Virginia Square

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Developer Wants to Build Pedestrian Bridge in Virginia Square — The Dittmar Company told the Ashton Heights Civic Association that it wants to build an enclosed, elevated pedestrian bridge between the two buildings of its massive proposed “Virginia Square Towers” development. An underground connection is not possible, the company says, because it plans to build one large, continuous parking lot under the two buildings. [TBD]

Arlington Elementary Schools Receive Top State Education Award — Arlington Science Focus, Arlington Traditional and Nottingham Elementary have all received the 2011 Governor’s Award of Educational Excellence, the state’s highest honor under its Virginia Index of Performance awards program. Seven other Arlington elementary schools have been recognized by the Virginia Board of Education for making “significant progress” in student achievement. [Arlington Public Schools]

Nominees Requested for Women of Vision Awards — The county’s Commission on the Status of Women  is seeking nominations for its 2011 Women of Vision Awards, which will be held in Ballston on March 10. Nomination forms must be submitted by Feb. 10. [Arlington County]

Flickr pool photo by Kevin H

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Rhodeside Grill Owners Eying Restaurant on the Pike — The owners of Rhodeside Grill and Ragtime are close to signing a deal to open a restaurant on the ground floor of the Sienna Park apartment building, across from Bob and Edith’s Diner, reports the new Pike Wire blog. [Pike Wire]

Most Board Member Assessments Stay the Same — All Arlington County board members are homeowners. But most bucked the upward trend in residential assessments this year. Of the five county board members, one saw his assessment fall, three saw their assessment stay the same, and one saw her assessment rise dramatically. [Sun Gazette]

Developer to Discuss Va. Square Apartment Project — A representative from the Dittmar Company will discuss its recently-announced Virginia Square Towers project at tonight’s Ballston-Virginia Square Civic Association meeting. Representatives from the county’s finance office will also be on hand to discuss the upcoming county budget process. [BVSCA]

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

New Development Planned in Virginia Square — The Dittmar Company has submitted plans for a two-tower, 500-unit apartment complex two blocks east of the Virginia Square Metro station. [TBD]

Meade Street Bridge Study Underway — Residents gathered at Arlington Temple United Methodist Church last night to discuss possible improvements to the Meade Street Bridge and adjacent intersections. County planners are looking at ways to make the bridge safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. They’re also seeking ways to improve the aesthetics of the bridge, which connects Rosslyn and North Lynn Street with the Fort Myer Heights neighborhood across Route 50. [Ode Street Tribune]

Remember the First Five Guys on Columbia Pike? — Fast-growing burger chain Five Guys is now based in Lorton, but the company has roots in Arlington. The first Five Guys opened in 1986 in the Westmark Shopping Center at the corner of Glebe Road and Columbia Pike. [Pike Town Center]

Flickr pool photo by Chris Reed

New Food Truck Launches In Virginia Square Today

By ARLnow.com

Today is the first day in business for Bada Bing Cheesesteaks and Spiedies, a new Arlington-based food truck.

What is a Spiedie, you ask? It’s an upstate New York delicacy — a sandwich made with marinated meats cooked over an open flame.

While the truck’s name doesn’t exactly convey an aura of culinary sophistication, the man behind Bada Bing is Nicholas Terzella, a trained chef whose resume includes fine dining restaurants in Napa Valley and Palm Beach.

Terzella, who has also worked as a private chef for an actress in Manhattan (he won’t name names), says he will be serving gourmet seasonal side dishes in addition to sandwiches. Needless to say, it’s not often that you hear the words “truffle oil” uttered by a tough-looking guy selling cheesesteaks out of the side of a truck.

Terzella, a Centreville resident, says he’ll be operating the truck as a full-time business in Arlington, though he’s hoping to eventually start selling in the District once the DC government starts issuing vendor licenses again.

Bada Bing will be stationed outside the Virginia Square Metro station tonight and tomorrow. Next week the truck will start on a regular rotation around Ballston, Clarendon, Rosslyn and Crystal City.

More photos after the jump.

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Vandalism in Virginia Square Neighborhood

By ARLnow.com

A tipster tells us that houses, cars, a fence and a park were all vandalized in a neighborhood in the northern part of Virginia Square.

The vandal used blue paint to deface property in the area late Tuesday night.

We spotted what remained of the blue paint on a white picket fence at the corner of North Lincoln Street and 14th Street. Also, blue writing was scrawled on a building in Hayes Park, two blocks away.

