls Hill. What’s more, fire companies in surrounding neighborhoods would not come into Halls Hill to provide help.

Finally, in the early 1950s, the county provided money to Halls Hill to hire professional firefighters. Reed, straight out of the Navy, was one of the first hired, starting on the job in 1952 at Fire Station No. 8.

He remains extremely proud of not just the work he and his fellow Halls Hill firefighters did, but the reputation they earned in the community.

“Just because we were Black, we were looked at as people who didn’t have the courage to go in and fight fires,” he says. “We had to prove ourselves. In most cases, I’d say we were outstanding as a company because we wanted to prove that we were as good or better than any other company.”

Hartman Reed’s firefighting helmet (staff photo by Matt Blitz)

Fire fighting wasn’t the only community need where Jim Crow reared its ugly head in Arlington in the mid-20th century. In an era there were fewer people had cars, cabs were neighborhood necessities. However, many white-owned Arlington companies would not pick up customers in Arlington’s Black communities like Johnson’s Hill, Halls Hill, and Green Valley.

So, two companies — Friendly Cab Company and Crown Cab — were founded specifically to service those neighborhoods. A number of the cabbies were firemen, including Reed.

In 1958, fellow Fire Station No. 8 firefighter Buster Moten started Crown Cab and hired Reed as his first driver. It’s believed he was one of the first Black cab drivers in Arlington.

For about 16 years, Reed was both a firefighter and a cab driver but he says the two jobs went hand-in-hand. For one, being a cab driver helped him “learn the territory.”

“You have to know where places are when a [fire] call comes in. You can’t be hunting around,” he says. “As a cab driver, you got to know the county a lot better.”

Cabs were also there for emergencies, like hospital visits, particularly since Arlington’s Black residents were often not allowed to go to the hospital closest by.

(more…)

New equity program taking root to plant trees in ten Arlington neighborhoods

By Matt Blitz
Trees in Arlington (staff photo)

A new program seeks to increase equity in Arlington by planting more trees in certain neighborhoods.

The local non-profit EcoAction Arlington announced that it’s starting the “Tree Canopy Equity Program” with the goal of raising $1.5 million to fund planting at least 2,500 trees over the next five years in local neighborhoods that have too few.

Insufficient tree canopy is closely tied to heat and temperature increases. The reason certain areas of Arlington are hotter than others, like the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, is due in part to lack of trees, recent data shows.

“The neighborhoods most impacted by insufficient tree cover are communities with higher-than-average minority populations and communities with people living in poverty,” EcoAction Arlington said a press release. “The lack of trees has a real-world impact that can lead to poor physical and mental health outcomes, higher utility costs, and a lower quality of life.”

The ten civic associations and neighborhoods that the program will work with are below.

  • Arlington View
  • Aurora Highlands
  • Buckingham
  • Columbia Heights
  • Glebewood
  • Green Valley
  • John M. Langston Citizens Association (Halls Hill/High View Park)
  • Long Branch Creek
  • Penrose
  • Radnor/Fort Myer Heights

The current levels of tree cover in those neighborhoods is between 17% and 33%, according to EcoAction Arlington.

“The goal is to radically increase tree planting in the neighborhoods with the lowest tree cover to align with the average for other Arlington communities of approximately 40 percent,” the press release says.

EcoAction Arlington executive director Elenor Hodges tells ARLnow that that the group has already begun to plant more trees. That includes American hornbeams, pin oaks, river birch, sugarberry, American sycamore, swamp white oak, and American linden.

The program needs about $150,000 a year to cover operations, marketing, staffing, and the actual planting of trees, Hodges says, with each tree costing about $500 to plant.

Amazon, an inaugural sponsor, has already contributed $50,000. The goal is to raise $1.5 million from other corporate and individual donors, while also obtaining funding from Arlington’s existing Tree Canopy Fund Program. This initiative allows neighborhood groups, owners of private property and developments, and places of worship to apply to have native plants or trees planted on their property.

Residents in neighborhoods lacking sufficient tree canopy note that the the problem is often tied to the construction of large, new homes and not prioritizing trees while building.

“As we lose trees due to infill development of large homes on lots in our neighborhood, they need to be replaced and even expanded,” John M. Langston Citizens Association president Wilma Jones tells ARLnow. “We all know that trees give off oxygen and they reduce stormwater runoff.

Natasha Atkins has been a resident of Aurora Highlands for nearly four decades and has “watched with alarm” the number of trees lost to homebuilding projects.

“With the County’s zoning code, requiring only very small setbacks for residential housing, it is questionable whether there will be much of a tree canopy in the future in the single-family neighborhoods that are being redeveloped,” she says. “Trees are an afterthought in planning and zoning. They should really be a driver.”

Hodges concedes that planting 2,500 more trees over the next five years will only “make a dent” and it will take tens of thousands of trees for all these neighborhoods to reach the 40% tree canopy threshold.

But the Tree Canopy Equity Program is just as much about what one can do today as what one can do tomorrow, says Hodges.

“It’s about behavioral change and teaching people about the importance of having a sufficient tree canopy in Arlington,” she said.

