Tysons Corner Center just welcomed its second poke place, adding to the veg-friendly eatery options in the mall.

Poki DC debuted in the food court on the third level over the weekend and is letting diners buy one regular bowl with two proteins and get a second one for free until Friday (June 21) to celebrate the opening.

Inspired by Hawaiian cuisine, the D.C.-based eatery offers build-your-own bowls and mochi.

Down on the first level, the mall has another poke place — Pokéworks, which serves up poke burritos, bowls and salads.

Patsy’s American is ready and open for business, but Randy’s Prime Seafood and Steaks needs a little more time.

The pair of restaurants, along with the recently opened Best Buns, are part of a trifecta of new eateries from Great American Restaurants (GAR) at 8051 Leesburg Pike.

Staff at Patsy’s American said that Randy’s is scheudled to open sometime in mid-July, but no definitive date has been established.

Randy’s Prime Seafood and Steaks is set to include seafood towers, wagyu steaks and American wines, according to Northern Virginia Magazine.

The restaurants are named after Randy and Patsy Norton, a husband-and-wife restaurant team who were two of the founders of GAR in 1976. Today, GAR is a regional enterprise with dozens of restaurants, including Coastal Flats in Tysons Corner Center.

The Weekly Planner is a roundup of interesting events coming up over the next week in the Tysons area.

We’ve scoured the web for events of note in Tysons, Vienna, Merrifield, McLean and Falls Church. Know of any we’ve missed? Tell us!

Wednesday (June 19)

• Kiki’s Delivery Service at Angelika Film Center — 7 p.m. at Angelika Film Center (2911 District Avenue) — As part of their Studio Ghibli summer festival, Angelika Film Center will be screening Kiki’s Delivery Service — the anime classic about a young witch striking out on her own — on Wednesday at 7 p.m. and Thursday at 11 a.m. Tickets are $14.50.

 Thursday (June 20)

• The Boro Summer Kick Off — 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at The Boro — Boro Tysons is hosting a summer kick off event with food trucks, music, lawn games and “puppy therapy.”
• Summer Reading Party — 7-8 p.m. at Bards Alley (110 Church Street NW) — The Bards Alley bookstore in Vienna is hosting a summer book party with finger foods and lemonade available. Booksellers will be in attendance sharing their favorite summer reads.
• Vienna Stories Book Talk — 7:30 p.m. at the Vienna Community Center (120 Cherry Street SE) — Marie Kisner, a former public information officer for the Town of Vienna, collected newspaper stories about Vienna into a new book called “Vienna Stories 1950-2000.” Kisner is also planning a book signing at the Freeman Store on Saturday, June 22, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Friday (June 21)

• Echosmith at Tysons Corner Center — 3:30-9:30 p.m. at Tysons Corner Center (1961 Chain Bridge Road) — HOT 99.5 and Tysons Corner Center are hosting a free concert with the band Echosmith. The show is scheduled to start for 6:30 p.m. but attendees are encouraged early to grab a seat.

Saturday (June 22)

• Daylily Walking Tour — 10:15-11:15 a.m. at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens (9750 Meadowlark Gardens Court) — The Northern Virginia Daylily Society President Janice Kennedy will lead a walking tour through the gardens showing the daylily collection including a few award-winning varieties. The tour is free and those participating in the tour will have free admission.
• Georgia Peach Truck — 12 p.m. at Merrifield Garden Center (8132 Lee Highway) — The Georgia Peach Truck is planning to roll into Merrifield at noon on Saturday with beaches brought up from Georgia available to be purchased by the box. One 23-25 pound box is $45.

Sunday (June 23)

• Providence Democrats Unity and Summer Solstice Celebration — 4-7 p.m. at Nouvelle Apartments (7911 Westpark Drive) — Following a crowded Democratic primary that saw Dalia Palchik voted as the Democratic nominee for the vacant Providence District Board of Supervisors seat, Providence District Democrats are hosting a buffet and silent auction fundraiser with the nominees and the other candidates. Attendees are encouraged to RSVP early.