EXCLUSIVE: Video Shows Rescue at Va. Square Metro Station

By ARLnow.com

Dimas Pinzon was dubbed (by us) the Virginia Square Metro Hero after he jumped to the track and stepped over two electrified rails to come to the aid of a man who had fallen in the path of an incoming Metro train.

What Mr. Pinzon did was certainly well-intentioned and brave. But was his act of heroism also incredibly ill-advised?

Surveillance video obtained by ARLnow.com sheds new light on the incident.

The video starts out with a man, who was suffering some sort of medical emergency, walking toward the edge of the platform in a daze. He falls onto the track just as the platform lights begin blinking, signaling the arrival of a train.

Immediately, people at the station jump into action. Good Samaritans on either side of the station sprint toward the train, frantically waving their arms. Mr. Pinzon, in a blue shirt on the opposite platform, points to the crawlspace under the platform, urging the fallen man to get under it to avoid being hit by the train.

The train, however,  slows as it enters the station. As it’s coming to a stop, Pinzon jumps down to the trackbed. He steps on the flimsy cover board of both electrified rails, and comes to the man’s aid. Another would-be hero jumps down to the track, but turns around after a brief stare-down with the third rail.

Pinzon, meanwhile, helps to lift the injured man onto the platform, where other Metro customers evaluate his injuries. Another man helps Pinzon himself get back up to the platform.

Hours later, our interview with Pinzon is published and NBC4 also airs a story on the rescue.

It’s a happy ending, but Metro spokesperson Ron Holzer says it could have taken a much more tragic turn. Had Pinzon tripped while jumping down to the platform, for instance, he would have landed on the third rail and been electrocuted by 750 volts of electricity. Pinzon’s decision to step on the third rail cover was also fraught with danger.

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Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

It’s September — Start mourning the end of summer now — and get to the pool while you still can.

Man Goes Bananas in the Vegetable Aisle — Police are trying to find a man who walked into the Virginia Square Giant, spit on the vegetable display, sprayed hand lotion on a candy display, and assaulted a cashier. He’s described as a six-foot tall, 30-year-old white male with a ponytail. More from TBD.

A “Tree Tragedy” in Ballston — This is an older item that was just brought to our attention. Last month workers at Ballston Common Mall went overboard while pruning trees along the sidewalk, resulting in an incident our tipster referred to as the “Ballston Tree Massacre.” A member of a local group called the Tree Stewards apparently tried to intervene, but was ignored by the crew. The end result of the overzealous pruning: ugliness and death.

Photos from Capital Bikeshare Station Installation — The first of the 114 planned Capital Bikeshare stations was installed near the Crystal City Metro station yesterday morning. The Commuter Page Blog has photos of the installation.

Flickr pool photo by BrianMKA

The Virginia Square Metro Hero Speaks

By ARLnow.com

The first thing Dimas Pinzon did when we got him on the phone was ask if we knew how the guy he helped to save was doing (he’s okay).

A day earlier Pinzon — a.k.a. the man in the blue dress shirt — had jumped into the path of a Metro train to come to the aid of a man who fell on the tracks while having an epileptic seizure. Then, after the train stopped short and he had helped to hoist the nearly 200 pound man to safety, Pinzon gathered the papers he had dropped on the ground and casually got on a train toward Union Station.

It’s hard to imagine a more ideal hero under the circumstances. Pinzon, 57, is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. His father, an electrical worker for the New York City transit authority, used to take him on the subway and teach him about the dangers of the electrified “third rail.” Despite knowing the dangers, Pinzon hurtled two electrified rails in his effort to get the victim to safety.

It all started around 12:15 p.m. Pinzon noticed people screaming on the other side of the station and saw that a man had fallen onto the tracks. At the far end of the station, the light of an arriving train was becoming brighter. Sure that the train was going to hit the man, Pinzon called out for him to lie in the crawl space between the track and the platform. The victim, dazed and in pain, slowly started to get up, but was not getting under the platform.

“I saw that the train was slowing down, and I saw the guy standing up and he was wobbling around, so it was like, this guy’s going to fall back or something bad is going to happen,” Pinzon said. “I just said to hell with it, someone’s gotta get to him.”

