If you want to help make your community a better place, VolunteerFest 2018 is the place to get started.

VolunteerFest is an annual week of community service throughout Fairfax County and the Washington, D.C. area on Saturday, Oct. 27. Hundreds of volunteers are mobilized to help nonprofits on projects they would not have the time or resources to handle on their own.

In McLean, volunteers are requested to help plant hundreds of native plants at the Marie Butler Leven Preserve.

Over the last year, Buddhist-environmentalist group Earth Sangha has worked to remove invasive plants from the forest’s edge. Now, Earth Sangha is requesting help from volunteers to restore native plants that local wildlife relies on to survive.

The event runs from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. The maximum number of volunteers for the effort is 25, with ten spaces remaining. Parking is available at the site but it is not Metro or wheelchair accessible.

Volunteers are asked to wear sturdy shoes and long pants. Work gloves and a bottle of drinking water are also encouraged. Earth Sangha will provide tools, gloves for those that don’t have them, a water cooler for refills and snacks.

In Tysons, volunteers are requested to beautify the Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library. The event will run from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday.

Outside, volunteers will improve the outdoor landscape by trimming plants around the parking lot and doing general litter pick-up. Inside, volunteers will clean the meeting room tables and chairs. 

Volunteers are requested to wear comfortable clothes that can get dirty and closed toe shoes.

Photo via Earth Sangha

Fairfax County is looking to turn the forests around the Beltway-Arlington Boulevard interchange into Merrifield’s newest urban center.

The Merrifield Suburban Center Task Force meets for the first time tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 7 p.m. in the Inova Conference Center at 3225 Gallows Road. The group is tasked with developing recommendations for the land surrounding the interchange on three sides.

At the July 31 meeting, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors initiated a process to review land use for 203 acres of land in the vicinity. Mixed-use office, hotel, and residential are all being considered as potential choices for development.

The portion of the site to the northeast of the interchange is Fairview Park North, a parcel of land mostly wooded except for a Northrop Grumman headquarters and a few other office buildings.

Fairview Park South, across Arlington Boulevard, is the smallest parcel of land and is mostly unused land north of the Falls Church Marriott. The southwest parcel is a wooded area surrounding the Inova Center for Personalized Health, which will remain on site.

At tomorrow’s meeting, the Task Force is scheduled to review the existing conditions of the site. Transportation issues is the topic for a subsequent meeting scheduled for Nov. 13. A full schedule meetings is available online.

The group is expected to deliver a final recommendation to the Board of Supervisors on April 23, 2019.

Photos via Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning

Bootique will return to Merrifield this Thursday (Oct. 25) night, offering an evening of deals and treats.

The Mosaic District’s annual Halloween event will take place from 5-7 p.m, during which time local stores will be giving out candy to trick-or-treaters. At 7 p.m., attendees are invited to settle in at Strawberry Park for a screening of Monsters Vs. Aliens on the large screen outside the Angelika Film Center.

Maps will be available and stores will have signs saying if they are giving out candy. The following stores are confirmed to be trick-or-treating candy stops:

• Cheestique
• District Dumplings
• Mint Nail Lounge
• Tiny Dancers
• Muse Paint Bar
• Neiman Marcus Last Call
• Caboose
• Scout and Molly
• Undeniable Boutique
• Oath Pizza
• Jinya Ramen
• The Shade Store
• Fair Trade Winds
• lululemon athletica
• Lather
• Nook
• Le Pain Quotidien
• Puree
• Lou Lou
• Matchbox
• Kendra Scott
• Ted’s Bulletin
• Arielle Shoshana
• Williams Sonoma
• 520 Ice Cream

Photo via Facebook

Cava, a Bethesda-based Mediterranean restaurant chain, has just opened in Tysons at 8350 Leesburg Pike.

The restaurant officially opened today (Monday) near the Greensboro Metro. The Cava is located right next door to Honeygrow, a stir-fry restaurant that opened last month.

The Cava on Leesburg Pike will be open daily from 10:45 a.m.-10 p.m. Be warned though, despite the large lot in Pike 7 Plaza, parking tends to fill up quickly around lunch.

This isn’t the first Cava in the area, with locations in Vienna, McLean and another inside Tysons Corner Center. The chain has been expanding rapidly over the last year, including a deal in August that led to the company acquiring Texas-based Mediterranean chain Zoës Kitchen.

This Saturday (Oct. 27) Fairfax County residents will have a chance to safely and anonymously rid themselves of all those old pills stockpiled in the medicine cabinet.

