Many local businesses around the region are struggling, but Conte’s Bike Shop is taking advantage of a curious windfall for local bike stores to open a new Falls Church location on Friday (Oct. 30).
The new 3,800 square-foot shop at 1118 West Broad Street will include a bike fitting studio and performance testing.
“The store’s expansion comes at a time when bike shops across the country are experiencing an increase in demand for products due to the pandemic,” a spokesperson said in a press release. “Conte’s larger space will be better equipped to meet the needs of the community.”
The shop will offer bicycles from the Cannondale, Specialized, BMC, and Pinarello brands
“We are very excited to be in our new location,” says David Conte, co-owner of the company. “Our Conte’s Bike Shop team is ready to welcome back new and familiar faces. Along with being in a much more robust shopping center, our new space will neighbor Road Runner Sports. Having the two stores next door to each other will bring excellent symmetry for anyone who is outdoor-minded. We can’t wait to continue serving the Falls Church community in our expanded location.”
Photo via Conte’s Bike Shop/Facebook
The synthetic turf field at the Graham Road Community Building in Falls Church is going to be replaced.
As part of its consent agenda, the Fairfax County School Board voted on Oct. 22 to award a $93,000 contract for the project to GTR Turf, Inc., a Fredericksburg-based contractor that specializes in artificial turf and grass.
Though the school board is responsible for awarding the contract, the funding will come from the Fairfax County Park Authority as part of a partnership between the county and Fairfax County Public Schools.
“The synthetic turf field at the Graham Road Community Building is one of the few playing fields available for community use in the area,” Providence District School Board representative Karl Frisch said in a statement. “I am grateful for our continued partnership with the Fairfax County Park Authority, which makes the funding for important projects like this possible.”
GTR Turf was one of five companies that FCPS deemed qualified to compete for a contract to construct the Graham Road turf field during the bidding period, which closed on Sept. 30. The four other contractors all submitted bids proposing construction costs that exceeded $100,000, ranging from $129,397 from Astro Turf LLC to $169,880 from Hellas Construction, Inc.
Located at 3033 Graham Road, the Graham Road Community Building housed Graham Road Elementary School until the school was relocated to its current site along Route 29 in 2012.
Governed by a shared-use agreement between the county and FCPS, the building now provides education, recreation, and other public services, according to Frisch. It serves as a School Age Child Care program center and a Fairfax County Neighborhood and Community Services drop-in site for students in grades seven through 12.
Construction to replace the Graham Road Community Building’s existing turf field was allowed to start on Oct. 22 after the contract was awarded. The project is expected to be fully completed on Feb. 5, 2021, according to FCPS’s invitation to bid.
Image via Google Maps
In a work session discussion yesterday, the Falls Church City Council considered a new distribution of funds in the FY 2021 budget to help cover issues ranging from COVID response to stormwater management.
One of the most immediate concerns presented in the budget discussion was the appropriation of $547,000 from CARES Act funding allocated to the city to help address crises in the city. The lion’s share of the funding, $250,000, was set to be allocated as small business grants, followed by $150,000 in emergency assistance to residents to help cover rental, utility and food assistance.
The City Council also considered funding for six stormwater management projects planned to help prevent some of the flooding issues that have devastated homes in the area over the last few years. There was some concern on the council, however, that without proper consideration the funding could just be flushing money down the drain.
Ross Litkenhous, a Falls Church City Council member, emphasized that he was in favor of dedicating funding to fixing flooding problems, but was concerned that the proposed projects were temporary fixes that would do little to address longer-term problems.
“I refuse to go down a path where we’re only solving for half the problem,” Litkenhous said.
Others on the Council urged to move forward with planning for stormwater management, though with general fund rather than issuance of debt.
Amid the discussion of spending, Vice Mayor Marybeth Connelly suggested that some funding be set aside in reserve. While the city is facing a fiscal catastrophe, experts warn the region could face difficult years ahead where they might need to tap into a cash reserve.
“Next year’s budget is going to be a big challenge,” Connelly warned.
