Updated at 2:25 p.m. — Police said at 2:20 p.m. that “at this time there is no evidence to substantiate the threat” after completing their search. The bank is resuming its normal operations.
Earlier: Police are on the scene of a potential bomb threat at Provident Bank (7799 Leesburg Pike) in Falls Church.
Fairfax County Police said in a tweet this afternoon, below, that “a man called the bank indicating a bomb threat.”
Police told Tysons Reporter that the front desk was notified of a vague threat with very little credible information and after a search of the building no suspicious objects were found.
Following the threat, police remained at the scene to continue investigating the source of the call.
We have completed our search. At this time there is no evidence to substantiate the threat. The bank is resuming normal operations. #FCPDhttps://t.co/seUbHQuENL
— Fairfax County Police (@FairfaxCountyPD) February 8, 2019
Image via Google Maps
The fences are up and construction is underway on the site of the former Chili’s in Tysons as Fairfax-based Great American Restaurants prepares for the opening of its latest restaurant later this year.
The new restaurant will occupy a large new building which looks like a cross between a church and a warehouse. It was built on what was once a Chili’s and an On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina, before both closed and were torn down.
The manager at another Great American Restaurants location said the new eatery will serve American cuisine. A name hasn’t been selected yet, but the manager said the food would be somewhere between the cuisine of Mike’s American in Springfield and Jackson’s in Reston, two of the company’s other locations.
Great American Restaurants currently operates 10 locations across Fairfax, including Coastal Flats in the Tysons Corner Center mall. Its headquarters are also located in Fairfax, near Merrifield.
On Reddit, several users said the new Tysons restaurant would have a sports bar component. The manager said the location would also contain a bakery, similar to the Best Buns Bread Company in Arlington, and is planning to open in June or July.
As the national chain files for bankruptcy, the Performance Bicycle Shop in Pike 7 Plaza is going out of business.
Like the nearby Pier 1 Imports, the imminent closure of the store also means much of the store’s supply is on steep sales. Helmets and other equipment normally sold for over $100 is priced at around $30.
Items in the store range from bicycles, including specialized recumbent bicycles, to smaller bicycle accessories like bells and chain lube. Yesterday (Thursday) was the first day fixtures in the store were also on sale, from wall racks to the vacuum cleaner.
A manager at the store said the business likely has a week or two before it fully closes. He estimated Jan. 27 will be the store’s final day.
Despite the impending closure, staff at the store still maintained a bit of gallows humor. The manager at the store was directing customers to items with the highest sales and asking if any of the people stopping by for accessories needed a bike-rack capable of storing 12 bicycles.
When one woman walked in with a bike broken into three pieces, staff told her that the store was no longer accepting maintenance work and that the shop’s repair team had been recently laid off.
But when she mentioned one of the staff by name, the discombobulated bicycle was recognized as a “special project” and she was directed to the back of the store where the few remaining employees were still helping Tysonians with their bicycle problems.
(Updated 1:40 p.m.) — The Tysons Pier 1 Imports is the latest victim of a series of closures that’s hit the furniture and decor chain.
The store is located at 8311 Leesburg Pike in a shopping center just southwest of the Greensboro Metro station.
Everything in the store, including the fixtures, is on sale. Most discounts range from 20-30 percent off in addition to existing sales. Items in the store range from large furniture and rugs to candles and bath bombs at less than $10.
As of Friday, the store was still around three-quarters full of items for sale, though with one scented air freshener and candle less than when the reporter arrived.
According to a spokesperson for Pier 1 Imports, the Tysons location will close late next month.
“As a matter of practice, we do everything we can to support our associates during this time of transition,” said the spokesperson in an email. “Pier 1 Imports continually reviews new and existing store locations to make sure we’re operating as efficiently as possible. Where necessary, based on that review, we make the strategic business decision to close certain locations on a case-by-case basis.”
It’s been nine years since Hazleton Laboratories, later Covance, closed the doors of its facility near Wolf Trap, infamous for its testing on monkeys and beagles — but life could soon be returning to the site.
Toll Brothers, a real estate developer, has plans to build 102 single-family homes northeast of the intersection of Route 7 and Towlston Road. The new project, called Grantstone, is a by-right development that has generated concern among neighbors who say the new development could overburden the nearby roads.
“Despite the fact that it is by-right, they’ve been cooperative,” said Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust. “We’ve had two well-attended community meetings to identify issues of concern. They’ve been willing to work with us. There’s not a lot of things we can do as long as they stick to subdivision ordinance.”
