Police have arrested five people after a robbery and assault in Tysons on Wednesday.
According to a police report, a group came into the Burlington (8355 Leesburg Pike), stole merchandise, and attacked an employee with pepper spray before fleeing in a sedan with a small child.
Police said officers tried to stop the car as it fled, but the driver refused and led police on a pursuit. Eventually, the car lost a tire and became disabled.
According to the report:
Officers took the occupants into custody including a small child who was not injured. Bryttany Richardson, 18, Jordan Jacobs, 20, Joylynn Queen, 22, and Gregory Parker, 25, all of Washington, D.C., were charged with robbery. Linda Pone, 50, of Washington, D.C., was charged with robbery, disregarding a police command to stop, possession with intent to distribute a schedule I/II narcotic, wanton child endangerment, and reckless driving.
Work on Metro’s Bike and Ride facility for the Vienna Metro Station is finally nearing the finish line.
More than five years after it started, major construction on the project has now been completed, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokesperson Ian Jannetta says.
“The Bike & Ride is being readied for customer use, including inspections and final project activities (such as integrating access control to the Metro network),” Jannetta told Tysons Reporter in an email on Oct. 30. “As soon as we have a date for when customers can use the facility, we will announce it.”
The Vienna facility is Metro’s second Bike and Ride in Fairfax County after one opened at the East Falls Church Metro Station in August. The two stations will have a combined 184 spaces for riders to park their bicycles before hopping on a train or bus.
Metro’s bike parking facilities are monitored around-the-clock by security cameras and include “fix-it stations” with a tire pump, tools, and a stand for making basic repairs and adjustments, according to WMATA.
In order to access the facilities, customers need a registered SmarTrip and must fill out an online form about 24 to 48 hours in advance of their visit, though the bike and rides are free to use.
Metro’s Bike and Ride facilities were recently the subject of a critical report by the WMATA Office of the Inspector General, which reviewed the projects after receiving public complaints and a request for information from a U.S. Senate subcommittee on federal spending oversight.
Released on Oct. 16, the report found that WMATA has spent over $5.9 million on three Bike and Ride facilities that collectively provide 304 parking spaces, amounting to approximately $19,400 per space.
The inspector general also criticized the prolonged construction schedule on the Vienna and East Falls Church facilities, the lack of timely communication with the public, and gaps in financial records for the projects.
Metro started developing Bike and Ride facilities in 2011 as part of a capital program designed to expand bicycle and pedestrian amenities at its stations.
While work on a Bike and Ride at College Park in Washington, D.C., started in August 2011 and finished in May 2012, the East Falls Church and Vienna projects were delayed by construction issues and contractor disputes, including a termination of the original contract in 2016.
Jannetta says WMATA has overhauled its structure for managing capital programs since the East Falls Church and Vienna Bike and Rides started construction in February 2015.
“While it took longer than it should have to get a new contractor on board, the issues were ultimately resolved, delivering bike capacity that will benefit current Metro riders and generations of environmentally conscious riders to come,” Jannetta said.
Photo via WMATA
Foam mattress company Purple is opening today in Tysons Corner Center in the mall’s BrandBox space.
Purple is a company that specializes in cushioning products, like mattresses, pillows and seat cushions. The company is moving into BrandBox, an flexible area designed to feature a rotating set of smaller companies that don’t need a full store location.
“The store is full of amazing product and has been built out with top of the line technology and AI and is definitely something to see!” the company said in a press release. “The Purple team will be on-site to speak to the brand as well as the store.”
BrandBox is located on the first level of the mall, between Arhaus and Seasons 52. Purple joins Tailor on Tap as one of the pop-up brands filling the space after sitting vacant for months during the pandemic.
Photo via Purple/Facebook
In anticipation of the upcoming holiday season, the Fairfax County Health Department released a set of guidelines with information on how to celebrate Thanksgiving safely.
The county emphasized that it’s still vital to work to slow the spread of COVID-19 and that, despite the cold months and inevitable pandemic fatigue, community members should not let their guards down now.