Falls Church Middle Eastern Restaurant Officers Discount for Guests Who Voted — “Sheesh Grill [in] Falls Church (8190 Strawberry Lane Ste 4) will offer diners who present their ‘I Voted’ sticker a discount off their meal from Oct. 26-Nov. 3.” [Sheesh]
Locals Help Science Teacher Clear Daniels Run Elementary Courtyard — “On #VolunteerFest weekend, students from Fairfax and Lake Braddock high schools help a science teacher clean up a courtyard at her school, Daniels Run Elementary.” [Twitter]
Tysons Chamber of Commerce Urges Greater Business Collaboration — “The chamber now is focusing on “business verticals” that encourage companies in complementary industries to purchase services from each other, said Andrew Clark, the chamber’s new board chairman.” [Inside Nova]
Staff photo by Jay Westcott
Police say Christopher Bellini, 59, was stabbed to death in his Falls Church home by his son, Alexander Bellini.
Police were dispatched to the 2300 block of Watters Glen Court around 1 a.m. yesterday for a domestic abuse. According to a police report, Christopher was found suffering from apparent stab wounds. Officers rendered aid until rescue personnel arrived, but Christopher was pronounced dead at the scene.
The report said Alexander Bellini, 28, of Chantilly, was found inside the home and taken into custody.
“Detectives from our Major Crimes Bureau determined Alexander is the decedent’s son and was prohibited from contacting his father due to a recent protective order,” police said.
Police said Alexander was taken to the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center and charged with second degree murder and violation of a protective order while armed with a deadly weapon. No one else was harmed and a knife allegedly used by Alexander was recovered at the scene.
Photo via Fairfax County Police Department
One of the many problems highlighted by the pandemic is the lack of affordable housing, with even short-term job loss leaving many residents unable to pay their rent. As local governments grapple with how to support more housing, one of the options proposed in Falls Church has been a meals tax increase.
The obvious response, presented even by the consultants in Falls Church proposing the increase, is that local restaurants are already in dire straits and many are struggling to make ends meet. The Falls Church City Council quickly dismissed the idea of implementing a meals tax during the pandemic and favored other options presented, like trying to tap into an Amazon-related affordable housing fund.
While the restaurant industry is slowly recovering, stability could be a year away. But the affordable housing crisis is unlikely to be solved before then, and the question of the meals tax could resurface.
Meals taxes can be controversial even under non-pandemic circumstances. In 2016, Fairfax County voters rejected a referendum to implement a meals tax which would have predominately gone to support schools. In 2018, the City of Alexandria increased the meals tax by 1% to support affordable housing.
Staff photo by Jay Westcott
In a meeting about how to help build affordable housing in Falls Church, one potential solution proposed was increasing the meals tax by 1%.
Meals tax increases have been a go-to solution for finding more funding for affordable housing in neighboring jurisdictions like Arlington County. Meals tax increases are frequently contentious even in the best of times, but the Falls Church City Council noted that these are far from the best of times.
Representatives from the hired consultants National Housing Trust and Federal City Council offered 11 recommendations in what they described as a tool box in a City Council work session on Monday. A meals tax was only one of those suggestions, but one most likely to turn heads, as restaurants in the area face devastating losses in revenue.
The consultants argued that increasing the meals tax by 1%, from 4% to 5%, would bring Falls Church in line with the meals tax in other parts of the region and would generate $800,000 for the affordable housing fund annually.
According to the report:
A meals tax is levied on prepared food purchased for consumption at a restaurant or taken to-go. Falls Church already has a meals tax of 4%, which generated over $3 million in revenue annually from 2017-2019 . Currently, all the funds generated by the meals tax are directed into the City’s General Fund. To provide a dedicated and consistent revenue source for the Affordable Housing Fund, Falls Church should consider increasing the Meals Tax to 5%, dedicating the additional 1% in tax revenue to the Affordable Housing Fund. This would represent a much-needed consistent revenue source for the AHF and would generate approximately $800,000 annually for the Fund.