Photo via Meadowlark Botanical Gardens/Facebook

Tysons may not have the liveliest nightlife at the moment, but that could soon change as more late-night restaurants and places to hang out open. “Tysons After Dark” will highlight a different spot every week.

TenPenh serves up contemporary Asian fare with wallet-friendly happy hour bites and drinks.

Around 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday, the bar area was mostly packed with groups of people ordering small bites from the menu, which features a range of Asian cuisines spanning Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Happy hour goers can choose from a wide selection of drinks and $5, $6 and $7 bites. Drinks offered include signature cocktails like the Asian Mojito, Matcha Mule and Frozen Mai Tai, along with $5 draft beer, wine, sake and champagne. Lamb pot stickers, pork belly bao buns and Filipino BBQ pork skewers are some of the 13 small bites on the menu.

The happy hour menu runs from 3-7 p.m. Monday-Friday and for drinks only from 4-7 p.m. on Saturday.

The restaurant itself is inspired by the layout of a traditional Chinese courtyard house and even includes a contemporary moon gate. Each room has its own character, from the outdoor courtyard to the bar with its earth-toned wall decor.

“TenPenh Tysons evokes the sense of a private home of a sophisticated westerner who has lived in Asia and absorbed the serenity of its highest aesthetic: calm, uncluttered, and inviting,” the website says.

Located at 7900 Westpark Drive, the restaurant is less than a 10-minute walk from the Tysons Corner Metro station.

TenPenh is open 5:30-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5:30-11 p.m. on Friday and 4-11 p.m. on Saturday. The restaurant is closed on Sunday.

CollabraLink has decided to move to larger office space at the Highline near the Spring Hill Metro station in Tysons.

Started in 2003, CollabraLink provides IT services to federal and commercial clients.

The technology company will move to 22,000 square feet of office space at its current home (8405 Greensboro Drive), according to Newmark Knight Frank, a commercial real estate advisory firm.

“CollabraLink wanted to stay in Tysons but needed a long-term home with the option to grow,” NKF’s Senior Managing Director Chethan Rao said in the press release.

The Highline is a two-building office complex with more than 400,000 rentable square feet on 7.5 acres. The complex includes retail, an outdoor plaza, daycare facility and a fitness center for tenants.

“Location and continuity were extremely important to our firm and the NKF team had a clear understanding of our desire to stay in Tysons,” Rahul Pandhi, CollabraLink’s chief executive officer, said in the press release.

Image via Google Maps

Updated at 1:30 p.m. — Corrects name of the performance venues and updates event information.

The curtains will rise for a new performance venue in Tysons in two years.

Fairfax County announced Tuesday (June 11) that the performance hall, which is a part of Capital One’s redevelopment, will open in September 2021.

Back in July 2017, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved the redevelopment, which includes Wegmans and the Capital One Center.

The 125,000 square-foot Capital One Hall will include a 1,500-seat main hall with an orchestra pit and a 250-seat black box theatre, according to the county.

In addition to hosting Capital One’s corporate events, local nonprofit arts organizations will be able to use the performance spaces for a specified number of days each year through a 30-year agreement with Fairfax County.

Arts organizations can find out more about the user application and scheduling processes for the facilities at a meeting next Wednesday (June 19) from 7:30-9 p.m. at Capital One Headquarters (1600 Capital One Drive). ARTSFAIRFAX and Capital One will give a presentation and have a Q&A session.

To RSVP, contact ARTSFAIRFAX at [email protected] by Monday, June 17.

Image via Fairfax County/Twitter

The Fairfax County Planning Commission greenlighted yesterday (June 12) a proposed senior living facility in Tysons despite concerns from staff about the height, size and open space.

Fairfax County staff recommended denial of the proposed two-tower senior living complex called The Mather.

