Tysons may not have the liveliest nightlife at the moment, but that could soon change as more late-night restaurants and places to hang out open. “Tysons After Dark” will highlight a different spot every week.

TenPenh serves up contemporary Asian fare with wallet-friendly happy hour bites and drinks.

Around 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday, the bar area was mostly packed with groups of people ordering small bites from the menu, which features a range of Asian cuisines spanning Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Happy hour goers can choose from a wide selection of drinks and $5, $6 and $7 bites. Drinks offered include signature cocktails like the Asian Mojito, Matcha Mule and Frozen Mai Tai, along with $5 draft beer, wine, sake and champagne. Lamb pot stickers, pork belly bao buns and Filipino BBQ pork skewers are some of the 13 small bites on the menu.

The happy hour menu runs from 3-7 p.m. Monday-Friday and for drinks only from 4-7 p.m. on Saturday.

The restaurant itself is inspired by the layout of a traditional Chinese courtyard house and even includes a contemporary moon gate. Each room has its own character, from the outdoor courtyard to the bar with its earth-toned wall decor.

“TenPenh Tysons evokes the sense of a private home of a sophisticated westerner who has lived in Asia and absorbed the serenity of its highest aesthetic: calm, uncluttered, and inviting,” the website says.

Located at 7900 Westpark Drive, the restaurant is less than a 10-minute walk from the Tysons Corner Metro station.

TenPenh is open 5:30-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5:30-11 p.m. on Friday and 4-11 p.m. on Saturday. The restaurant is closed on Sunday.

(Updated at 2:45 p.m.) The Fairfax County Police Department plans to crack down on violations at Scott’s Run Nature Preserve this summer.

The police department posted today (Friday) on Facebook:

In the span of a just a few hours this past Saturday, our officers responded to multiple calls at Scott’s Run Nature Preserve – arresting six people and serving summons to another nine. This is a beautiful park with a lot to offer for our community. We’re reminding you that there’s NO excuse to break posted park rules at Scott’s Run. That includes engaging in prohibited activities such as swimming, littering, illegal and underage drinking, trespassing after dark, etc.

FCPD will work with the Fairfax County Park Authority during the summer to enforce the park’s rules.

This is not the first time the police department has had to step in to help with enforcement at the park.

Lt. Jason Allegra said in a Fairfax County video from 2017 that Fairfax County police helped enforce violations by patrolling the park daily.

Map via Google Maps

A fire is now out in a Falls Church apartment.

Firefighters from the Arlington County Fire Department and Fairfax County Fire and Rescue responded to the apartment fire around 11:30 a.m. today (Friday), ACFD tweeted.

Firefighters quickly extinguished the kitchen fire in a two-story garden apartment in the Falls Chase and Covent Gardens Condominiums (1306 S. Washington Street), the City of Falls Church tweeted at 11:56 p.m.

A westbound lane of traffic on S. Washington Street remains blocked, AFCD tweeted at 12:05 p.m.

The fire marshall is currently investigating the cause of the fire. No injuries were reported.

#Breaking: units from ACFD and @ffxfirerescue on scene of apartment fire in 1100 block of S. Washington St. in @FallsChurchGov pic.twitter.com/PtsNYmjFZB

— Arlington Fire & EMS (@ArlingtonVaFD) June 14, 2019

Photo via Arlington Fire/Twitter

A new book recounts tales about the Town of Vienna from the 1950s to early 2000s.

Marie Kisner, a former public information officer for the Town of Vienna, collected and compiled newspaper stories about Vienna for her newly released book, “Vienna Stories 1950-2000.”

“It basically fell in my lap,” Kisner told Tysons Reporter. In the early 200os, the Town’s clerk office decided to give dozens of boxes of news article clippings to Kisner, who sorted through the clippings.

“I didn’t have to go back and try to find a lot of old timers and pick their brains and see if they could remember these things,” Kisner said.

Originally, Kisner said that she sorted the articles chronologically, but then decided to organize the book by recurring themes, like animals, beautification, businesses, civil rights and politics.

