Pentagon City

Crime Report: Abduction Attempt on Wilson Blvd

By ARLnow.com

A masked man tried to abduct a woman outside of her residence along Wilson Blvd this past weekend, according to Arlington County Police.

The abduction attempt happened early Saturday morning on Wilson near the intersection with Patrick Henry Drive. The man tried to drag the woman away but she fought back and the attacker eventually fled.

More from this week’s Arlington County Police Department crime report:

ABDUCTION, 2019-01120041, 6100 block of Wilson Boulevard. At approximately 3:00 a.m. on January 12, police were dispatched to the report of a suspicious person. Upon arrival, it was determined that the female victim was walking in the area when she noticed an unknown male subject following her. As she approached the entrance to her residence, the male suspect pulled the victim’s hair from behind and wrapped his arms around her, preventing her from leaving. The suspect attempted to pull the victim away from her residence, however she resisted and the suspect eventually fled on foot when a vehicle drove by the area. The suspect is described as a Hispanic male, with light-olive toned skin, possibly in his late 20’s or early 30’s, approximately 5’8″-5’11”, 150-180 lbs., wearing black pants, a black jacket, black shoes and a winter mask. The investigation is ongoing.

Also last week, police were dispatched to a store in Pentagon City for a man who exposed himself to a group of children inside a fitting room.

The incident happened Friday night, on the 1100 block of S. Hayes Street — which is address of both the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City mall and the Pentagon Centre shopping center.

INDECENT EXPOSURE, 2019-01110259, 1100 block of S. Hayes Street. At approximately 7:11 p.m. on January 11, police were dispatched to the report of an indecent exposure. Upon arrival, it was determined that the juvenile victims were in the area of the fitting rooms inside of a business when they observed a male expose himself and touch himself inappropriately. The suspect is described as a Middle Eastern male, 25-35 years old, taller than 6’1″, approximately 190 lbs., with short black hair, brown eyes, scruff on his face, wearing a dark gray shirt, black jacket and black jeans. The investigation is ongoing.

Below are the rest of the highlights from this week’s crime report, including some we’ve already reported.

(more…)

As Amazon Looms, Lopez Pushes for More State Money to Fund Affordable Housing Development

By Alex Koma

(Updated at 3 p.m.) With Amazon gearing up to move into his neck of the woods, Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-49th District) is angling to substantially beef up state spending on affordable housing development.

Lopez, who represents a variety of South Arlington neighborhoods surrounding the tech company’s planned headquarters in Crystal City and Pentagon City, is eyeing a two-pronged approach to the issue in this year’s General Assembly session.

Both of his legislative efforts involve the Virginia Housing Trust Fund, a pot of money Lopez helped create back in 2016 to offer low-interest loans for developers hoping to build reasonably priced housing. Though state lawmakers have only allocated a few million dollars to the fund for the last few years, Lopez hopes to simultaneously ramp up appropriations for the program and find a more stable source of funding for it going forward.

Leaders in Arlington and Alexandria have both committed to send more resources to local programs targeting housing affordability in the wake of Amazon’s big announcement, but those efforts will only be designed to target the communities surrounding the tech giant’s new office space. And with most prognosticators predicting that the 25,000 Amazon employees set to descend on the area will choose to live all over the Northern Virginia region, Lopez sees a clear need for a state-level solution.

“This is a statewide problem,” Lopez told ARLnow. “And I believe affordable housing is a quality of life issue in Virginia, and it’s something we should be funding in the same breath as transit, transportation, environmental protection and education.”

Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, has already proposed sending $19 million to the housing fund over the next two years as part of his latest budget proposal. That change would make $20 million available for the current fiscal year, and another $10 million available the year after that.

But Lopez is envisioning an even larger amount heading to the fund, and he’s planning on proposing a one-time, $50-million influx to make a difference right away.

The amount might seem small compared to the state’s mammoth budget, but Lopez expects it could make a big difference — he points out that the fund has already helped kick start two projects along Columbia Pike in just the last few years alone.