According to the guidelines, high-risk activities include:
- Going shopping in crowded stores just before, on, or after Thanksgiving
- Participating in or watching a crowded race
- Attending crowded parades
- Attending large indoor gatherings with people from outside your household
Moderate-risk activities include:
- Having a small outdoor dinner with family and friends in your community
- Visiting pumpkin patches or orchards where people use hand sanitizer before touching produce, wearing masks is encouraged or enforced, and people can maintain social distancing
- Attending small outdoor sports events with safety precautions in place
Lower risk activities include:
- Having a small dinner with people who live in your household
- Having virtual dinner and sharing recipes with friends and family
- Preparing recipes for family and neighbors and delivering them in a way that doesn’t involve contact with others
- Shopping online the day after Thanksgiving, as opposed to in-person
- Watching sports events, parades, and movies from home
The county advised against participating in any in-person activities if you or anyone in your household has, or are showing, symptoms of COVID-19 and reiterated that traveling increases the chance of getting and spreading COVID-19.
The health department suggests following the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations on holiday gatherings to further lower risk.
Photo via Fairfax County Emergency Information
In a perfect world, Sahar Javadi’s children would have gone back to school on Aug. 25 as the Fairfax County School Board planned when it adopted a calendar for this academic year in July.
In a perfect world, there would presumably be no novel coronavirus, let alone a pandemic that appears to be resurgent in Virginia just as the weather cools and Fairfax County Public Schools prepares to usher more students back into physical classrooms for the first time since March.
Because this is not a perfect world, however, Javadi and thousands of other parents in Fairfax County have spent the past month deciding whether to send their children back to school and risk them contracting COVID-19, or stick with virtual learning despite its challenges.
Javadi says she has been impressed by how the teachers at Freedom Hill Elementary School in Vienna have adapted to online classes, especially compared to the chaotic transition that FCPS went through when schools shut down in the spring.
When surveyed over the summer and again in October about whether to continue exclusively with virtual learning or to attempt the hybrid model proposed by FCPS, Javadi opted to sign her fifth-grade and second-grade sons up for two days of in-person classes both times.
“I am a little nervous, but part of it is also, [we] just gotta take a plunge and see where we go next and kind of be adaptive as we move along, because it’s not like COVID’s going away any time soon, right?” said Javadi, who is the president of Freedom Hill’s PTA.
If FCPS sticks with its current “Return to School” plan, which could change if COVID-19 cases continue to rise, Javadi’s younger son will be part of the cohort of first-grade, second-grade, and special education students scheduled to resume in-person learning on Nov. 30.
Fairfax County started bringing students into classrooms on Oct. 5 for specialized high school career preparatory programs. Since then, select groups of special education students and English-language learners have returned, and a cohort of pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students is expected to start in-person classes on Nov. 16.
While Javadi says she feels reassured by FCPS’s planned health protocols, which include a mask requirement and reduced class sizes, Bailey’s Elementary School PTA president Melissa Snyder is more ambivalent about choosing hybrid learning for her first-grader and her third-grader, who is not scheduled to go back to school until Jan. 4.
“It was a difficult decision, and it’s not, from our perspective, an endorsement of the plan to return to school,” Snyder said. “It was made mostly because we didn’t think that the kids were going to get what they needed with the concurrent learning plan. If it had been a truly all-virtual class, we would’ve kept them virtual.” Read More
Tysons Transit Prioritized by State — “The top five transit routings, based on preliminary analyses, are Bethesda to Dunn Loring via Tysons Corner; Bethesda to Tysons West; Gaithersburg to Tysons West; Bethesda to Tysons East; and Germantown to Tysons West.” [InsideNova]
Vienna Torn Between Biden and Trump Precincts on Election Day — “At Vienna area polling places on Election Day, totals for Biden and President Donald Trump were closer in a few precincts, and Trump received more votes at the Flint Hill, Vienna #1, Vienna #2, Wolftrap, Thoreau, Oakton and Nottoway precincts.” [Patch]
Vienna Elementary School Teacher Adrienne McCormick Dies — “Of Adrienne’s many accomplishments, her 19 years as a teacher at Stenwood Elementary was her proudest–here she helped to build a village, a community that continues to serve the students she so loved.” [Patch]
Staff photo by Jay Westcott
Slowly but surely, the controversial Broad and Washington project in Falls Church is moving forward with only minor concerns from reviewing officials.
