Virginia Highlands Park

Kaine, Planned Parenthood Hold Rally in Arlington

By ARLnow.com

Former Virginia governor and current U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine (D) was among the notable political figures who took the podium at a rally for Planned Parenthood in Arlington over the weekend.

Planned Parenthood’s “Women are Watching” bus tour stopped at Virginia Highlands Park near Pentagon City on Sunday morning. With a bright pink bus as a backdrop, Kaine told the crowd that he was committed to pro-choice policies and against efforts to place restrictions on birth control.

“Often, these issues are pushed by the other side as wedge issues. They want to use wedge issues that divide us,” Kaine said. “Women’s lives are not political issues, women’s lives are not wedge issues. Women have the ability to make their own health care decisions and their own moral decisions.”

Kaine was joined at the rally by several local Democratic elected officials, including County Board member Walter Tejada, state Senator Janet Howell, Del. Charniele Herring, and Arlington Commissioner of Revenue Ingrid Morroy.

Howell and Herring spoke of some of the bills pushed by Republicans during the latest legislative session in Richmond, including a bill that originally would have required women seeking an abortion to receive a transvaginal ultrasound. (The bill was amended to only require an external ultrasound after it made national headlines.) Also discussed was the more recent controversy over remarks by Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Akin falsely suggested that the female body “has ways to shut… down” and prevent a pregnancy during a “legitimate rape.”

Charniele told the crowd of more than 100 Planned Parenthood supporters that politicians should be required to have a basic understanding of biology before they try to legislate on it.

While politics dominated the rally, not everything discussed was of a political nature.

One of the speakers was a young female immigrant who was diagnosed with breast cancer during a Planned Parenthood screening. She spoke of how, though she lacked health insurance, the organization provided the support and financial assistance she needed to get a mastectomy and emerge from treatment cancer-free.

Kaine will face Republican George Allen on the Nov. 6 ballot in Virginia.

Photos courtesy Kaine for Virginia and Cliffords Photography, as labeled

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Virginia Highlands Sprayground Won’t Open Until 2013

By ARLnow.com

The proposed sprayground at Virginia Highlands Park is behind schedule and likely will not open until next year.

County officials say the project schedule has been extended while they take “some additional measures to ensure cleaner water enters the storm sewer from the sprayground.” That may be a disappointment to residents who were hoping to have a new place for their kids to cool off this summer.

We reported in 2010 that the sprayground — the county’s most elaborate water park yet — was originally scheduled to open by Memorial Day 2012. Now, we’re told, the county hopes to begin construction late this summer, which will allow the sprayground to open on Memorial Day weekend 2013.

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Soccer Field to Close for Summer — The synthetic turf field at Virginia Highlands Park, used extensively for soccer games, is expected to be closed for much of the spring and summer so that the turf can be replaced. [Sun Gazette]

Church to Celebrate 50th Anniversary — St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (4250 N. Glebe Road) will be holding a concert next weekend to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The concert, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 12. [Falls Church News-Press]

Arlington Man Killed by Dump Truck — Prince George’s County Police are investigating the death of an Arlington County man who was hit by a dump truck in Capitol Heights on Wednesday evening. [Gazette.net]

Rugby, Hockey Come to the Parks and Parking Lots of Crystal City

By ARLnow.com

Crystal City may not seem like an obvious venue for team sports, but don’t tell that to the growing number of players who compete in sports leagues in and around the neighborhood.

Starting this year, a few new sports will start to be played in the shadows of the office towers and high-rise hotels that line Jefferson Davis Highway. Among them: street hockey, rugby and outdoor volleyball.

An “old school” street hockey league is currently accepting new player and team registrations. The co-ed league will play on Thursday nights from May through July at a surface parking lot near the corner of 20th Street and S. Bell Street. The league’s start date — May 5 — is set to coincide with the Crystal City’s Fit Week.

A co-ed touch rugby league will play its first game Saturday afternoon, at a park on Eads Street near Ft. Scott Drive. The leagues is still in open registration for individual players.