Michelle Winters, the executive director of the Arlington-based Alliance for Housing Solutions, notes that the trust is “currently a small source of funding that is spread fairly thin across the state.” That means even Northam’s proposal, to say nothing of Lopez’s more ambitious ask, would be a “quantum leap” forward for the state, according to Michelle Krocker, the executive director of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance.

“Federal housing dollars are really diminishing, so it’s increasingly up to state and local governments to fund this stuff,” Krocker said. “Arlington has been a leader on this…but the state of Virginia is being fairly negligent, to put it mildly, in providing resources through the trust fund.”

Accordingly, Winters expects even a modest increase would prove to be meaningful, in Arlington and elsewhere.

“Even though it is small, any source of funding to help fill the gap in an affordable housing project’s budget is very valuable and can help make some more projects feasible,” Winters wrote in an email.

Yet Lopez also sees a clear need to make affordable housing funding a bit more predictable going forward.

Currently, Lopez laments that he has to go “hat in hand” to appropriators on General Assembly committees, urging them each year to set aside money for the trust fund. He’d much rather see lawmakers set up a dedicated funding stream to ensure regular, stable contributions to the loan program each year.

Accordingly, Lopez is backing a bill to establish such a funding mechanism — in essence, the legislation would pull away an annual percentage of surplus revenue from state “recordation” taxes, or levies on home transactions.

He’s proposed such legislation in the past, and acknowledge that it could face an uphill battle this time around — lawmakers with power over the state’s purse strings may be loathe to give up any budgetary discretion, after all.

Even the one-time cash infusion could prove difficult for Lopez to achieve, considering that Republicans have already declared Northam’s budget proposals “dead on arrival,” as a fight over tax revenues brews in the General Assembly.

“We’re all very concerned that with Republicans being so opposed to the governor’s amendments… that we’ll really have to wait and see whether the governor’s housing trust fund plans survives these deliberations,” Krocker said.

It doesn’t help matters either that some key lawmakers (and even some Northam administration officials) shied away from including more affordable housing money in the state’s proposal to Amazon, arguing localities and developers are better suited to fund this kind of development.

But Lopez is “hopeful” that the grave concerns raised about the housing market in the wake of Amazon’s announcement could help change minds on the issue, and he’ll certainly have allies among Arlington’s legislative delegation.

“Housing will be an issue here for at least a decade or more,” said Del. Patrick Hope (D-47th District). “Amazon coming in won’t change all that dramatically, but it does increase the urgency for affordable housing and putting funding behind this.”

File photo

Google Maps Now Displays Arlington Sections of Jefferson Davis Highway as ‘Richmond Highway’

By Alex Koma
1/3

Arlington officials remain stymied in their long push to rename the section of Jefferson Davis Highway running through the county — but you’d never know it by glancing at Google Maps.

The tech company’s virtual atlas now identifies Arlington’s section of Route 1 as “Richmond Highway,” dating back to at least Friday (Jan. 11). An ARLnow reader, who asked to remain anonymous, first noticed the switch.

That matches the new name Alexandria leaders picked for the road last year, stripping the Confederate president’s moniker from the highway. Arlington’s County Board is anxious to make a similar change, but a complex provision of state law currently bars it from doing so — Attorney General Mark Herring’s office issued an opinion clarifying that cities like Alexandria have the authority to change the names of state roads within their boundaries, but counties don’t.

Accordingly, signs around Crystal City and Pentagon City will still bear the “Jefferson Davis” name for the foreseeable future, but many people looking up the road online would never know it was there. Apple Maps users, however, will still see the Confederate president’s name on the highway, as of today (Tuesday).

The swap will surely come as good news for the Board, which recently urged state lawmakers to renew old efforts to pass a bill giving the county the power to change the name on its own. The impending arrival of Amazon in the neighborhood added some urgency to that push, given the company’s stated commitment to inclusivity and diversity and Davis’ connections to Virginia’s slaveholding past.

