One month after opening, Andy’s Pizza is the go-to spot in Tysons Galleria for a slice of New York-style pizza.

But now that the holiday rush has settled, the restaurant aims to expand its ambitions and become a go-to spot for a craft beer.

“We’re going to have wine, but we’re really excited about the craft beer,” said Emily Brown, who co-opened the restaurant with her cousin Andy Brown, the co-founder of D.C.-based Eat Pizza. “Mostly it’s from the east coast and particularly local places.”

Brown said the idea of using primarily local beers is in keeping with the theme of Taste of Urbanspace, a food hall that opened in early December after the high-profile collapse of the Isabella Eatery. The core concept of Taste of Urbanspace is opening new locations for local favorites.

Andy’s Pizza offers pizza by the slice, from simple cheese pizza at $3.49 to whole pies loaded with a variety of toppings for $18.99. The restaurant also has caesar salads with croutons borrowed from the Stomping Ground eatery next door.

Brown said her cousin’s passion is for pizza, but her true love is the craft beer scene. Her focus is going to be on maintaining a regularly changing menu, bringing in the newest and highest-profile beers from throughout the area.

She compared the beer scene to the sneaker scene, where people regularly line up to check out the newest release. Brown said the same is true in the beer scene, where connoisseurs congregate outside Richmond breweries to get a sampling of the latest batch. It’s that level of expertise and hipness to the zeitgeist that Brown said she hopes to bring to the bar-side of Andy’s Pizza.

Tysons has something of a chronic nightlife problem, and Brown hopes that some of the new drinking choices at Andy’s Pizza and other spots across the Taste of Urbanspace can help turn the mall’s food court into a social scene.

“If you’re coming in for lunch and you’re into beer, we want to have the kind of menu that will have you coming back in after work,” said Brown.

When the new bar comes online is dependent on when the licenses are approved by state regulator. Andy’s Taste of Urbanspace neighbors Donburi, Sen Khao, and Stomping Grounds are all also applying for alcohol licenses.

When you do come in for that first drink, Brown suggests a crisp pilsner would pair well with the pizza.

Vienna may have its share of controversies, but overall, local residents are apparently pretty big fans of the town.

Last October, the town participated in the National Citizen Survey, a survey aimed at helping local governments understand their citizens’ perspective on their community.

The town received a relatively high amount of feedback, with 695 residents or 45 percent of those surveyed answering.

“Responding residents rated Vienna as excellent or good as a place to raise children (98%), as a place to live (96%), and for quality of life (94%),” according to a Town of Vienna press release. “Nine in 10 Vienna residents would recommend living in the community to someone who asked.”

The survey is conducted by the National Research Center (NRC). In 65 of the 126 categories, local residents rated Vienna higher than residents in comparable communities rated theirs. The highest rated category was for safety-related services.

The four areas Vienna ranked lower than comparable communities were for traffic flow, ease of travel by car, affordable housing, and the number of residents who work in Vienna.

A traveling musical about women’s suffrage, called “19” after the 19th amendment, is stopping in Tysons this weekend for two shows as part of a tour celebrating the upcoming 100th anniversary of the amendment’s passage.

The musical highlights the stories of Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists who fought for the right to vote.

“The inspirational story of these fearless women is brought to life through jazz, spoken word, dance, and audience interaction,” according to the musical’s website.

Tomorrow night (Friday) and Saturday, the show will perform at 1st Stage in Tysons. Each show starts at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students of members of the military.

Later this month, the 1st Stage theater will open “The Brothers Size,” a play by “Moonlight” co-creator Tarell Alvin McCraney about a pair of brothers reuniting in the Louisiana bayou. The play will run from Jan. 31 to Feb. 24.

Photo via Facebook

There’s a handful of design options for the new Vienna police station, but all of the plans being considered by town leaders will double the size of the existing building.

The Vienna Town Council plans to review three proposals for the project from Dewberry Architects Inc. at a meeting on Monday (Jan. 14).

The current station is 11,800 square-feet, while all of the new designs are over 28,400 square feet.

All of the designs extend the station southwest along Locust Street away from Center Street. In addition to new rooms for roll call, interviews,and other daily police-work uses, the new station designs feature a large “community room” and public lobby.

Two of the designs are very similar, both featuring the same distinctive curved meeting room at the Center Street end of the building, but with different parking layouts at the far side of the station.

Price estimates for the project range from $13 million to $15 million, with an estimated construction start date in fall 2020.

The project’s approval was not without some controversy, however. At a Town Council meeting earlier this week, Councilmember Pasha Majdi opposed awarding a contract for project management, saying there were better projects that could be funded instead.

Things are getting better for Tysons’ economy, but slowly.

For offices around Tysons, the boom anticipated with the opening of the Metro in 2014 has been more of a trickle as growth continues at a more sluggish pace than initially anticipated.

The Office Submarket Report on Tysons Corner (their wording, not ours) by Ryan Rauner, an associate broker with Realty Markets, shows a market experiencing steady, if unremarkable, growth.