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com
An airplane on approach to Reagan National Airport at twilight near Rosslyn (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Firefighters Rescue Cat from Tree — From the Animal Welfare League of Arlington: “We are so grateful for @ArlingtonVaFD! Yesterday, Charlie the cat snuck out of his house and got spooked, climbing 2.5 stories up a nearby tree on a very stormy day. ACFD came to the rescue and brought Charlie back down to the ground and to safety.” [Twitter]

Suspicious Package at Pentagon Metro — From Pentagon police: “At 9:46am, @PFPAOfficial was alerted to a suspicious package at the Pentagon Metro Visitors Screening Center. Explosive Ordnance Detection Unit is… investigating. Bus and rail service is bypassing the Pentagon. Personnel are asked to please avoid the area. […] At 1251 @PFPAOfficial gave the all clear. Bus and rail service have resumed. The incident is currently under investigation.” [Twitter]

New Apartment Building Proposed in Crystal City — “Add another new mixed-used building to the growing National Landing pipeline. An affiliate of Dweck Properties filed plans this week with Arlington county for two new buildings that would become a part of the Crystal Towers development at 1600 South Eads Street.” [UrbanTurf]

Boeing Bringing Few Jobs — “Paul Lewis, a Boeing spokesman, said the company employs 400 people in the Washington area and has space to add more, but ‘there are no immediate plans to expand the facility here in Arlington.’ The company also won’t reduce its roughly 400 employees at Boeing’s outgoing headquarters in Chicago. Nonetheless, Lewis said in an email the move to Virginia was important for the company: ‘It’s significant in that this will be the base of operations for the CEO and CFO.'” [Washington Post]

More Local Reaction to Boeing HQ — “From the Greater Washington Board of Trade: “Congrats to @NationalLanding
. Our region provides such a compelling strategic advantage to businesses that want to relocate here because of its’ proximity to the government, business, non-profits and academia. It’s a win for everyone in our region!” [Twitter, LinkedIn]

Local Cemetery Getting Historic Marker — “It became a county historic landmark last year, and soon the Mount Salvation Baptist Church cemetery will have a marker denoting its status… The cemetery, located adjacent to the church in the historically African-American North Arlington community of Halls Hill/High View Park, is the final resting spot of at least 89 people. Burials at the cemetery were recorded from 1916 (although some likely occurred a decade or two earlier) to 1974.” [Sun Gazette]

Reminder: West Glebe Road Bridge Closed to Cars — “The West Glebe Road bridge over Four Mile Run will be completely closed to vehicles [on Monday, May 9], and will remain closed for nearly a year.” [ARLnow]

It’s Monday — Mostly sunny, with a northeast wind around 11 mph and gusts as high as 18 mph. High of 64 and low of 44. Sunrise at 6:03 am and sunset at 8:10 pm. [Weather.gov]

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com
Squirrel defeating a bird feeder (Flickr pool photo by Kevin Wolf)

Planning for Fmr. Inner Ear Site — “Arlington Cultural Affairs is working with public art and placemaking firm Graham Projects to design a future arts space at 2700 S. Nelson Street/2701 S. Oakland Street in Green Valley, and we are looking for your inspiration and input. A flexible, outdoor open space is planned for the site, which will be designed following the planned demolition of the existing building this fall. In the meantime, we want YOUR thoughts and ideas!” [Arlington County]

Big Money for Growing Local Company — “Arlington’s Federated Wireless Inc. has raised an additional $14 million in a second closing of its latest round of funding — bringing the raise’s total to $72 million — as it looks to augment the private wireless market.” [Washington Business Journal]

Refugee Wins Reprieve in Court — “In a brief ruling from the bench that surprised both sides with its speed, Circuit Court Judge William T. Newman Jr. in December declared Khoy’s plea vacated. Khoy reached for her lawyer’s arm in disbelief. Was the nightmare really over?” [Washington Post]

Events to Mark Civic Association Anniversary — “The John M. Langston Citizens Association will celebrate the 85th Anniversary of the organization with a series of events during the weekend of May 13th through 15th. The Opening Program on Friday, May 13th at the Langston-Brown Community Center will feature recognition of the 28 plaintiffs from the Thompson v. Arlington School Board 1958 court case who were denied entrance to white schools, when the Stratford Four… were admitted on February 2, 1959.” [HallsHill.com]

SoberRide for Cinco de Mayo — “Offered by the nonprofit Washington Regional Alcohol Program (WRAP), the 2022 Cinco de Mayo SoberRide® program will be in operation beginning at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 5th (Cinco de Mayo) and operate until 4:00 a.m. on Friday, May 6th as a way to keep local roads safe from impaired drivers during this traditionally high-risk period.” [WRAP]

Circulator Strike Planned — “Fed up with a lack of progress in contract talks and unfair labor practices, the bus drivers for the DC Circulator, employed by RATP Dev, will be on strike tomorrow morning, Tuesday, May 3rd and will stay out until an agreement is reached.” [ATU Local 689]

It’s Tuesday — Partly sunny during the day, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 8 p.m. High of 75 and low of 56. Sunrise at 6:09 am and sunset at 8:04 pm. [Weather.gov]

Flickr pool photo by Kevin Wolf

View More Stories