An eatery plans to start serving “wild and yummy” tacos in Falls Church in June.

A sign outside 7167 Lee Highway — the former home of Milan Bakery and Miss Donuts — says that Wild Tacoz is coming later this summer.

Owned by Teddy Koumarianos, Wild Tacoz will be the first location for Kool Foods, a company that uses organic ingredients from the Amish community.

“The plan is now to open the doors for business in the first half of June 2019,” according to a Wild Tacoz Facebook post from May 5.

A previous sign last June said that it was coming in fall 2018. “There was a delay on the construction due to the age of the building, but through modern technology, construction is moving along at a much faster pace,” the eatery posted this March.

Recently, the space had new drywall, according to another Facebook post.

Photo via Facebook

McLean Student Wins Contest to Study in Spain — “Ethan H., an 11th-grader at BASIS Independent McLean, has won the 2019 Junior Study Abroad Scholarship and will travel to Spain this summer. This national award, valued at more than $3,500, is given each year to 24 students nationally who become eligible by earning high scores on the National Spanish Examination.” [Inside NoVa]

Look Back at Falls Church’s Memorial Day — Missed the City of Falls Church’s parade and festival during the weekend or want to relive it? This article describes what it was like to be there with the young families who joined veterans and active service men and women to honor fallen service members. [WJLA]

Vienna Mom Qualifies For Olympic Trials — Perry Shoemaker, a 48-year-old Vienna resident, is the second-oldest woman to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials.”Shoemaker’s journey to Olympic Trials qualifier started back in about 2011, when the family moved from Pittsburgh to their current home in Vienna… she did most of her runs pushing a jogging stroller and holding a dog on a leash.” [Runner’s World]

Tysons Restaurant Makes OpenTable List — Founding Farmers in Tysons made it onto OpenTable’s 2019 list of 100 best restaurants in America for a “big night out.” [Patch]

Falls Church Crash Injuries Five People — On Saturday, four pedestrians and the driver were taken to a hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries following a crash in a parking lot along Annandale Road in Falls Church. [Twitter]

Tysons Building at Full Capacity — “A new 150,000 square foot lease with an undisclosed company has capped off Rubenstein Partners and Griffith Properties’ lease up program for their jointly-owned building, Centerstone at Tysons. The single transaction brought the newly-renovated building to full occupancy. Rubenstein and Griffith acquired Centerstone at Tysons, located at 1550 Westbranch Dr., in July 2015.” [GlobeSt]

Photo via Founding Farmerres

Memorial Day is coming up on Monday (May 27). Check this list in case you are planning to visit government facilities around Fairfax County this weekend while honoring people who died while serving in the U.S. military.

County-wide

All county offices, schools and libraries will be closed on Memorial Day.

County trash and recycling collection won’t have any changes for Monday and Recycling and Disposal Centers at the I-66 Transfer Station (4618 West Ox Road) and the I-95 Landfill Complex (9850 Furnace Road) will be open on Memorial Day. Residents with private collection will need to contact their haulers.

Vienna

Town of Vienna offices will be closed on Monday, but refuse collection will take place as scheduled.

The Vienna Community Center (120 Cherry Street SE) will have reduced hours on Memorial Day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Falls Church

The Mary Riley Styles Public Library will be closed on Sunday and Monday.

The Community Center (223 Little Falls Street) will be open from 2-6 p.m. on Sunday and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday.

City Hall, city government offices and courts will be closed on Memorial Day.

McLean

The McLean Community Center and the Old Firehouse Center will be closed on Monday.

Other Closures

Metro trains and buses and the Fairfax Connector will be operating on a Sunday schedule (8 a.m.-11 p.m.) on Memorial Day.

The Department of Motor Vehicles will be closed on Monday.

Speaking of closed offices, Tysons Reporter will be on a break as well on Monday.

The aftermath of the storm yesterday (Thursday) has left more than 1,300 residents around Falls Church without power and caused several road closures.

The Dominion Energy map shows two power outages currently in Falls Church as of 10:45 a.m. today (May 24) — one affecting 1,009 customers from West Street to Lincoln Avenue and another one affecting 324 customers around Shreve Road above Jefferson District Park.

Dominion expects that power will be restored later tonight for both outages between 6-11 p.m.

Several roads in Dunn Loring and Falls Church were still closed as of 8:33 a.m., according to a released list from the Fairfax County Police Department. FCPD will update the list throughout the day.