But Arlington legislators say they likely won’t raise the issue in this year’s new General Assembly session.

Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-30th District) initially signaled that he could be willing to back legislation on the matter this time around if the local business community, or perhaps some Republicans, came on board with the issue. But without that backing, he’d rather wait to see if Democrats can seize control of the legislature in this fall’s elections first.

“It might not be the best year to push forward on that,” Ebbin told ARLnow. “We’re looking into the best strategies for 2020, to see if we go ahead with allowing them to name contiguous roads the same as in adjacent localities. That’s probably the most palatable case we can make to others that have strongly held beliefs on this.”

On the House of Delegates side of things, Del. Rip Sullivan (D-48th District) added that he doesn’t plan to introduce any bill on the subject and that “I don’t know that any of my colleagues will either.”

So far, his prediction has proven to be correct — as of Tuesday, no legislation on the topic has been filed down in Richmond.

Vegetable-Heavy Eatery The Little Beet Could Soon Expand to Pentagon City Mall

By Alex Koma

The vegetable-focused fast casual eatery The Little Beet could soon open a new location in the Pentagon City mall.

The restaurant applied for a permit to bring a new eatery to the first floor of the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City in late December, according to county records.

Andy Duddleston, the chain’s founder and chief brand officer, confirmed that he is indeed “considering a location” at the mall.

“Stay tuned,” Duddleston told ARLnow.

A spokeswoman for the mall’s management company said they’re “unable to share information on businesses rumored to be joining the center.”

The Little Beet opened its first Arlington location in Rosslyn in the fall of 2017 in the Central Place development. The restaurant also operates a D.C. eatery, with a variety of other locations in New York City, where the company got its start.

Its menu is largely dominated by salads and bowls, with a whole host of vegetarian and vegan options for diners.

H/t Chris Slatt

State Lawmakers Kick Off Process to Hand Over Up to $750 Million in Incentives to Finalize Amazon Deal

By Alex Koma

State lawmakers are now setting the wheels in motion to approve at least $550 million in grant money to Amazon, a process that should help seal the deal to bring the tech giant to Arlington.

Legislators in both chambers of the General Assembly have now introduced bills to make good on the deal that Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration helped strike with Jeff Bezos’ firm, promising hundreds of millions in incentive cash if Amazon comes through on its promise to bring 25,000 jobs to Pentagon City and Crystal City between now and 2030.

Arlington is set to chip in some cash of its own to make the deal work (about $23 million in grant money over 15 years, drawn from a projected increase in revenue from the county’s tax on hotel stays) and new investments in transportation and education programs beef up the state’s offer to Amazon by hundreds of millions more.

But the new legislation lays out the clearest look yet at what Northam’s team promised the tech company — and makes it clear that Amazon could earn another $200 million if it adds another 12,850 jobs at the new headquarters over the years, bringing its haul to $750 million in total.

The identical bills are backed by primarily by state Sen. Frank Ruff (R-15th District) and Del. S. Chris Jones (R-76th District), the powerful head of the House of Delegates’ appropriations committee.

Each would establish a “Major Headquarters Workforce Grant Fund” to lay out the payments, attaching a $22,000 price tag to each new job Amazon brings to the area over the next 15 years. To qualify for the grant, the jobs will need to come with an average wage of $150,000 per year starting in 2019, increasing by 1.5 percent each year after that.

The legislation lays out a schedule for how the state pays out the grant money, with Amazon set to earn $200 million by 2024, then $300 million by 2025. The figure jumps by $50 million increments before topping out at $550 million in 2030.

Then, if the company can deliver on the additional 12,850 jobs beyond the original 25,000 it promised, it will collect another $50 million each year through 2034.

The bill also requires Amazon to provide evidence to state officials each year that it’s meeting the requirements to earn the grant payments.

The legislation generally seems like a sure bet to pass, considering that several influential state lawmakers have already had a chance to help shape the incentive package.