“Despite slow demand growth at the metro level, some has trickled down to Tysons, helping vacancies improve slightly over the past few years,” the report said. “An explosion in the residential population has not yet been matched by strong office-demand growth, despite four Metro stations opening in the submarket.”

While the expansion of the Capital One facility was a welcome boon, the report notes that most tenants are not actively expanding their footprint and there has been a spate of large move-outs, specifically pointing to public affairs consulting group Interel’s decision to leave Tysons for Washington D.C.’s East End Submarket.

Which isn’t to say there haven’t been plenty of new clients coming into Tysons. Apian announced in April it would be moving to Tysons while Cvent announced it would be expanding its local offices. Facebook is also reportedly looking for space at Tysons II to occupy between 75,000-85,000 square feet.

In 2015, office vacancies in Tysons were near 18 percent. Since then, vacancies have steadily fallen to 15.6 percent. Forecasts for the market show vacancies taking a dip in middle-2019 then continuing a steady decline.

The high supply of office and relatively low demand led office rents in Tysons to face a steep decline from 2012-2014. There’s been some growth there, averaging about 2 percent from 2015-2018, but the report also warned not to view that growth as a trend.

“High vacancies could continue weighing on growth,” the report said. “Rents have continued their increase this year but at a relatively slow pace — as of early December, rents had increased by roughly 2 percent for the year. At the metro level, rents surpassed their pre-recession peak in 2015, but those in [Tysons] are just now reaching that point.”

The report did note that Tysons isn’t alone in its lackluster rent growth, that several other locations across Fairfax have also faced similar low rents.

None of this has slowed construction, however. There was 1.2 million square feet of new office space created between 2014-2017. Last year also saw a record high of office space opening with Capital One’s 975,000 square foot expansion.

The report notes that there are two notable projects underway: The Boro and View at Tysons.

The Boro is anticipated to include 582,000 square feet of new office space. Boro Tower, the main office component of the project, is currently 70 percent pre-leased and is expected to be ready sometime this year.

The View at Tysons is further out in development but is expected to include 570,000 square feet of office space and the region’s tallest building as part of a 2.8 million-square-foot mixed-use development.

Months after a large fire leveled the restaurant, Marco Polo still stands as a burnt out husk on Maple Avenue.

The building had been long vacant and was set to be demolished, even before two teens allegedly set fire to the building as part of a small crime spree.

The site is owned by a limited-liability corporation, Vienna Vision LLC, and was planned to be redeveloped as 8,200 square feet of retail space and 44 townhouse condominiums. The development was approved in 2017.

Town of Vienna staff say a letter has been sent out to representatives of the property’s owners with questions regarding the property and condition, urging them to do something about the building’s “blighted condition.”

After Vienna staff sent a letter requiring action within 30 days, Doug D’Alexander, the property’s developer, applied for a demolition permit on Dec. 16. Additional information about the demolition was requested and no response has been offered by D’Alexander.

Tysons Reporter attempted to contact D’Alexander but has not received any response.

“As part of the development process, the site plan was approved in early December,” said Lynne Coan, communications and marketing manager for the Town of Vienna. “Next steps as part of the [Maple Avenue Commercial] process would be for the project to go before the Board of Architectural Review and for the developer to apply for building permits.”

If no progress is made, the town government could move forward with blight proceedings, where the town would demolish the building and charge the expenses to the property owner.

The area around the West Falls Church Transit Station could start to see some major development soon.

A public meeting is set for Tuesday (Jan. 15) from 7-9 p.m. in the Northern Virginia Center at 7054 Haycock Road to discussed the proposed changes. According to staff at District Supervisor John Foust’s office, more information about the proposed development will be presented at the meeting.

The plan is to allow a mix of uses on property belonging to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and Virginia Tech. The WMATA proposal could include 150,000 square feet of office space, 500 multi-family units in townhomes, and 50,000 square feet of retail. Height limits, currently 45-65 feet, are proposed to go up to 65-85 feet.

Meanwhile, Virginia Tech is looking to add new institutional, office, retail and residential uses to the Northern Virginia Center property southwest of the WMATA property.

Plans for the site allow new development, so long as that work doesn’t interfere with the property’s use as a transit hub and the surrounding road network supports the development without diminishing access to the station.

The plans do not include the Village and Pavillion Condominiums to the southeast along Haycock Road.

In the planning documents, staff said the proposals would encourage a mix of uses in a compact, pedestrian-friendly urban form within a 5-7 minute walk of the station while preserving existing stable neighborhoods near the station.

Photo via Fairfax County Government

It’s not exactly the university regional experts say Tysons needs to thrive, but a local seminary could be moving into a new office across town this year.

Reformed Theological Seminary is currently seeking a permit for a college/university use in an existing office building at 8227 Old Courthouse Road. The new location would be double the size of the school’s current facility at 1651 Old Meadow Road, near the McLean Metro station.