He jumped onto the track, stepped over both third rails, hurried over to the man and put him in a bear hug. With the help of two people on the platform, Pinzon lifted the man to safety. After being helped back to the platform himself, he asked the station manager to call 911. With the man being taken care of by the other riders, Pinzon collected his papers and went back to the other side of the station, where he boarded a train to Union Station.

“My job was done, and I figured I’d go on with my business,” he said.

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Will The Virginia Square Hero Please Step Forward?

By ARLnow.com

Update at 2:30 p.m. — We found him, and we’re hoping he can get permission from his employer to talk with us. Thanks, everybody.

We’re trying to get in touch with the guy who risked life and limb yesterday to help save a man who had fallen on the tracks at the Virginia Square Metro station. We’d love to find out how he had the courage to jump in the path of an arriving train, and how he got the idea to roll in the space under platform had the train not stopped short.

All we know about this gentleman is that he was wearing a blue dress shirt and that he left on a train — without much fanfare, it seems — shortly after incident.

Man Falls Onto Track at Virginia Square Station

By ARLnow.com

Firefighters and paramedics responded to the Virginia Square Metro station this afternoon, after a Metro employee rider had an epileptic seizure and fell onto the trackbed.

Other customers immediately came to the man’s aid and helped him get back up to the platform according to WMATA spokesperson Ron Holzer. An Orange Line train was arriving at the station the time of the incident, but came to a stop before it reached the fallen man. Power to the third rail was turned off shortly after he fell, Holzer said.

The incident happened around 12:15 p.m. When paramedics arrived they applied a neck brace and loaded the victim onto a stretcher, according to scanner reports.

One witness shared this harrowing account of incident in the comments below:

The man was waiting for the Vienna train. He appeared to be mid-twenties, about 200 lbs, wearing a backpack. He appeared disoriented then started toward the tracks. Someone yelled “watch out watch out”. The lights were blinking because the Vienna train was coming. The man stepped out into thin air and fell forward onto the nearest of the two tracks. The track got him right in the ribs, and he lay there.

Some people started yelling “get up get up”, and others ran toward the tunnel exit, waving at the Vienna train to stop. A man in a blue dress shirt on the New Carrollton/Franconia side dropped his papers and jumped into the track bed. The victim was saying “I can’t move” but he slowly got up. Blue dress shirt hopped to the Vienna side just as the victim was getting to his feet. Blue dress shirt was standing behind the victim, bear-hugging him. He was maneuvering the victim toward the platform when the train emerged from the tunnel and came to a stop about 100′ from the where they were.

(The train peeked out of the tunnel by about 30′. I was surprised that the train was able to stop so quickly – apparently the driver responded to the people waving and/or saw the two people on the tracks. There was no screeching of brakes or anything that I noticed – the train appeared to stop pretty comfortably with room to spare.)

Two people who were working on the Vienna-side escalator grabbed an arm each and pulled the victim from the trackbed. Blue dress shirt pulled himself out onto the Vienna platform. The victim was laid down on his back with his head propped up. He was saying “my back my back”. A female metro employee with a walkie-talkie appeared and reported on the situation.

After multiple assurances, the victim stopped panicking and was able to relay a phone number to the metro employee. Blue dress shirt called across for somebody to grab his papers. The man nearest did so, and blue dress shirt crossed back to the New Carrollton/Franconia side. The Franconia train, which had stopped, emerged slowly from the tunnel, parked, and opened its doors to take on passengers. Blue dress shirt boarded the train. He had two knuckles on his right hand that were badly swollen. He guessed that he had accidentally punched the concrete when he grabbed the victim. He said that his plan had been to pull the man beneath the platform as the train pulled up. Luckily we never found out if this plan would have been successful.

Get Ready For the Ballston-Virginia Square Patch

By ARLnow.com

Internet giant AOL is rolling out a local news site devoted exclusively to the Ballston-Virginia Square area. The Ballston Patch will launch on September 13 with a paid, full-time editor at the helm.

As we first reported in February, AOL has been planning on launching dozens of its Patch local news sites in the DC area. Then in May, we noted that the company was hiring editors for two different Patches in Arlington. A “Rosslyn-Court House-Clarendon” Patch may still be in the works, but so far it’s not listed as “coming soon” on the Patch web site.

Over here at ARLnow.com, we’re taking the competition for neighborhood news in stride. So we want to know: what sort of stories in the Ballston-Virginia Square area should we cover that we’re not already covering? What events should we be adding to the events calendar? Please let us know in the comments section.

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