A panel known as the Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission signed off on the bulk of the details in tandem with Northam’s staff, and that group included some of the most senior members of both parties in the House and the Senate. As Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-30th District) told ARLnow, the incentive package “may not face much opposition, but it’s still meaningful.”

Nevertheless, some of Amazon’s fiercest opponents in Arlington are urging state lawmakers to reject the deal. A group of advocates dubbing themselves the “For Us Not Amazon” coalition, including organizers from Our Revolution Arlington, the Metro D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Latino rights group La ColectiVA, is calling for legislators to vote down the incentive package in its entirety, and organized a demonstration at the county’s Amazon-focused listening session Saturday (Jan. 12) to underscore that point.

“There should be no incentives for Amazon, and city and state grants and funding should go to protect communities at risk,” the group wrote in a statement. “Public officials need to hear our communities’ concerns about Amazon’s current and future impact on residents.”

But a vote on the incentive bills will be only one piece of the puzzle in finalizing the Amazon agreement, lawmakers say. The state promised transportation improvements all around the company’s proposed campus, and a huge influx of cash into tech-focused higher education programs, and that money will likely be included in adjustments to the biennial state budget.

That means cash for everything from Metro improvements in Crystal City to money for an expansion of George Mason University’s Virginia Square campus will all be wrapped up in one massive budget bill.

Of course, Del. Patrick Hope (D-47th District) points out that any lawmakers hoping for a seperate vote on the Amazon-specific portions of the budget could move to “sever” those sections from the rest of the spending plan. Hope says he generally supports the deal, but he fully expects there to be some discussions over the course of the remainder of the General Assembly’s 46-day session about the issue.

“I believe it has the votes to pass, but there could be some debate on that on the floor,” Hope said. “I suspect we will see that, in fact.”

Arlington officials are set to sign off on their portion of the Amazon deal no sooner than the County Board’s Feb. 23 meeting.

The legislature is set to adjourn that same day, meaning that any Amazon bill will likely have cleared the General Assembly well in advance of that gathering — however, budget debates have been known to linger well past the proposed end of each year’s legislative session.

Poll: Most Local Tech Workers Ready to Jump Ship for Amazon Jobs

By Alex Koma

Nearly three quarters of all IT workers across the D.C. region would consider leaving their current job to work for Amazon, a new survey shows, revealing just how impactful the company’s arrival in Arlington could be on the local labor market.

A poll released today (Wednesday) by Eagle Hill Consulting, and conducted by the survey firm Ipsos, found that 51 percent of employees across all occupations would jump ship for Jeff Bezos’ company. The group found that younger people and tech workers were especially enthusiastic about the company, with 60 percent of millennials expressing interest in Amazon and 71 percent of IT workers showing a willingness to leave.

The research underscores the fears harbored among many smaller, tech-focused startups in the D.C. area that Amazon’s arrival in Crystal City and Pentagon City (set to begin in earnest this year) will result in a brain drain of sorts. Eagle Hill also expects that federal workers could find themselves lured into the private sector by Amazon’s hefty paychecks, particularly as the company ramps up hiring for the 25,000 jobs it expects to eventually bring to its new headquarters.

“Area employers should be worried, especially those that need to retain their tech talent,” Melissa Jezior, Eagle Hill’s president and CEO, wrote in a statement. “Private sector and government employers will have to do all they can now to hang on to their employees before Amazon arrives – especially in such a tight labor market.”

As Jezior points out, unemployment rates are low around the country at the moment, especially in Arlington, which regularly posts the lowest jobless rate in the whole state. To Eagle Hill researchers, that means employers will need to “dig deep to understand their employees’ satisfaction and deliver what their workforce needs are positioned to hold onto their star employees when Amazon moves in,” Jezior said.

The poll results show that 71 percent of all workers see a move to Amazon as a chance to earn more pay, while 45 percent say they’d make the move to do “more interesting work.” An identical number said they’d move to Amazon in order to work “for a progressive company” — Bezos’ firm has been a leader in bumping up wages for its warehouse workers, but has also taken plenty of criticism for its labor practices and support for the Trump administration’s immigration tactics.

