After two months of a “soft-opening,” Club Pilates in Tysons is finally ready for its grand opening this weekend.
The new workout studio is in the Adaire apartment building at 1521 Boyd Pointe Way, near the Spring Hill Metro station.
On Saturday (Jan. 19) and Sunday (Jan. 20), attendees will get to try out a complimentary 30-minute Pilates class. Booking for the free class is available online.
Pilates is a type of full-body workout aimed at building balance, strength, mobility and flexibility. The workout utilizes specialized equipment, like springboards, that often aren’t available at Pilates classes offered at other gyms. Club Pilates in Tysons offers four ranges of classes aimed at various levels of experience with a variety of membership packages, ranging from one workout per week to an unlimited annual membership.
In addition to the free classes, the new Tysons location will also have raffles and item giveaways with various vendors. All merchandise in the store will be discounted 20 percent all week.
Parking at the location is free in the Adaire building garage.
Photos via Facebook
If your tech company is one of the several across Northern Virginia represented by Tysons-based public relations firm SpeakerBox, the reach of your advertising might soon expand after the company is swallowed into a larger marketing agency.
D.C.-based digital marketing company REQ announced today (Tuesday) that it is acquiring SpeakerBox. According to the Washington Business Journal, the combined company will have over $20 million in annual revenue and over 150 clients, including Amazon and Disney.
Elizabeth Shea, co-founder of SpeakerBox, said one condition of the deal was to allow SpeakerBox staff to continue operating out of Tysons. The company has been located in Northern Virginia since it was founded in 1997 and based out of Tysons since 2005.
“The Dulles corridor is well known as tech corridor,” said Shea. “Half of our clients are public sector groups and all of them are in Northern Virginia. We knew it was important to stay near our clients.”
Shea said the company has a staff of 20 employees all working in Tysons, while REQ has offices spread out across San Francisco, New York and Boston.
“I think the fact that there are so many tech companies in [Northern Virginia] is intriguing,” said Shea. “People think of tech as [being based in] Boston and San Francisco, but there’s a strong presence here.”
Shea said everyone currently employed by SpeakerBox will remain employed at REQ. Shea herself said she’s contracted to stay on board for the next three years or more.
“Day to day, our clients won’t see anything immediately different,” said Shea. “But as clients look to grow and expand their marketing that might involve services we didn’t previously offer.”
Photo courtesy SpeakerBox
Tysons Agenda is a listing of interesting events for the week ahead in the Tysons area.
We’ve scoured the web for events of note in Tysons, Vienna, Merrifield and McLean. Know of any we’ve missed? Tell us!
Tuesday, Jan. 15
Valo Park Blood Drive
Valo Park (7950 Jones Branch Dr)
Time: 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Inova Blood Donor Services will be hosting a blood drive at Valo Park. Another blood drive will be hosted at 7900 Westpark Drive in Mclean later this week. To make an appointment, schedule online or call 1-866-BLOODSAVES (1-866-256-6372).
Albert Lee at Jammin Java
Jammin’ Java (227 Maple Ave E)
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Guitarist Albert Lee will be performing at Jammin Java. Lee, who has been performing with R&B, country, and rock and roll bands since 1959, is renowned for his speed. Doors open at 6 p.m. General admission tickets are $25.
Wednesday, Jan. 16
Free Spaghetti Dinner for Furloughed Workers & Their Families
American Legion Dyer-Gunnell Post 180 (330 North Center Street)
Time: 5-8 p.m.
The Vienna American Legion Post is offering a free spaghetti dinner available to all furloughed government employees and their families.
Thursday, Jan. 17
Specialty Beer Release: Resilience
Tysons Biergarten (8346 Leesburg Pike)
Time: 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
The Tysons Biergarten will host a party celebrating the launch of Resilience, a beer brewed by Sierra Nevada to support relief efforts for those affected by the California wildfires. All sales of the beer go to the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief Fund.
Shutdown Lunch
McLean Presbyterian Church (1020 Balls Hill Rd)
Time: 12-1 p.m.
McLean Presbyterian Church will have lunch for employees who are furloughed and not working at all, essential employees who are still on the job but not getting paid, and their families.
John Oates at Wolf Trap
Wolf Trap (1645 Trap Rd)
Time: 8-11 p.m.
John Oates, half of the legendary ’80s duo Hall and Oates, will be performing in The Barnes at Wolf Trap on Thursday and Friday. Tickets start at $42.
Admittedly, the new Donburi in Tysons Galleria is a little smaller than the Adams Morgan or Dupont Circle locations.
But, for owner James Jang, this smaller location in the Taste of Urbanspace food hall allows him a special opportunity: he can try something new.
With two established locations in D.C., Jang said he’s hesitant to change the menus too much. But soon, Jang says he plans on trying out adding udon, a type of thick Japanese noodle dish, to the Tysons location.