Those in the Tysons area can dump their unused or expired medicine at the McLean district police station at 1437 Balls Hill Road free of charge from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The drop off is only taking pills and liquids, no needles or pressurized canisters.

Other FCPD stations will also be open for drop offs.

Getting rid of unused or expired medicine is important, as abuse, misuse or accidental poisoning can lead to serious health problems, but simply washing the pills down the drain or throwing them away can lead to environmental issues when the medicine filters into a body of water.

Last year’s Operation Medicine Cabinet Clean-Out collected a total 2,623 lbs of drugs across the county, with 264 lbs collected in the McLean district.

For those with a substance abuse issue, services are available in Fairfax via:

• Emergency Services (24/7) – 703-573-5679 (TTY 711)
• Fairfax Detoxification Center (24/7) – 703-502-7000 (TTY 703-322-9080)
• CSB Entry & Referral Services – 703-383-8500
• Call 911 for life-threatening emergencies

One week after a fire gutted the abandoned Marco Polo restaurant on Maple Avenue, there’s still no answer for what caused the blaze.

At a Town Council meeting on Oct. 15, Vienna Chief of Police James Morris said the fire was reported around 2 p.m. on Sunday, and by 3:16 p.m. the flames under control. The building was vacant and there were no injuries in the fire, but the building itself is a complete loss.

Morris said throughout the week there have been complaints of kids hanging around gawking at the site. Even when the building was intact though, Morris said there was some unsavory activity at the site.

“The property itself has had broken windows and significant vandalism of buses in the back lot. There has been a lot of activity around that building.”

Battalion Chief Willie Bailey said it’s not uncommon for fire investigations to take over a week, with variables being size of the structure and the level of damage.

Before the fire, the building had been planned for demolition to make way for a new development approved on May 7 this year.

The site has been home to a number of buildings since 1900, but the recently-burned one had been located there since 1954. Local developer Doug D’Alexander applied to have the lot redeveloped in 2015, but a protest petition meant the Town Council would have to vote 6-1 in favor of development. In the end, the development fell one vote short.

D’Alexander returned in 2017 with a more scaled down version of the development called Vienna Market. The new development would consist of 8,200 square feet of retail space with 44 townhouse condominiums. The development was unanimously approved at the meeting.

Tysons Reporter was unable to reach D’Alexander, so the timeline for the development and the impact of the fire on redevelopment plans are currently, like the cause of the fire, still unknown.

The Tysons Biergarten is looking to close out what’s likely the last Oktoberfest in its current location (8346 Leesburg Pike) with a bang.

Tomorrow (Saturday), the Biergarten will host its Oktoberfest Finale Festival from 3-7 p.m. The festival will feature live music, outdoor games, and face painting as well as the Oktoberfest standards of beer and German food.

While the beer drinking is adults only, the Biergarten will have other activities like a moon bounce and a kids corner for the rest of the family.

Tickets to the finale are $20 if ordered online or $30 at the door, with each ticket including ten tokens for various beers. A full list of beers is available at the event’s Facebook page.

The Oktoberfest tradition will likely continue wherever the beer hall travels, the Tysons Biergarten itself will be relocating down the road to the area around the McLean Metro station, the next stop on the Silver Line.

Even The Fallstead’s biggest proponents admitted there were times it looked like the 82-unit affordable housing complex for seniors was never going to open.

But yesterday (Thursday), after over a decade of planning and struggling to find funding, The Fallstead at Lewinsville Center in McLean opened its doors at 1609 Great Falls Street to the public.

The Fallstead is an independent senior living community, with 72 one-bedroom and 10 two-bedroom rental units available to persons 62 years of age or older with a household income at or below 50 percent of area median income (AMI). Of those units, 10 percent are fully accessible for individuals with mobility impairments and two percent are accessible for individuals with vision and hearing impairments.

In addition, the complex also has amenities like a fitness center, a library, a community garden and more.

The Fallstead is a result of public-private partnerships between the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Wesley Hamel Lewinsville LLC, itself a partnership between Wesley Housing Development Corporation and Hamel Builders.

“It was a dream, and at times a nightmare, but we’re here,” said Supervisor John Foust. “We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. It’s been a very long journey.”

Foust said for years, the cost of redeveloping the parcel of land owned by Fairfax County into an affordable housing facility was not considered feasible. But Foust said that changed as the County looked into developing it as a public-private partnership.

“In McLean it can be a challenge for [older] citizens to find housing,” said Foust. “That need is only growing.”

At the grand opening, guests, neighbors, and new residents were led on a tour of the facility.

“It’s wonderful to have this finished,” said Jan Auerbach, a nearby resident. “These 82 units are terrific, and we need more, but I can’t complain.”