The Falls Church Planning Commission met with the Architectural Advisory Board last night for a joint work session to discuss the upcoming project — but while public concerns remain about parking and scale, the groups offered more praise than criticism of the project.
Staff noted in a presentation that the project had gone through significant changes to offer better open space and better use of street access. The project is also perhaps most notable as the planned home of a new Whole Foods and a permanent home for local performing and visual arts group Creative Cauldron.
Members of the Planning Commission and Architectural Advisory Board were mostly satisfied with changes that scaled the building better with the surrounding area. Chair of the Architectural Advisory Board noted that one side of the building facing Broad Street still had the unfortunate “slab” look of the earlier designs.
James Way, chair of the Architectural Advisory Board, also said the roadside public square planned in the project could have been better but he said he was also happy with what the city would get.
“Like the square,” Way said. “I always like to see more space but I understand financial constraints. I worry about spaces being too taken up with hard set features. [There] might be something to make it more flexible and adaptable to actual uses.”
The project is scheduled to come back to the city government on Wednesday, Nov. 18 for a vote.
Fairfax County is inviting community members to provide feedback on its draft comprehensive plan for the McLean Community Business Center (CBC) at a virtual open house at 9 a.m. on Saturday (Nov. 7).
Hosted by the Fairfax County Department of Planning and Development, the open house will give members of the public an opportunity to learn about the latest work of the McLean CBC Task Force and share their thoughts on a draft plan for the future of McLean’s downtown area.
A group of 21 residents, local business leaders, and civic association representatives appointed by Dranesville District Supervisor, the McLean CBC Task Force has been meeting since May 2018 with the goal of developing recommendations regarding land use, transportation, public facilities, and other characteristics of the CBC.
Spanning about 230 acres between Chain Bridge Road, Dolley Madison Boulevard, and Old Dominion Drive, the CBC serves as a downtown district for McLean, and the conversation around the draft comprehensive plan has been driven by debates about density and how to balance development with open space.
Based off a Vision Plan finalized in December 2018 and released on Oct. 5, the latest draft of the comprehensive plan states that the CBC is being “planned to provide for the needs of the immediate surrounding community and not the regional needs at the scale found in [nearby] Tysons.”
The McLean Citizens Association, which has two representatives on the CBC task force, plans to hold a special meeting of its board of directors on Nov. 18 that will exclusively focus on the CBC comprehensive plan.
In an email to members ahead of the board’s regular meeting on Wednesday, MCA President Rob Jackson notes that the association traditionally does not take positions on comprehensive plan revisions until they are final, but the board decided to organize a special meeting after “a number of members” petitioned for one.
In addition to taking a preliminary vote on whether it wants to take a position now, the board will hear from committee chairs on the issues they would like to be considered in the comprehensive plan and determine which items to include in a draft letter to Foust.
“We are focusing on only big items to increase our chances of influencing the county, recognizing that an organization with a long list of priorities effectively has no priorities,” Jackson said. “Further, submitting a long list provides motivation for the county to toss us a couple of bones, while we are ignored on big items.”
Community members can join Fairfax County’s open house on Saturday by registering via WebEx. The county’s planning staff is soliciting comments and questions regarding the McLean CBC study at [email protected].
Photo via Supervisor John Foust/Twitter
Fairfax County voters approved the sale of $441 million worth of bonds to fund a full slate of pending capital projects during the 2020 general election on Tuesday (Nov. 3).
This year’s ballot featured four separate bond referendums that asked Fairfax County voters to authorize:
- $90 million for renovations and upgrades at four public libraries
- $112 million in parks bonds
- $160 million in transportation bonds to fund the county’s share of Metro’s capital improvement program, which covers rehabilitation and modernization projects for the Metrorail system
- $79 million in community health and human services bonds to renovate the Joseph Willard Health Center on Old Lee Highway and Alexandria’s Crossroads residential treatment facility
Though vote counts won’t be finalized until tomorrow’s noon deadline for absentee ballots, all four referendums passed with ease. The health and human services bonds garnered the most support with 76.5% “yes” votes, followed by parks with 72.4% and transportation with 67.7%. Just under two-thirds of voters (66.1%) supported the public library bonds.