A 5% meals tax is in line with what is levied by other jurisdictions in the area. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, the median meals tax rate is 6%. While neighboring jurisdictions Arlington and Fairfax County currently levy a 4% meals tax, as of 2016, 108 localities in the Commonwealth have instituted a meals tax that is higher than 4%.
The report notes that Alexandria’s meals tax increase was aimed squarely at raising funding for affordable housing, though the report also acknowledged that recent factors could make the proposal untenable in the near term.
The consultants recognize that restaurants nationwide are struggling to survive on reduced revenue caused by COVID-19, and the subsequent limits and restrictions on service that have been imposed to stop the spread of the virus. An increase in the tax at this time could potentially discourage the purchase of food from restaurants at a time when restaurants are operating on extremely thin margins. The implementation of this recommendation should be considered in the long-term, once the restaurant and hospitality industry is under less financial pressure.
City Council member Letty Hardi struck down the idea as soon as the discussion was turned back over to the City Council.
“In regular times I’d be a fan of looking at things like the meals tax or carving funding out of the general fund,” Hardi said, “but I think neither of those would fly currently given how much suffering there is in the community.”
One proposed source of funding that sat better with the City Council was dipping into Amazon REACH Funds — a $75 million funding commitment to support affordable housing in the area and avoid the affordable housing loss associated with the tech giant elsewhere.
“The City of Falls Church should take the opportunity to engage with local housing development owners whose projects are eligible and are able to access the funds to increase housing affordability in the City,” the report said. “The final deadline for a project application is June 15, 2021.”
Maura Brophy, director of transportation and infrastructure for Federal City Council, also said that promoting accessory dwelling units can have a meaningful impact on housing affordability by increasing the supply, but without other interventions and requirements, there’s no guarantee that the accessory dwelling units would be affordable.
“If we can access all $3 million, that will allow us to buy down 60 units for about ten years, and that’s way more than we can produce in a year as-is,” Hardi said. “That feels like we should put pedal to the meddle and go after that free money.”
After an earlier deferral and walking tour, a planned mixed use development dubbed the Broad & Washington Project is headed back to the Planning Commission tomorrow for a work session.
“Planning Commission is requested to hold a work session to discuss the Broad and Washington mixed-use development proposed at the intersection of East Broad and North Washington Streets on approximately 3.16 acres of land including the City Lot on Park Place,” staff said in a report.
The Planning Commission work session is scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday).
The proposed seven-story development would include 339 multifamily apartment units above a Whole Foods, theater, and other retail options.
The meeting is not planned to include a recommendation to the City Council, but will instead focus on discussion. The project has already stirred considerable controversy in the community, with a public comment page times longer than the staff report.
The public comment submitted in advance of the work session was almost unanimous opposition to the project. Much of the opposition was concern about the loss of parking for nearby local businesses, like the State Theater, during construction and concerns that the replacement spots in the new underground parking garage won’t be equivalent to what is lost.
According to Fred Bonner, a local resident:
I would like to urge you to not agree to sell the municipal parking lot as part of the Broad and Washington Streets project. I have been following the development of the project over the past few years and my impression is that most of the changes have been detrimental from the city’s perspective, primarily making it mostly residential. While there are still reasons to accept the overall project, I do not believe losing the municipal lot is necessary or good for the city. The developers offer to ‘replace’ the spots in their underground garage cannot be considered equivalent, and the loss of those spots during the construction and after will be devastating to Thompson’s, Clare and Dons and the State Theater.
Several other local residents argued that eliminating the lot would harm local establishments like Clare and Don’s.
The plan has already been through several updates that increased the shared public parking and dedicated residential parking at the site. A staff report noted that while there have been changes, concerns from local businesses remain for how changes to interim parking could affect customers during construction.
“65 offsite parking spaces are provided at 107 and 111 Park Place, within 800 Feet of City Lot, while public parking is unavailable onsite during construction,” the staff report said. “The previously proposed 6 to 8 months period of offsite parking was reduced to 3 to 6 months; in terms of adjacent business support, the latest comments received from Thompson Italian and Clare & Don’s detail concerns they have about how the project, particularly the construction period, will adversely impact their business.”