Auerbach and many other visitors said they were excited for the Lewisville Senior Center currently under construction behind The Fallstead. The Lewisville Senior Center is scheduled for completion in Spring 2019.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Mark Finks, a nearby resident. “There’s been years of talk, now it’s finally here. After all the noise and dirt, it’s great to come here and see it. It looks nice and there’s such a need for it in our community.”

Aurora Singletary is scheduled to move into the The Fallstead soon and said she was delighted to walk around and look at the facility.

“It feels really great to be here,” said Singletary. “My daughter drove by in February and saw the ad for senior housing… When I came in, I thought it was absolutely beautiful. I won’t even have to take the bus to work out, it will be right here near the courtyard.”

Singletary moved to the area recently from Portland. She said one of her favorite things about the facility — apparently in contrast to her previous housing arrangement in the Pacific Northwest — is the fact that it doesn’t reek of marijuana in every room.

The Tysons branch of The Container Store, a national chain of stores selling all types of storage and organization supplies, is moving across the street this weekend.

The store is relocating from 8508 Leesburg Pike to 8459 Leesburg Pike near the Best Buy on Route 7. While the distance is slight, the new location promises a completely new feeling for the store.

In a press release, the Container Store announced the new store will include a revamped store design with unique interactive technology elements that aim to make shopping for containers more convenient and customized. This store will be the first of a “new generation” of container shopping, following on a prototype store that opened in Dallas in June, the company said

The location opens at 10 a.m. this Saturday (Oct. 20). The opening weekend will include giveaways every hour on the hour, including a $1,000 Elfa custom closet with installation, both Saturday and Sunday.

The Container Store is also hiring new full-time and seasonal employees, with applications available online.

Photo via The Container Store

(Updated at 9 p.m.) Some 425 people attended today’s Social Media Week Fairfax event in Tysons, absorbing insights and ideas for anyone working in social media, marketing or startups.

The event, hosted by Fairfax County Economic Development Authority at Capital One headquarters, was a one-day convention of panels and networking that primarily focused on how businesses, large and small, engage on social media.

The keynote speaker and celebrity for the PR world was Judy Smith, a crisis management expert and the inspiration for the show Scandal. The biggest points Smith highlighted were speed and tone of responses to calamity.

“There’s an appreciation of mistakes when you embrace it and you own it,” said Smith.

Smith said organizations often wait more — sometimes much more — than 45 minutes before responding to an incident, by which time public opinion has already started to form.

One cause, according to Smith, is that companies can get tangled up in communications between different departments. Companies can also be slow to admit the whole truth, while Smith says the best answer is usually just to let all of the bad news come out at once like tearing off a Band-aid.

“You also have to pick the best time and vehicle to respond,” said Smith. “There was a CEO who apologized in 15 posts on Twitter. Given the seriousness of the matter, I would not have responded to that on Twitter. If a food company has a massive recall where people are sick or dying, I wouldn’t tweet ‘sorry about the bad food.'”

Smith said part of working in crisis management is working on controlling the narrative. In her own life, when the producers on Scandal approached her about adding in an intimate relationship between her character and the President, Smith said she got on the phone with President George H.W. Bush, for whom she had worked as a press secretary, to let him know.

Smith said when President Bush called her back and left a voicemail, joking that “you called me” and “you left me,” she fired back that he couldn’t make jokes about that.

“If you don’t follow these talking points,” Smith recalled telling Bush, “I will call Barbara.”

These days, Smith said things are moving faster in social media, saying her largest concern is that the population seems to have increasing difficulty discerning fact from fiction.

“One year ago, there was something I was looking at on social media and it was trending too fast,” Smith said. “When my team checked, it was because the other side had hired two bot companies to tweet about it. That’s how it went from zero to five million tweets in two minutes.”

Despite the prevalence of untruth on social media, Amanda Waas and Tammy Abraham from National Geographic emphasized the importance of being genuine.

“People can see right through anything on social media,” said Tammy Abraham. “If you’re not authentic, if it doesn’t feel true, everyone knows it.”

To this end, Abraham said that the National Geographic’s Instagram account is handled almost exclusively by photographers in the field. There are general guidelines, but Abraham said letting photojournalists have unfiltered access to the social media has helped build a following for the brand.

This extends to working with sponsored content as well.

“We’re not just going to post an ad,” said Waas. “Even for branded content, it needs to follow certain guidelines.”

“We have to find a common place to tell an authentic story,” said Abraham. “We can’t tap into an authentic story without something meaningful to tell.”