Among IT workers, those numbers are even stronger: 71 percent see a chance for higher salary, 55 percent are enthusiastic about more interesting work, and 51 percent want to work for a progressive company.

Victor Hoskins, director of Arlington Economic Development, acknowledged that Amazon will put pressure on the labor market, as will the tech companies who flock to the area to take advantage of Amazon’s arrival. But he was also quick to point out that companies concerned about losing employees will have to time to prepare and do the sort of introspection that Jezior recommends.

“Only a few hundred jobs are coming here in the first year, so if that’s the concern, they can get a jump on them,” Hoskins said. “The big numbers really don’t start until 2020, 2021.”

Much like other surveys of attitudes about the company, Eagle Hill found that opinions on Amazon were largely positive: 83 percent of workers surveyed believe the company will have a positive impact on the local economy. Additionally, 88 percent believe Amazon will improve prospects for job seekers and 73 percent think the company will have a positive impact on “overall compensation” in the region.

But Amazon’s impact on Northern Virginia’s already crowded roads emerged as a clear concern among those survey — 77 percent believe Amazon will have a negative impact on traffic, a common view among Arlington residents but one generally not shared by local officials.

Eagle Hill says Ipsos conducted the survey by collecting responses online from about 1,000 “working age” people across the D.C. region.

Photo via Amazon

Metro Will Shut Down Three Blue, Yellow Line Stations for Lighting Updates This Weekend

By Alex Koma

Metro is shutting down three Arlington stations on the Blue and Yellow lines this weekend, in order to allow for some major lighting improvements set to make each station substantially brighter.

The Pentagon, Pentagon City and Crystal City stops will all be closed both Saturday and Sunday (Jan. 12-13), WMATA announced last week, work that is sure to create substantial disruptions on both lines.

Metro plans to run Blue Line trains on its regular weekend schedule between the Franconia-Springfield and Reagan National Airport stations and between Arlington Cemetery and Largo Town Center each day, with free shuttle buses providing a bridge between the closed stations. After the cemetery closes at 7 p.m. each day, Blue Line service will end at the Rosslyn station.

As for the Yellow Line, Metro expects it will only run trains between the Huntington and National Airport stations, with free shuttle buses on that line too.

The exact details for the shuttle buses are as follows, per a WMATA press release:

  • Blue Line Shuttle (No stop at National Airport) – every 5-10 minutes between Braddock Rd, Crystal City, Pentagon City, Pentagon, Rosslyn
  • DC-Airport Express Shuttle – every 5-10 minutes between Reagan National Airport and L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Downtown DC
  • Pentagon-Airport Shuttle – every 15 minutes between Reagan National Airport, Crystal City, Pentagon City, Pentagon only

Metro is warning anyone hoping to use the rail service and shuttle buses to allow an extra 30 minutes of travel time to reach their destinations this weekend.

Officials chose to kick off work this weekend because they’re counting on “lighter post-holiday travel” patterns, easing demand for service reaching DCA. Metro made a similar assumption back on Veteran’s Day in closing the National Airport station, only to see huge traffic snarls as frustrated commuters turned to the roads instead.

This latest construction project is aimed at installing new LED lights in all three stations, part of a $50 million project that involves lighting upgrades at all of Metro’s 48 underground stations. WMATA says that stations generally become about six times brighter after the new lights are installed.

The station closures will also let Metro “perform additional track work, including concrete grout pad replacement, installation of radio communication cables and tunnel leak mitigation” at all three locations.

The troubled transit system remains beset by questions of how to best complete needed track work while improving service and luring riders back to its trains. Metro leaders are proposing some key rush hour service increases in WMATA’s new budget, but it remains an open question whether Arlington and other Virginia localities will be able to help pay for those changes.

Photo via WMATA

Harry’s Smokehouse in Pentagon City Mall Shuts Down

By Alex Koma
1/3

Harry’s Smokehouse, a burgers and BBQ restaurant, has now shut its doors in the Pentagon City mall.