The following roads closed in FCPD’s McLean District are:

• Winder and Drexel streets
• Jefferson and Woodlawn avenues
• Elmwood and Stuart drives
• Marshall Street between Jefferson and Farragut avenues
• Woodley Place between Lee Hwy and Deborah Drive
• 2900 block of Rogers Drive
• 2900 block of Wallace Drive
• 2700 block of Greenway Blvd

Local storm reports from the National Weather Service yesterday around 7:30 p.m. reported “a tree uprooted and many large branches snapped” by the intersection of Route 50 and I-495, a large fallen tree blocking Summerfield Road and S. Washington Street and “downed wires and trees” near Jackson Avenue and Summerfield Road.

A few people took to Twitter to share a video of the thunderstorm in Tysons yesterday and spottings of downed trees and power lines.

Thunderstorm rolling into Tysons Corner and the W2 Communications offices ⛈⚡️ @capitalweather pic.twitter.com/ixp67wIS2D

— W2 Communications (@W2Comm) May 23, 2019

Driving from Merrifield to Tysons and seeing a ton of downed limbs and branches. Winds here were legit during yesterday’s storms

— Andrew King (@H2Omaker71) May 24, 2019

Map via Dominion Energy 

New improvements recently completed are designed to make Idylwood Park (7715 Virginia Lane) in Falls Church a little more accessible.

The park is tucked into the northeast corner of the I-66 and I-495 interchange.

According to the Fairfax County Park Authority website:

The project included fully paving the parking lot, which had been comprised of compacted gravel that presented maintenance and accessibility issues. Contractors from Southern Asphalt improved the parking lot and drive to comply with [Americans with Disabilities Act] accessibility requirements. Additional striped parking spaces were added by reconfiguring the overall layout to be more efficient.

Renovations started in June 2018, during which the park was accessible only via foot traffic.

The total cost of the project was $309,732, provided through Fairfax County’s infrastructure project fund.

Photo via Fairfax County Park Authority

A parade and fireworks are planned for a pair of Memorial Day commemorative events in the Tysons area.

On Sunday (May 26), the U.S. Marine Band will play a free concert at the Filene Center (1551 Trap Road) in Wolf Trap National Park. A fireworks display is planned to follow the concert.

Gates open at 6:30 p.m. for lawn and in-house seating, with curtains opening at 8 p.m. the fireworks are planned to start at around 9:45 p.m.

Seating capacity for the event is limited. The Fairfax Connector bus from the West Falls Church Metro station will not be available for the event. Parking is free and attendees can get $5 off two Lyft rides with the code WOLFTRAP19.

On Monday (May 27), the City of Falls Church is hosting its 38th Annual Memorial Day Festival and Parade with an expected 12,000 visitors. The festival is planned to feature food, live entertainment, artists and various vendors.

The Don Beyer Volvo 3K Fun Run is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. The parade is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m.

Free public parking will be available in the Kaiser Permanente garage at the corner of N. Washington Street and Park Avenue and at the George Mason Square garage (103 W. Broad Street).

The parade and festival will also result in several street closures.

• Park Avenue will be closed from 5:30 a.m.-7 p.m. between N. Maple Avenue to N. Virginia Avenue (except for limited vendor traffic)
• Little Falls Streed will be closed from 5:30 a.m.-7 p.m. between Park Avenue to Great Falls Street
• Great Falls Street
• Pennsylvania Avenue
• Fulton Avenue
• N. Oak Street
• Lincoln Avenue
• N. West Street
• Park Avenue

Other Memorial Day events around the area include:

• The Murphy Challenge: Memorial Day Workout and Grill-Out — 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at CrossFit Tysons Corner (8452 Tyco Road) — The event is a fundraiser to support educational charities to honor the life of Lt. Michael Murphy. Three workouts will be held followed by a grilling event, with attendees asked to bring a drink or dish to share. Visitors and non-members can sign up online.
• Memorial Day Annual Pool Party — 12-2 p.m. at Sport&Health McLean (1800 Old Meadow Road) — The summer barbecue and pool event is hosted by Sport&Health McLean and will include information about aquatics programs, camps and more.

Photo via Facebook

The City of Falls Church is looking to reduce its residential parking and ramp up its multi-modal transportation options.

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Transportation Planning Board (TPB) approved $680,000 in assistance for 13 projects, including one to support a residential parking standards update underway in Falls Church.

Details on the update are scarce, but according to the TPB:

This project will update multi-family residential parking requirements for new development in the area. An outcome of this project will include revisions to the city’s Traffic Impact Analyses tables, which are used to estimate potential traffic impacts of proposed land uses and assign parking requirements. The project will also support a potential revision to the city’s zoning ordinance. The updated standards would be intended for use in all future multi-family residential projects and useful to other jurisdictions in the region.