“We’ve just opened here,” said Jang, “so we can be a little more creative with what we try out.”
Like the nearby Andy’s Pizza, the restaurant has also filed for an ABC permit in hopes of being able to serve Japanese beer and sake.
“We’re looking to get the beer on draft if we can,” said Jang. “We might do cocktails as well.”
Jang has owned and operated Donburi for six years and jumped at the chance to join Taste of Urbanspace, a collection of new locations from regional favorites that filled the void left by the high-profile collapse of Isabella Eatery.
For Jang, the opening in Tysons is also a homecoming, though he also said moving back into the area has been a rediscovery of how much it has changed since he grew up in nearby McLean.
“I used to live here,” Jang said. “I went to McLean High School, so this is more of a hometown than D.C.”
The most popular dishes on Donburi’s menu are the karaage salad, a soy sauce marinated chicken with mixed greens, and sakedon, a salmon sashimi that Jang says is the restaurant’s signature dish.
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.
A traveling musical about women’s suffrage, called “19” after the 19th amendment, is stopping in Tysons this weekend for two shows as part of a tour celebrating the upcoming 100th anniversary of the amendment’s passage.
The musical highlights the stories of Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists who fought for the right to vote.
“The inspirational story of these fearless women is brought to life through jazz, spoken word, dance, and audience interaction,” according to the musical’s website.
Tomorrow night (Friday) and Saturday, the show will perform at 1st Stage in Tysons. Each show starts at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students of members of the military.
Later this month, the 1st Stage theater will open “The Brothers Size,” a play by “Moonlight” co-creator Tarell Alvin McCraney about a pair of brothers reuniting in the Louisiana bayou. The play will run from Jan. 31 to Feb. 24.
Photo via Facebook
Things are getting better for Tysons’ economy, but slowly.
For offices around Tysons, the boom anticipated with the opening of the Metro in 2014 has been more of a trickle as growth continues at a more sluggish pace than initially anticipated.
The Office Submarket Report on Tysons Corner (their wording, not ours) by Ryan Rauner, an associate broker with Realty Markets, shows a market experiencing steady, if unremarkable, growth.
“Despite slow demand growth at the metro level, some has trickled down to Tysons, helping vacancies improve slightly over the past few years,” the report said. “An explosion in the residential population has not yet been matched by strong office-demand growth, despite four Metro stations opening in the submarket.”
While the expansion of the Capital One facility was a welcome boon, the report notes that most tenants are not actively expanding their footprint and there has been a spate of large move-outs, specifically pointing to public affairs consulting group Interel’s decision to leave Tysons for Washington D.C.’s East End Submarket.
Which isn’t to say there haven’t been plenty of new clients coming into Tysons. Apian announced in April it would be moving to Tysons while Cvent announced it would be expanding its local offices. Facebook is also reportedly looking for space at Tysons II to occupy between 75,000-85,000 square feet.
In 2015, office vacancies in Tysons were near 18 percent. Since then, vacancies have steadily fallen to 15.6 percent. Forecasts for the market show vacancies taking a dip in middle-2019 then continuing a steady decline.
The high supply of office and relatively low demand led office rents in Tysons to face a steep decline from 2012-2014. There’s been some growth there, averaging about 2 percent from 2015-2018, but the report also warned not to view that growth as a trend.
“High vacancies could continue weighing on growth,” the report said. “Rents have continued their increase this year but at a relatively slow pace — as of early December, rents had increased by roughly 2 percent for the year. At the metro level, rents surpassed their pre-recession peak in 2015, but those in [Tysons] are just now reaching that point.”
The report did note that Tysons isn’t alone in its lackluster rent growth, that several other locations across Fairfax have also faced similar low rents.
None of this has slowed construction, however. There was 1.2 million square feet of new office space created between 2014-2017. Last year also saw a record high of office space opening with Capital One’s 975,000 square foot expansion.
The report notes that there are two notable projects underway: The Boro and View at Tysons.
The Boro is anticipated to include 582,000 square feet of new office space. Boro Tower, the main office component of the project, is currently 70 percent pre-leased and is expected to be ready sometime this year.
The View at Tysons is further out in development but is expected to include 570,000 square feet of office space and the region’s tallest building as part of a 2.8 million-square-foot mixed-use development.
It’s not exactly the university regional experts say Tysons needs to thrive, but a local seminary could be moving into a new office across town this year.
Reformed Theological Seminary is currently seeking a permit for a college/university use in an existing office building at 8227 Old Courthouse Road. The new location would be double the size of the school’s current facility at 1651 Old Meadow Road, near the McLean Metro station.
The staff report says administrative staff would be on the site during the day with classes held Monday through Saturday. The site is anticipated to have 45 total full-time students, with up to 30 present at any given time.