Many of the issues Kisner recounts Vienna residents tackling decades ago — traffic, Tysons Corner’s growing presence and development — are still relevant to locals today.

“People need to know they can’t sit back and hope — hope — that Vienna will stay Vienna,” Kisner said. “I think development has always been like issue #1.”

Kisner said that she not only wrote the book to preserve its history from the news articles, but also to remind current residents of the struggles the town has gone through to maintain its unique character.

“One of the reasons I wrote the book is so people who live in Vienna now who think, ‘Oh what a wonderful town we’ve got,’ they will realize it didn’t happen by accident,” Kisner said. “It took a lot of hard work by a lot of people to make and keep Vienna the way it is, and those same issues keep coming up.”

While Kisner does not cite throughout the book, “Acknowledgements” section includes a list of the news publications that the articles came from:

• “The Washington Post”
• “Washington Evening Star”
• “Washington Business Journal”
• “Fairfax Globe”
• “Fairfax Journal”
• “Northern Virginia Sun”
• “Sentinel”
• “Sound of Vienna”
• “Sun-Gazette”
• “Vienna Viewpoint”
• “Vienna Connection”
• “Vienna Times”
• “Vienna Advertiser”

“My thought was if I cited every single newspaper reference, the book would probably be twice as thick and it would break up the narrative too much,” she said.

Since the book is based on the articles, Kisner decided to refer to herself in the third person, saying “Right now I’m just part of the cast of characters in this book.”

Kisner, who now lives in Texas, is set to come back to Vienna for a book talk and signing next Thursday (June 20) at 7:30 p.m. at the Vienna Community Center (120 Cherry Street SE).

She will also sign books during the Antiques and Collectibles Evaluation event at the Freeman Store (131 Church Street NE) next Saturday (June 22) from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Book lovers and history buffs can buy the book for $12.99 at the Freeman Store. All of the proceeds from the book will go to the town’s historical society.

After a temporary closure, the Aveda salon is open again in Tysons Corner Center.

Tysons Reporter spotted that the salon was closed in April and noticed that it was open again last Wednesday (June 5). Signs said the salon was undergoing renovations.

The national cosmetics company focuses on eco-friendly hair and skin care products.

Aveda is located on the lower level by Nordstrom.

Pedestrians will soon be able to get over I-495 once the Jones Branch Connector’s sidewalk open, connecting North Central to Tysons East.

Currently, the Jones Branch Connector is undergoing construction for a $60 million project that will add two travel lanes and on-street bike lanes in each direction.

“Right now the Jones Branch Connector sidewalk is slated to open mid- to late summer 2019,” Michael Murphy, a  spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Transportation, told Tysons Reporter.

Back in December, the Jones Branch Connector partially opened with one lane of traffic in each direction, but “Sidewalk Closed” signs have kept pedestrians away.

“By providing an alternate route across the Beltway and linking the Tysons East and Central areas, the Connector is expected to relieve traffic along Route 123, at the I-495 interchange, and at other congested intersections,” according to VDOT. “The road is expected to carry more than 32,000 vehicles per day by 2040.”

The project is slated to finish in the fall.

A Severe Thunderstorm Warning is in effect for Fairfax County.

The warning is in effect until 5:30 p.m. today (Thursday) and also covers several surrounding localities across Northern Virginia.

More from the National Weather Service:

At 447 PM EDT, a severe thunderstorm was located over Linton Hall, or 10 miles east of Warrenton, moving northeast at 35 mph.

HAZARD…60 mph wind gusts.

SOURCE…Radar indicated.

IMPACT…Damaging winds will cause some trees and large branches to fall. This could injure those outdoors, as well as damage homes and vehicles. Roadways may become blocked by downed trees. Localized power outages are possible. Unsecured light objects may become projectiles.

NWS recommends that people “move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a building.”

Severe Thunderstorm Warning including Centreville VA, Reston VA, Burke VA until 5:30 PM EDT pic.twitter.com/OYAIqMdN9F

— NWS Baltimore-Washington (@NWS_BaltWash) June 13, 2019

CollabraLink has decided to move to larger office space at the Highline near the Spring Hill Metro station in Tysons.

