Nordstrom Rack Coming to Pentagon Centre
Arlington shoppers are a month away from the grand opening of a new Nordstrom Rack store in the Pentagon City. The 33,912 square foot store, located in the Pentagon Centre shopping plaza, will replace Linen ‘N Things, which closed last year.
A full Nordstrom store is located across the street in the Pentagon City mall.
Nordstrom Rack is the retailer’s off-price division, selling merchandise from Nordstrom stores at 50-60 percent off the original prices.
The new Nordstrom Rack will be the company’s fifth store in the Washington area. The other stores are located in Fairfax, Woodbridge, Sterling, and Gaithersburg, Md. The Arlington store will be the closest Nordstrom Rack to downtown DC.
The new store’s grand opening is scheduled for August 26. The company is actively hiring at careers.nordstrom.com.
Special thanks to David Hillburg for the tip.
BREAKING NEWS — Worker Falls To His Death At Courthouse Hotel
A worker has fallen to his death at the Arlington Court Suites Hotel in Courthouse. The incident is being investigated as an “industrial accident,” according to Arlington police spokesperson Det. Crystal Nosal. It is the second death from a fall in Arlington in as many days.
The worker fell seven stories, through a glass atrium and into the hotel’s front lobby. No word yet on how the worker fell, but ironwork appears to have been underway on four balconies above the atrium.
A pickup truck from Newington, Va.-based Hallmark Iron Works was parked outside the hotel.
“Out of respect for the family, we will offer no comment,” said a woman who answered the phone at the company’s headquarters.
Police say the victim was a 35-year-old man. Co-workers told WUSA9 that he was a new father. They also said that the man’s safety harness had been bothering him today, and that he was apparently not tied in.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident.
WARNING: Readers may find some photos (after the link) disturbing.
The Future Crystal City: A Vision of ‘Manhattan on the Potomac’ Realized?
Earlier this year, the Washington Post’s John Kelly shot down Rosslyn’s attempt to brand itself “Manhattan on the Potomac.” You won’t find the word “Manhattan” anywhere in the 156-page Crystal City Sector Plan, but it certainly comes to mind when one sees an artist’s rendering of tall buildings and wide sidewalks surrounding the renamed “Jefferson Davis Boulevard.”
A thriving “see and be seen” street life and a dedicated cultural district are among the goals of planners who hope to convert Crystal City from the workaday home of monolithic government office buildings to an urban oasis of gleaming trophy office towers, shiny new apartment buildings and busy retail corridors.
To achieve the vision of a pedestrian-oriented urban community, however, major investments will need to be made in Crystal City’s inadequate transportation infrastructure — specifically, the roads.
Currently, Crystal City is surrounded by Crystal Drive on one side, Jefferson Davis Highway on the other, and a disorganized jumble of parallel streets in between. It’s unclear who decided that Clark and Bell Streets should be separate, discontiguous traffic traps, virtually devoid of easily cross-able intersections, but it was obviously someone who, at the time, considered the Crystal City Underground to be the end-all be-all of pedestrian-friendliness.
The sector plan calls for the streets to be combined and “realigned” into a singe, tree-lined “Clark-Bell Street” that will traverse Crystal City top to bottom. Achieving such a realignment will be one of the plan’s biggest challenges. Entire buildings will need to be acquired and torn down to make it happen.
Jefferson Davis Highway, meanwhile, will be utterly transformed into an urban boulevard and will be appropriately renamed “Jefferson Davis Boulevard.” Traffic will be “calmed,” pedestrian crossings will be made safer and, if all goes as planned, the thoroughfare’s current capacity will be maintained.
In a Moment, A Life Taken and Many More Shaken
“Someone call 911!” a woman shouted as glass rained down on a popular lunch spot at the base of a sleek Rosslyn office building around 11:30 Tuesday morning. Up above, a man in the seventh floor had locked his office door from the inside and was furiously breaking a hole in one of the thick windows.
The man — white, mid-30s, balding, well-dressed — worked for Verizon, according to police and witness accounts. It’s not known why he wanted to take his life that day, nor why he chose to do so in a way that thoroughly traumatized the 10-15 people who witnessed it. The word around his office was that he was a quiet man who was divorced and had kids. On this particular day, people said, he was particularly quiet.
The office workers on their smoke and lunch breaks scattered as the glass fell. If it wasn’t for the glass, a witness said, the man could have easily landed on top of someone. Police arrived within seconds of the 911 call but it was too late. The man was on the ground, bleeding.
Morning Notes
Arlington Joins Region-Wide HOV Enforcement Effort Today — Today Arlington police will be joining Virginia State Police and other local law enforcement agencies in an effort to crack down on HOV violators. During the morning and evening rush hours, police will step up HOV patrols on I-66, I-395 and other local highways. More from WaPo’s Dr. Gridlock.
Injured Vets Stop at Iwo Jima Memorial on Cross-County Bike Ride — A group of 18 bicyclists, many of them wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stopped in Arlington last night on their way from San Francisco to Virginia Beach. The vets stopped at the Marine Corps Memorial to see the retiring of the colors ceremony. More from the Associated Press.
Moran’s Cash Advantage Over Murray Nearly 20:1 — Talk about an incumbent advantage. In the latest disclosure period, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) reported nearly twenty times as much cash on hand as his Republican challenger, Patrick Murray. Murray has $29,890 to Moran’s $581,829. The Sun Gazette reports that Murray’s congressional campaign also has $35,000 in unpaid debt.
Annual Twilight 5K Returns to Crystal City Saturday — Now in its third year, the Crystal City Twilighter 5K will once again wind its way through the streets of Crystal City as the sun sets Saturday night. The race will get underway around 8:00 p.m. on Crystal Drive between 20th Street and 23rd Street. The Twilighter features medals for the top three finishers in 16 age groups, cash prizes for the top five finishers, and a killer after party. Online registration for the race ends Friday.