One of the biggest items of concern has been the new development’s impacts on Towlston Road, a two-lane street to the west of the property. The Great Falls Citizens Association passed a resolution last summer calling on the Virginia and Fairfax County departments of transportation to reexamine the issue of how much traffic will be generated on the surrounding streets.
Foust said the new housing development aligns fortuitously with a plan to widen Route 7 from four lanes to six lanes, as well as make new intersection improvements.
“The Department of Transportation will not grant access onto Route 7, so they’ll have to access the site from Towlston,” said Foust. “Eventually, that’s going to work very well since we’re widening Route 7 and the plan is to dramatically improve the intersection at Towlston. [That will mean] adding a couple lanes to the dedicated right and left turning lanes. But that’s a couple years down the road.”
While construction of 102 new homes was planned to start in early 2019, as of yesterday (Wednesday) most of the 113,000 square-foot property visible from outside the “do-not-enter” signs remains overgrown, with cracked roads the only sign of the former facilities. Foust said the development is currently in the site plan review process, and county records show the review was approved on Dec. 21.
Foust said the Grantstone development is being done across two phases, and the first home sales are unlikely to start for another two or three years.
“It’s a long process to go through,” said Foust. “That’s another reason the traffic issue is a little less concerning. We are concurrently making progress on Route 7 widening. By the time they’re fully built, I’m confident Route 7 will be widened.”
The Route 7 widening project hit a snag last summer when the costs came in at $95 million more than was originally estimated. In June, the Board of Supervisors voted to approve $40 million to help close the project’s funding gap.
Map via Fairfax County
Foot by foot, Tysons is getting a little more walkable.
Tomorrow afternoon, Fairfax County will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for two new sidewalks along Leesburg Pike (Route 7) under Chain Bridge Road (Route 123). The new sidewalk connects the Pike 7 shopping center and The Boro development with the retail and restaurants west of the Tysons Corner Center mall.
According to the Fairfax County Department of Transportation press release:
The sidewalks are part of the Dulles corridor bicycle and pedestrian access improvements and provide enhanced pedestrian access along Leesburg Pike with 1,100 feet of sidewalk on the north side and 800 feet of sidewalk on the south side. These improvements were designed by the Fairfax County Department of Transportation; constructed by the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services (DPWES); and funded under the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) Locally Administered Project (LAP) program.
The ribbon-cutting is scheduled for 1 p.m. tomorrow and to be attended by several members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Sol Glasner, president and CEO of the Tysons Partnership.
The blistering pace of development in Tysons has many looking to the future, but sometimes it’s interesting to look back.
Aerial photos from the 1980s, available via Google Earth, help tell the story of the region’s evolution over the past three decades.
Tysons as an urban metropolis is a somewhat modern phenomenon for an area that was largely farmland for 100 years after William Tyson purchased it. In the 1960s, development was jump-started by the construction of the Capital Beltway, Dulles Airport, and the Tysons Corner Shopping Center in 1968.
By the 1980s, when the first satellite photos are available, Tysons was already a developed area. According to data from the U.S. Census, in 1990 the population of Tysons was 9,374. It grew by 35.8 percent to 12,734 in 2000.
The growth slowed a bit between 2000 and 2010, when the population rose by 11.2 percent to 14,159. Since then the pace of residential growth in Tysons has picked back up; the current population of Tysons is 19,627, already a 38.7 percent increase over 2010.
The 1988 image of Tysons, above, shows Tysons Galleria to the north on the eve of opening later that year. The streets surrounding Tysons Galleria were also widened and became more interconnected over the years, allowing for more dense construction to the north and to the east, including several recently opened and planned mixed-use developments. The offices to the west of Tysons Galleria are currently planned for major renovations to keep up with development further west on Leesburg Pike.
One of the most visually striking shifts on Leesburg Pike is the decrease in surface parking lots, which covered much of the office parks east of Leesburg Pike. Several of the lots have been replaced with under-construction developments like The Boro. The shopping centers west of Leesburg Pike have also become more active as well, with new restaurants like Honeygrow and Cava opening this year.
Photos via Google Earth
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.
The 8600 block of Westwood Center Drive is typically a quiet grouping of offices with some ground floor retail, but late Sunday (Sept. 23) evening it was the scene of a burglary.
Police would not say which store of business was hit, but did report that around 10:19 p.m. a man broke into one of the businesses by prying open the door. Most of the retail on the south side of the block consists of small restaurants, like Subway and Paisano’s, while Walmart sits to the north of the block.
According to the police report, several small safes were broken into and the cabinets were rifled through. The exact amount of cash stolen was undisclosed.
Photo via Google Maps