Image via City of Falls Church
Editor’s Note — Tysons Reporter is running Q&As with the candidates running for the open Falls Church City Council seat. The stories have been condensed and edited for clarity.
Debora Schantz-Hiscott is one of three candidates — along with Joshua Shokoor and Simone Pass Tucker — running for the open Falls Church City Council seat on the Nov. 3 election.
Tysons Reporter: Why did you decide to run?
Schantz-Hiscott: I have lived in Falls Church City for 24 years. I have raised three children here. I’ve been extensively involved in the community with the women’s commission, with the schools, with athletics, with all kinds of organizations, and I have been thinking about running for city council for many years.
However, I decided I would do it once my youngest child graduated from high school, which is next June. I was thinking about running for [the] November 2021 city council to kind of build upon the 24 years of volunteerism and working, and raising a family and building a community here. With the very unfortunate passing of Councilman Dan Sze, this special election is being held. I decided I would shorten that timeline and run for this year’s special election on November 3.
Tysons Reporter: How are you connected to the Falls Church community?
Schantz-Hiscott: For the past eight years, I’ve served with the Falls Church Education Foundation’s executive director. I’ve been for almost all of that time a sole employee and have taken a standalone 501(c)(3) foundation at the Falls Church City Public Schools into a thriving organization with a volunteer board of 16 people that has raised almost $2 million for supporting programs and grants and scholarships within Falls Church City Public Schools.
I’ve worked extensively for the past eight years with businesses to collaborate with them to see how supporting the foundation benefits their businesses…which work extensively with the school, the superintendent, and the school administration to see what current needs are in our city.
I’ve worked with city staff across a dozen different departments to put together events…and then with school staff to create these events, to create fundraisers and to create support for the school. Support for the schools includes creating a grant program. Last year, we gave about $260,000 out for innovation grants, and those can be anything from additional programs at the preschool all the way through.
We have also supported teacher training. So, above and beyond what our school board can and city can afford to do within professional development, we’ve supported staff on everything from…leadership courses to reading, math, science — you name it — for the teachers and the community.
And then lastly, and probably most importantly, supporting equity of access for our community: equity to educational resources, equity to food security, technology, clothing, emergency services, etc. I work really closely with the social workers. There’s one assigned to each school to identify what needs we have, and in the past year, since the pandemic, we — just in the spring alone — gave about $120,000 out in food support, in addition to clothing and everything. You can kind of see that my job and my life are kind of intertwined. Read More
After months of delays from the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Falls Church is starting to get back to work on implementing traffic calming measures across the city to reduce speeds.
The report included plans for new curb extensions and sidewalks along Great Falls Road, at the intersections with Little Falls Street and Maple Street — a busy set of intersections that run parallel to W. Broad Street.
Several new speed limit signs, and flashing warnings, would be installed in neighborhood streets around Falls Church.
An update listed eight traffic calming projects that had been underway in Falls Church, three of which have been completed. Completed projects include:
- Annandale Road and Gundry Drive — heavy traffic calming measures at this intersection were completed in May
- W.Jefferson Street — light traffic calming was completed in late September
- Lincoln, Phase I — a restriping project completed in late September
Four other projects throughout the city are underway, with Falls Church staff saying work is starting to resume on moving projects through the bureaucracy. According to a report:
Response to COVID-19 pandemic did result in a March/April slow down as we converted to remote work sites, reduced crews to emergency and priority field work, cancelled in-person community meetings pending legal authority to conduct under the emergency declaration and adapted to virtual formats. Staff adapted quickly to the virtual environment and continued to work through the queued projects in order of petitions. With Zak Bradley’s promotion to Interim Public Works Director, we have made staff reassignments to ensure that the program moves forward.
The report also included a recommendation that $350,000 dedicated to the traffic calming that had been put on hold earlier in the pandemic be released.
Image via City of Falls Church