Registration for an outdoor volleyball league at Virginia Highlands Park (1600 S. Hayes Street) started last week. The 6v6 league will supplement an indoor volleyball league that is played at Sport & Health Club Crystal Gateway (1235 S. Clark Street).

All the leagues are run by the Arlington Athletic and Social League. AASL is also running an indoor dodgeball and a women’s 3 on 3 basketball league in Crystal City this spring. Both sports are in open registration for individuals.

Photo courtesy DC Social Sports

Trees to Be Added to Narrower Pentagon City Street

By ARLnow.com

Newly-narrowed South Joyce Street in Pentagon City is losing a few parking spaces to make way for trees.

Over the winter, crews narrowed the portion of Joyce Street from 15th Street to 16th Street. A sidewalk was added to the side of the road facing Virginia Highlands Park, and the width of the street was reduced from 40 feet to about 35 feet.

The changes were intended as traffic calming measures. Narrower streets, the county says, encourage drivers to slow down.

To slow traffic down even more, Arlington has added six car-length planters — three on either side of the street. Trees will be planted in the planters, which each take up what was once a parking space.

“They serve to visually narrow the roadway on a very long stretch that is not interrupted by intersections,” said Traffic Engineering and Operations Bureau Chief Wayne Wentz.

Wentz said that while one side of the street has cars parked on it throughout the day, the other side sometimes lacks parked cars. The empty parking spaces, in turn, make the street appear wider and result in people speeding up. The planters, Wentz said, will do the job of calming traffic even when parked cars aren’t present.

Wentz noted that the roadwork actually added two parking spots to South Joyce Street, so the net loss of parking is only four spots. But one resident worried that park-goers may soon be forced to leave their cars in the adjacent neighborhood.

“Those barriers on the side take up parking spots that fill up quickly during softball season!” said the resident. “I live at South Joyce and 20th and you can bet neighbors will be complaining about increased parking in their neighborhood.”

The construction was paid for by money set aside by the developer of the nearby Pentagon Row shops.

“The changes to Joyce Street were actually development conditions of Pentagon Row,” Wentz said.

Wentz expects the trees to be planted by mid-April. The county’s arborist will decide which type of tree will be planted. In addition to the six planters on the side of the road, road crews also added a planter in the middle of the road at a pedestrian crossing.

Sprayground Planned for Virginia Highlands Park

By ARLnow.com

Update on 3/23/12 — This project has been delayed, according to Arlington County.

Virginia Highlands Park is in line to get the county’s most elaborate sprayground park yet.

The spiral-shaped park takes elements of Arlington’s existing sprayground parks, as well as elements from other water parks around the country. It will be located in a corner of the park, near the volleyball and basketball courts.

As planned right now, the park will feature water cannons, buckets that fill and dump water on anyone below them, mini waterfalls, small pools of water for play, bubblers, interactive locks and dams, jumping water jets and a boulder wall dividing the active and passive play areas in the park. The boulder wall will also provide a place to sit during the off-season.

The sprayground will be partially bordered by a rain garden, which will benefit from the park’s runoff. Other excess water would be directed to a large underground tank, which could then be used for irrigation or for the park’s toilets.

Funding for the park is still in question. An official who gave a presentation to the Aurora Highlands Civic Association last night suggested that the construction could be paid for with Neighborhood Conservation funds while the county tries to secure other funding.

If all goes according to plan, the park will be open in time for Memorial Day 2012. (Sprayground parks are open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Recently park hours were reduced, but it sounds like the county is confident that normal hours will be restored by 2012.)

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Signs of Spring

By ARLnow.com

After the snowiest winter on record, signs of spring finally arrived this weekend.

At Virginia Highlands Park in Pentagon City on Sunday, the county’s snow melter sat idle as 60 degree weather ate away at the monstrous piles of dirty snow surrounding the parking lot.

Soccer, football, tennis and basketball were all being played, with most of the participants emboldened enough by the mild temperatures to ditch their jackets and track pants for shorts and t-shirts.

Squirrels scurried about, digging for acorns and heading for high tree branches when one was found.

It’s a scene that’s sure to be repeated, with sunny days in the mid- to low-sixties predicted for much of the week.