The staff report says administrative staff would be on the site during the day with classes held Monday through Saturday. The site is anticipated to have 45 total full-time students, with up to 30 present at any given time.

The report notes that properties near the site are primarily being developed with office uses. The building is part of the South Old Courthouse subdistrict along the southern edge of Tysons, which acts as sort of a buffer between Tysons and residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of Vienna.

“The vision for this edge is to retain the existing low-rise and low-intensity character, which provides a transition in scale and intensity from mid-rise and high-rise commercial development along Leesburg Pike to adjacent single-family neighborhoods,” staff wrote.

The meeting is tentatively scheduled to be brought to the Planning Commission next Wednesday, Jan. 16, with a review at the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 22.

After a series of noise complaints, Bey Lounge’s live-entertainment permits could once again be on the chopping block.

Bey Lounge, a bar and restaurant at 303 Mill Street with Lebanese cuisine, hookahs, and live music, currently has four pending noise violation charges for incidents across the last several months. Town Attorney Steve Briglia said the most recent violation was this past Saturday (Jan. 5) night.

Briglia said the first case is scheduled to go to court this Monday (Jan. 14), with more court appearances planned for early February.

If the lounge is found guilty of the noise violations, Briglia said his office is planning to present a motion to revoke the site’s conditional use permit to the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA).

“It’s clearly audible,” said Briglia. “Officers are able to hear it on [nearby] streets and across residential lines.”

This isn’t the first time the lounge has gotten into trouble over noise levels. In 2017, the BZA voted unanimously to renew Bey Lounge’s conditional-use permit for live entertainment but required that between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, the noise cannot exceed 51 decibels at the property line.

“We did that once before and there had been some better behavior by Bey Lounge,” said Briglia. “But I think things have changed.”

Discussion at the Vienna Town Council meeting on Monday (Jan. 7) showed that many in the city’s leadership are fed up with the noise violations.

“I fully support revoking the permit,” said Councilmember Pasha Majdi. “It’s not strike three, it’s strike fifteen.”

Photo via Google Maps

It’s true that McLean High School is overcrowded, but following last night’s School Board public hearing on the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), Dranesville District Representative Jane Strauss says plans are in the works to relieve some of the pressure.

The CIP shows McLean High School currently at 114 percent capacity, with projections sending that up to 127 percent by 2022.

Strauss said that she has been in discussion with members of the community about adjusting the school boundaries to relocate some of the older, multi-family units to other schools. With an extensive renovation project just wrapping up in October and a school capacity utilization at 82 percent, Strauss said Langley High School is the best option for relocation.

The school’s renovations began in 2014 and added a new two-story science addition, new gyms, a new library, a fine arts facility, classrooms and more.

“We’ve been talking with the community about this for years,” said Strauss. “We had to wait for the Langley High renovations to finish, but now is the time to begin talking about boundary changes.”

Strauss said shifting boundaries to send students to Langley High School and Cooper Middle School is essential, not only to relieve the current overcrowding, but to prepare for the incoming developments along the Silver Line.

In addition to the changes at the high and middle school levels, Strauss said she plans to propose adding classrooms to Franklin Sherman Elementary School. Franklin Sherman, Strauss said, is the last property in the area that has space to expand without needing zoning changes.

In the long-term, though, Strauss said McLean will need the new elementary schools at Pimmit Hills and Tysons to help deal with long-term population growth fueled by new development. Plans for the schools are in the CIP, but are still years away.

At the hearing, parents from McLean and other schools throughout Fairfax urged border adjustments to offset overcrowding.

“The current enrollment at McLean is 2,255, with a program capacity of 1,983,” said Susan Garrahan, a Langley High School alum with a daughter at McLean High School. “This equates to 14 percent over capacity. The forecast in the draft CIP shows that in the last two years of this five-year plan, McLean will be the most overcrowded high school in the county at 26 to 27 percent over capacity.”

Garrahan said development along the Silver Line will likely continue to bring families with school children into the McLean-area schools.

“Given current conditions and your forecast of serious overcrowding, I was startled to see no concrete proposals to address this situation in this year’s CIP,” said Garrahan. “I have read about your efforts to revise the policies and procedures for boundary adjustments.  This makes me concerned that McLean will get stuck in a holding pattern, overcrowded while procedural matters get ironed out.”

The school newspaper’s October edition described the school overcrowding as leaving students stuffed three to a seat on school buses and teachers traveling with a cart full of supplies because of limited classroom space.

“I ask the board to have the courage to look at school boundaries,” said Keith Foxx, an FCPS parent. “Several reports developed by the School Board mention this as an option, usually at the bottom because it’s not popular. Let’s stop kicking the can down the road, we’re going to have to deal with this.”

On Jan. 17, the McLean High School PTSA will host a meeting in the Lecture Hall with Strauss and Kevin Sneed, a school planner, to discuss the plans to address school overcrowding.