Started in 2003, CollabraLink provides IT services to federal and commercial clients.

The technology company will move to 22,000 square feet of office space at its current home (8405 Greensboro Drive), according to Newmark Knight Frank, a commercial real estate advisory firm.

“CollabraLink wanted to stay in Tysons but needed a long-term home with the option to grow,” NKF’s Senior Managing Director Chethan Rao said in the press release.

The Highline is a two-building office complex with more than 400,000 rentable square feet on 7.5 acres. The complex includes retail, an outdoor plaza, daycare facility and a fitness center for tenants.

“Location and continuity were extremely important to our firm and the NKF team had a clear understanding of our desire to stay in Tysons,” Rahul Pandhi, CollabraLink’s chief executive officer, said in the press release.

Image via Google Maps

Updated at 1:30 p.m. — Corrects name of the performance venues and updates event information.

The curtains will rise for a new performance venue in Tysons in two years.

Fairfax County announced Tuesday (June 11) that the performance hall, which is a part of Capital One’s redevelopment, will open in September 2021.

Back in July 2017, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved the redevelopment, which includes Wegmans and the Capital One Center.

The 125,000 square-foot Capital One Hall will include a 1,500-seat main hall with an orchestra pit and a 250-seat black box theatre, according to the county.

In addition to hosting Capital One’s corporate events, local nonprofit arts organizations will be able to use the performance spaces for a specified number of days each year through a 30-year agreement with Fairfax County.

Arts organizations can find out more about the user application and scheduling processes for the facilities at a meeting next Wednesday (June 19) from 7:30-9 p.m. at Capital One Headquarters (1600 Capital One Drive). ARTSFAIRFAX and Capital One will give a presentation and have a Q&A session.

To RSVP, contact ARTSFAIRFAX at [email protected] by Monday, June 17.

Image via Fairfax County/Twitter

The Fairfax County Planning Commission greenlighted yesterday (June 12) a proposed senior living facility in Tysons despite concerns from staff about the height, size and open space.

Fairfax County staff recommended denial of the proposed two-tower senior living complex called The Mather.

The proposed building would go 60 feet above the 225-foot maximum. “The excessive height combined with a narrow building footprint oriented diagonally results in a building mass that inconsistent with adjoining structures and overwhelms the street,” according to the staff report.

Staff also took issue with the developer wanting to move the open space from an area on top of the parking garage to a sloping area behind the parking garage.

According to the staff report:

The three major issues noted above are all interrelated and stem from the manner in which the continuing care facility is proposed to be integrated into the existing Arbor Row development. Staff does not object to the concept of a continuing care facility as a use, and in fact, recognizes the services provided by such a facility are both necessary and desirable within Tysons. However, the continuing care facility has been designed in a way that reflects the unique needs of the applicant’s specific business model, and does not reflect the urban design recommendations of both the Comprehensive Plan and the Tysons Urban Design Guidelines.

While Providence District Planning Commissioner Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner called the proposal “one of the most complicated applications the commission will recall,” he ultimately brought forth a motion to approve the project.

Before the vote, Niedzielski-Eichner asked staff to address each of the three major concerns and allowed the applicant’s representative, John McGranahan Jr., to respond.

McGranahan argued that the recommended denial by staff was not considering the proposal’s height and size in the context of the surrounding neighborhood.

A staffer said that the mass of the building was considered to be out of context to the nearby buildings and that the applicant’s desire for more height for operational and financial considerations wasn’t enough justification to go above the maximum height.

Staff and McGranahan also disagreed on the relocation and redesign of the open space.

By the end of the back and forth, Niedzielski-Eichner said he was persuaded by the applicant’s reasoning.

Now that the proposal has a favorable recommendation from the Planning Commission, it heads to Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors.

The project is a part of Cityline Partners LLC’s Arbor Row project near Tysons Galleria, which includes the completed Nouvelle residential building and The Monarch. The development aims to transform the back end of Tysons Galleria along Westpark Drive into a suite of mixed-use buildings.