Signs posted at the eatery, located near the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City’s Metro entrance, indicate that it’s now permanently closed.

“Thank you for many years of patronage,” the signs read.

Readers told ARLnow that the restaurant has been closed since at least Thursday (Jan. 3).

The restaurant has long been a fixture of the mall’s lower level, starting out as a Harry’s Tap Room before rebranding to a more BBQ-centric menu back in 2011.

There’s no indication yet of what might replace Harry’s in the space.

Amazon Plans to Offer Incentives to Push Future Arlington Employees to Use Public Transit

By Alex Koma

Amazon says it will offer “transit benefits” to its thousands of employees bound for Arlington, in a bid to incentivize workers to rely on the county’s public transportation options once they arrive.

The tech giant has long worked to help employees at its Seattle headquarters afford train and bus rides and ease their commutes, but Amazon officials didn’t initially detail similar plans for the new offices it plans to set up in Crystal City and Pentagon City.

Yet county officials have said recently that they’ve received assurances from Amazon that the company would indeed offer similar benefits in Arlington, and the tech firm has confirmed that plan to ARLnow.

“Consistent with our other corporate offices, Amazon will provide transit benefits for our employees at our new headquarters in Virginia,” Amazon spokesperson Jill Kerr told ARLnow. “Last year alone, we provided $63 million in transit fares for our employees in Seattle.”

Kerr added that “more than half of our employees in Seattle bike, walk or take public transportation to work,” and she expects that the new “National Landing” campus will “allow for similar commuting.”

The move is quite welcome news for county leaders and transit advocates alike, who are anxious to see the tech giant embrace public transportation in the area. Though Metro’s rail service may well have its problems, many around Arlington hope Amazon’s 25,000 workers embrace transit to ease pressure on the county’s congested roads.

“Ideally, Amazon employees here will be like those in Seattle where a significant number live within walking distance of the headquarters,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the transit advocacy-focused Coalition for Smarter Growth. “But for the rest, offering essentially free transit passes is basically the single most powerful thing they could do to make a difference.”

Kerr declined to provide specifics on how the transit benefits will be structured for future Arlington employees. But posts on the crowdsourced employer review site Glassdoor suggest that the company offers free “ORCA” passes for its Seattle workers, giving them unlimited access to public transit options in the city and its surrounding suburbs.

Schwartz hopes that the company pursues a similar strategy in Arlington, considering that Amazon’s new offices in Crystal City and Pentagon City will sit adjacent to a variety of different transit options.

While the area’s Metro stations are the more obvious options for employees, giving them access to the Blue and Yellow lines, the county also operates a bus-rapid transit system between Crystal City and Potomac Yard (which it will soon expand to Pentagon City).

The neighborhood’s Virginia Railway Express station is also located just a few minutes’ walk up Crystal Drive from the company’s planned office space, and the VRE is even weighing an expansion of the station in the coming years. That could put an entrance to the station directly across from a new entrance for the Crystal City Metro station, a project set to be funded largely with state money as part of the proposed Amazon deal that will sit just under one of the company’s buildings.

“They have a very high preference among their employees for multimodal transportation, public transportation, biking, walking, being part of an integrated place that you can get around in a number of ways,” Alex Iams, assistant director of Arlington Economic Development, said during a Dec. 6 question-and-answer session on Amazon. “Pentagon City-Crystal City fits the bill perfectly. You can get on a plane, a train, an automobile, a scooter, all of the amenities.”

But officials do acknowledge that for any drivers glad to see Amazon employees pushed onto public transit, there are also nervous Metro riders who fear crowds of new arrivals. After all, the service already suffers from fairly regular meltdowns leaving huge crowds on platforms during rush hours.