The proposed building would go 60 feet above the 225-foot maximum. “The excessive height combined with a narrow building footprint oriented diagonally results in a building mass that inconsistent with adjoining structures and overwhelms the street,” according to the staff report.

Staff also took issue with the developer wanting to move the open space from an area on top of the parking garage to a sloping area behind the parking garage.

According to the staff report:

The three major issues noted above are all interrelated and stem from the manner in which the continuing care facility is proposed to be integrated into the existing Arbor Row development. Staff does not object to the concept of a continuing care facility as a use, and in fact, recognizes the services provided by such a facility are both necessary and desirable within Tysons. However, the continuing care facility has been designed in a way that reflects the unique needs of the applicant’s specific business model, and does not reflect the urban design recommendations of both the Comprehensive Plan and the Tysons Urban Design Guidelines.

While Providence District Planning Commissioner Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner called the proposal “one of the most complicated applications the commission will recall,” he ultimately brought forth a motion to approve the project.

Before the vote, Niedzielski-Eichner asked staff to address each of the three major concerns and allowed the applicant’s representative, John McGranahan Jr., to respond.

McGranahan argued that the recommended denial by staff was not considering the proposal’s height and size in the context of the surrounding neighborhood.

A staffer said that the mass of the building was considered to be out of context to the nearby buildings and that the applicant’s desire for more height for operational and financial considerations wasn’t enough justification to go above the maximum height.

Staff and McGranahan also disagreed on the relocation and redesign of the open space.

By the end of the back and forth, Niedzielski-Eichner said he was persuaded by the applicant’s reasoning.

Now that the proposal has a favorable recommendation from the Planning Commission, it heads to Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors.

The project is a part of Cityline Partners LLC’s Arbor Row project near Tysons Galleria, which includes the completed Nouvelle residential building and The Monarch. The development aims to transform the back end of Tysons Galleria along Westpark Drive into a suite of mixed-use buildings.

According to county permits, a new Men’s Wearhouse could be coming to a squat, castle-looking building at 1929 Old Gallows Road off Leesburg Pike.

The building formerly had been a Petco, but has been vacant for at least a year. Construction at the building seems to include not just the former Petco, but the closed Mattress Firm that also shared the building.

Men’s Wearhouse also has locations in Reston and near Centreville and there had been one near the Greensboro Metro station.

Permits were filed in March for internal alterations to the building, and from the look of the building, any interior renovations are still in the earliest stages. Tailored Brands, the company that owns both Men’s Wearhouse and Joseph A. Bank, could not be reached for comment, so the estimated time for completion is not currently known.

It is far from the biggest problem facing Metro, but the lack of cell coverage in the Greensboro Metro tunnel is still a minor annoyance for locals that could be fixed earlier than planned.

Since May, Metro’s claims that Virginia’s tunnels had complete cellular coverage came with an “except for Tysons” corollary. But while Tysons was originally scheduled to get covered by 2020 with the rest of the tunnels, plans for Tysons have shifted to an expected completion by the end of the year.

“Wireless voice and data service is now available in more than 60 percent of Metro’s tunnel segments,” Sherri Ly, the media relations manager for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, said. “Metro is on schedule to have the Greensboro tunnel on the Silver Line complete by the end of this year and expects to have cellular coverage across the entire system by June 2020.”

The lack of cell service is more than a convenience issue. Experts have called it a glaring safety problem for the system — particularly in the wake of a death in a smoke-clogged tunnel in 2015.

Gilly Hicks, a lingerie brand by Hollister, may soon arrive in Tysons Corner Center.

Hollister revived Gilly Hicks two years ago when the intimates market started to grow as more brands focused on selling bras and underwear geared toward teen consumers.

Building permits indicate that Gilly Hicks plans to occupy a space within BrandBox, a collection of pop-up stores in the mall, on the lower level near H&M. Hollister is also on the first level by Macy’s.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co., which owns Hollister, is on the second level, directly above the BrandBox spaces.