The public library bonds include $23 million for Fairfax County’s planned redevelopment of the Patrick Henry Community Library in Vienna.
Originally built in 1971, Patrick Henry Library operates close to the level of a small regional library as one of the busiest community branches in the Fairfax County Public Library system, according to the county’s FY 2021-2025 adopted capital improvements program.
“Renovation is required to upgrade building systems and infrastructure that are well beyond the end of their life cycle and meet current and future operational needs,” the CIP said. “The building is one of the oldest, resulting in an antiquated layout that does not adequately reflect modern library design and usage.”
The new library bond funds will help expand Patrick Henry Library by roughly 7,000 square feet to a 21,000-square-foot building, permitting more public seating and a larger children’s section.
The renovation will also involve the construction of a 213-space parking facility that the county is working on with the Town of Vienna as part of an agreement approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in July.
Fairfax County’s 2020 parks bond includes $100 million for the Fairfax County Park Authority and $12 million to pay for the county’s share of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority’s capital program, which focuses on resource protection, facility improvements, and the expansion of open space, trails, and recreational opportunities.
Tysons area projects covered by the Fairfax County Park Authority’s bonds funding include an upgrade of McLean Central Park in accordance with the park’s master plan and a renovation of the Providence RECenter to improve its efficiency.
The park bonds also have funds for design advancement for McLean’s Salona Park, even though the project was put on hold in September until the park authority develops a master plan for Langley Fork Park.
Photo via Google Maps
The City of Falls Church is encouraging businesses to prepare for winter and apply for COVID-19 relief grants worth up to $100,000.
More businesses may be eligible for increased sums of relief money under Gov. Ralph Northam’s expanded criteria for Rebuild VA grants. The changes were announced last Thursday.
Under the new criteria, businesses that have less than $10 million in gross revenue or fewer than 250 employees will be eligible to receive up to $100,000, which is 10 times the original grant maximum.
The Rebuild VA Grant Fund is a program to help small businesses and non-profits whose operations were disrupted by COVID-19. Rebuild VA will now be open to all types of Virginia small businesses that meet size and other eligibility requirements, from restaurants and summer camps to farmers and retail shops.
This is in addition to the $250,000 that the City of Falls Church agreed to appropriate last week from the city’s CARES Act funding to give to small businesses. Businesses that previously received a Rebuild VA grant will receive a second award in line with the updated guidelines.
Falls Church City spokesperson Susan Finarelli says the Rebuild VA program expansion is especially welcome as the cooling weather could present extra challenges to local businesses.
“The City of Falls Church is trying to help City businesses succeed through the pandemic with grants, special permits, and sharing resources and information,” Finarelli said in an email. “…The more businesses and non-profits than can benefit, the better for the entire community.”
Approved Rebuild VA applicants may receive grants of three times their average monthly recurring eligible operating expenses, plus COVID-related expenses, up to a maximum of $100,000. Applicants who have received CARES Act funding are not eligible to receive reimbursement for COVID-related expenses under the Rebuild VA grant.
Eligible recurring operating expenses include:
- Payroll and benefits
- Mortgage payments
- Rent or Lease payments
- Utilities
- Principal and interest payments for business loans incurred before or during the emergency
Eligible COVID-related operating expenses, made on or after March 24, include:
- Expenses to comply with safety standards relating to COVID-19 prevention
- Expenses to reconfigure business facilities to comply with physical distancing standards, including the installation of drive-through windows
- Expenses for using or phasing-in touch-free technology or equipment
- Purchase of equipment, infrastructure, technology or other services to prepare for and respond to coronavirus
- Purchase of equipment, infrastructure, technology or other capital assets to prevent transmission and provide a healthy and safe work environment
An application guide can be viewed here. A list of required documents can be viewed here.
Photo via Governor of Virginia/Facebook