Yet Arlington planners are optimistic that crowds in Crystal City and Pentagon City have died down enough over the years, particularly as military and federal agencies fled the neighborhoods, that there should be plenty of room at the Metro stations near the new headquarters. Metro officials also point to proposals to increase the size of all trains and ramp up rush-hour service as reason for optimism, though Arlington leaders may not be able to find enough cash to afford those improvements just yet.

Of course, county leaders acknowledge that not everyone headed for Amazon HQ can ride Metro. That’s where they hope their work to, eventually, bring Route 1 down to the same grade as other streets in the neighborhood will expand other commuting options as well.

“That’s the desire of the company too, to make it more walkable, bikeable and more connected,” county transportation director Dennis Leach said during the Dec. 6 Q&A.

Photos: ‘Impulse’ and Its Musical, Colorful Seesaws Take Over Pentagon City Parking Lot

By Alex Koma
1/7

Ever seen a light-up, musical seesaw? If not, you might want to swing by a new public art installation in a parking lot sitting on the border of Crystal City and Pentagon City.

Starting last week, the lot became home to “Impulse,” an interactive art display designed to spruce up the previously barren space at the corner of 12th Street S. and S. Eads Street, just across from the Whole Foods grocery store.

The Crystal City Business Improvement District and property owner LCOR teamed up to bring the new exhibit to the area, after it was initially displayed in downtown Montreal, and it’s designed as a “an interactive light and sound experience.”

“It consists of large seesaws whose light intensity and musical tones change when set in motion by visitors,” Crystal City BID Events Manager Cassie Hurley wrote in an email. “This work creates an ephemeral and ever-changing field as the public plays with this urban instrument. Impulse embodies ideas of serialism, repetition, and variation to produce zones of intensity and calm.”

Hurley added that the BID has been working with LCOR recently to make the parking lot a bit more inviting, dubbing it “The Grounds,” with plans to sketch out a full “lineup of new arts and events programming” for the area next year.

“The Crystal City BID is always looking for unique ways to enliven spaces, engage residents and welcome visitors to our community, which makes Impulse an ideal choice for our latest art installation,” BID Executive Director Tracy Gabriel wrote in a statement. “The exhibit energizes the area between Crystal City and Pentagon City, connecting the neighborhoods with light, sound, and excitement, and its whimsical seesaws are a fun way for residents and visitors to socialize and enjoy the season.”

“The Grounds” sits in a section of the neighborhood set to see quite a few changes in the coming years, thanks to Amazon — the space is just across from the “PenPlace” development that the tech giant purchased for one of its new office buildings in the area, and is just a block away from the Metropolitan Park properties where the company will build more space.

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Arlington Employee Inspires New Child Care Policy — Lanette Johnson, an employee at the Pentagon City Best Buy store, is “the inspiration behind Best Buy’s new backup child-care benefit for all full-time and part-time employees. Workers at nearly 1,000 U.S. stores, distribution centers and corporate headquarters have access to 10 days of subsidized care each year through a Best Buy partnership with Care.com.” [Washington Post]

Weekend Rain Drenched Arlington — Arlington was among the parts of the region to see the most rainfall over the weekend. [Twitter]

Small Business Lender Active in Arlington Courts — “On Deck Capital Inc., a publicly traded online small business lender based in New York… which also has Arlington office space… accounted for 7 percent of all [small business] debt collection cases brought to that Arlington County courthouse through September.” [Washington Business Journal]

New Leadership for Arlington NAACP — “The Arlington branch of the NAACP will enter 2019 with a new leadership structure and a commitment to building on recent growth. ‘I’m all about community activism – we will go out and do good things,’ said Julius Spain Sr., who on Dec. 17 was sworn in to serve as president of the 78-year-old local civil-rights organization.” [InsideNova]

Arlington GOP Chief Steps Down — “The Arlington County Republican Committee will enter 2019 on a hunt for prospective candidates – and a hunt for a new chairman, too. Jim Presswood, who has chaired the GOP for nearly three years, announced recently he would be stepping down halfway through his second two-year term due to commitments at work.” [InsideNova, Facebook]

Photo courtesy Crystal Comiskey

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