The look at residential parking follows a commercial parking requirements update approved in 2016.

The residential parking standards update would be one part of a broader effort to promote non-car transportation through the city. The FY2019 budget included $25,000 to restore a commuter incentive program.

Photo via Facebook.

Code Ninjas, a franchise aimed at teaching kids to code, recently arrived in downtown Falls Church.

A grand opening on Saturday (May 18) welcomed Code Ninjas into 510 S. Washington Street, Suite F.

Code Ninjas teaches kids ages 7-14 to code with a game-based curriculum, advancing from the white belt for beginners to the black belt — the most advanced status, according to its website.

Spanning more than three dozen states, Code Ninjas’ opening in Falls Church marks its 13th franchise location in Virginia.

The Falls Church location offers classes on Javascript, coding video games, creating websites, building Minecraft worlds and programming drones.

After 32,000 student trips, the free Metrobus pilot program at Justice High School in Falls Church could be expanding to Marshall High School in Tysons.

Students across the county can use the Fairfax Connector and City of Fairfax CUE bus for free, and students account for 1.4 million trips on those buses in less than 4 years, but the passes have not been usable on the Metro system.

Over the last eight months, 35 percent of students at Justice High School have gotten a Metrobus-enabled student bus pass. Students at the school account for 3,500-4,000 trips per month.

Nearly half of the ridership among Justice High School students was on Metrobus Route 28A, which runs along Route 7 from King Street in Alexandria to Tysons.

Of students surveyed as part of the pilot, 70 percent had never ridden a Metrobus to or from school and 52 percent said they would not ride unless it was free. The majority of students said they also wanted to see more routes, extended hours and Metrorail service added.

The top three uses for the pass were traveling home or to activity centers — Tysons specifically — or to an after-school job.

At a Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee meeting on Tuesday (May 14), faculty and students from Justice High School told the committee about their experiences with the program as the committee considered an expansion of the pilot.

A similar pilot program is planned for either Marshall High School, Falls Church High School or Annandale High School in the 2020-2021 school year.

“Students take the bus to the mall and the movies, but they also go to work with it,” Justice High School Principal Maria Eck said. “I met with a student on a totally different topic, but he told me he got a better job because of the bus pass. Now he can find a job he can get transportation to, and he’s going up to Tysons to help his family.”

Staff recommended renewing the agreement with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to continue the pilot at Justice High School next year.

“When I first heard about it, I couldn’t believe it,” Carlos Pineda-Lopez, a student at Justice High School, said. “Now, I’m not paying $40 a week for Metro. It’s been amazing. For a family that makes $30,000 with both parents combined, that adds up. Sometimes I couldn’t go to practice or work and that would hurt my family. This bus pass increased my mobility and range of jobs. Now, I can go anywhere in Virginia. That’s how the pass has helped me. It’s helped as a next step towards adulthood.”

Seven out of the 10 Fairfax County-based companies on this year’s Fortune 500 list are located in or near Tysons.

Fortune released its annual list of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. earlier today (May 16). The rankings are based on 2018 revenue.

The Tysons-area companies represent one-third of the 21 companies from Virginia on the list, according to a Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA) press release.

“Only a handful of communities can say they are home to 10 Fortune 500 companies,” Catherine Riley, the interim president of FCEDA, said in a press release. “It is an important milestone, a significant recognition of the county as a prime location for corporations from a wide variety of industries looking for the assets and talent they need to grow and succeed.”

The new list includes:

• #40 Freddie Mac (Tysons)
• #92 General Dynamics (Falls Church area)
• #98 Capital One Financial (Tysons)
• #108 Northrop Grumman (Falls Church area)
• #122 DXC Technology (Tysons)
• #345 Hilton Worldwide Holdings (Tysons)
• #475 Booz Allen Hamilton (Tysons)

Leidos Holdings, an information technology company, and home construction company NVR — both based in Reston — made the list, along with Herndon-based Beacon Roofing.

Last year, Fairfax County had nine companies on the list, according to FCEDA. The company that made the biggest leap from last year’s list was DXC Technology, which jumped up 252 spots.

“The wide diversity of the industry sectors represented here — everything from our traditional strengths in IT and aerospace to financial services, hospitality and, now, construction materials — shows the value of a Fairfax County headquarters to corporations of all kinds,” Riley said.