The report notes that properties near the site are primarily being developed with office uses. The building is part of the South Old Courthouse subdistrict along the southern edge of Tysons, which acts as sort of a buffer between Tysons and residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of Vienna.
“The vision for this edge is to retain the existing low-rise and low-intensity character, which provides a transition in scale and intensity from mid-rise and high-rise commercial development along Leesburg Pike to adjacent single-family neighborhoods,” staff wrote.
The meeting is tentatively scheduled to be brought to the Planning Commission next Wednesday, Jan. 16, with a review at the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 22.
5G is coming to Tysons — sooner or later — but its local rollout is not without challenges.
The next generation of wireless internet technology, which will arrive in Tysons in the next few years, means more than faster Netflix. It means infrastructure, laying the groundwork for innovation and entrepreneurship. It means bringing technology like self-driving cars a step closer to reality.
It also means regulation: it means Fairfax County negotiating with property owners, telecom providers, and the federal government. Tysons is built on a legacy of leadership in network technology, and the path forward relies on wise implementation of wireless technology. The future of “Internet Alley” hangs in the balance.
Mobile internet has changed a lot since 2G technology came along in 1991. Every additional G (for ‘generation’) follows the same trend: speed increases while range drops. Long-gone are the days of a single cellular tower providing a signal for the entire city. Today’s 4G technology relies on a network of smaller nodes, often located on top of buildings, that each cover a neighborhood. Tomorrow’s 5G nodes, with speeds up to twenty times faster, will probably have a range between 250 and 2000 feet. Fortunately, these will be “small cells”: maybe as large as a thirty-foot tower or as small as a backpack attached to a streetlight that’s already there.
5G’s higher speeds will be critical for Tysons moving forward. With much of the area’s historical success and present industry built on network technology, internet connection is as important here as was coal to the cities of the Industrial Revolution.
The new technology will be particularly important for self-driving cars, often called autonomous vehicles or AVs. Full automation will require that an AV is always connected to the internet, at reliably high speeds, so it can communicate with other AVs on the road. Only then will the full potential of the technology be unleashed. Tysons is heavily reliant on cars for transportation and Fairfax is “trying to become a capital of driverless cars,” so it is clear that AVs and 5G will play a transformative role for ‘America’s Next Great City.’ 5G will also be important for “Internet of Things” technologies like cashier-free retail and augmented reality.
Tysons faces unique and formidable challenges in implementing 5G. These challenges arise from the combination of 5G’s limited range with Tysons’ unusual physical and legal environments.
Where should 5G small cells be located? The first half of the question is physical. In traditional cities like Washington, we can attach them to existing streetlights on every block where they’ll cover traffic on the streets as well as people using mobile devices on the sidewalk or in parks, shops, and cafes. But Tysons doesn’t really have blocks. Here, a cell at the side of the road might not be strong enough to reach all the way through the parking lot to the building behind it. Here, the 495-123 interchange is almost 1,000 feet wide — it alone might need several cells.
Although Tysons is working hard to be more pedestrian-friendly, most people walking in the area are still inside buildings. Because 5G signal can’t easily penetrate walls, that means that our malls, parking garages, and big-box stores might only get reception if the cells are actually indoors with the shoppers.
Solving those technical issues will be difficult enough, but on the legal side of things the problems really get thorny.
Many of Tysons’ streets, along with its enormous buildings and parking garages, are privately-owned. This means it will be difficult for Fairfax County to coordinate a unified system that covers the entire area. The wide variety of private landowners will each bring their own desires to the table, but for the 5G network to be really useful it will have to be unified. To imagine what an inconsistent network might mean, think about an autonomous vehicle that drives itself off the highway ramp only to abruptly switch back to manual control when it enters a private street. To imagine a consistent one, think about placing an HD video call from your seat on the Metro and the connection not missing a beat as you disembark and walk to your favorite shop inside the mall.
To make the situation even stickier, Fairfax will be handling all of these negotiations with one hand tied behind its back. The FCC recently released a set of regulations dictating that local governments will only have 90 days to approve or deny small-cell installation applications, restricting environmental approval processes, and limiting the fees that can be charged to a service provider. 90 days is the blink of an eye for regulators, meaning that Fairfax will have to have a well-made plan ready before the first installation applications appear.
5G is coming quick. It could arrive as soon as next year, though probably not soon enough that you should upgrade your phone yet. However, if we hurry to bring 5G to Tysons, we might ignore the complexity of the issue and get the rollout wrong.
Early-adoption 5G might provide an advantage in the short term that turns into a long-term obstacle when the system is too established to change. We might be better off if we take our time and avoid other communities’ mistakes. Internet connectivity is important here, but it’s more important to get it right than to get it fast.
D. Taylor Reich is a freelance journalist who writes about urbanism and development. They are a Fulbright scholar, a 2017 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Brown University and a proud alum of Arlington Public Schools.
(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.”
