Soccer Fans to Kick Off MLS Season in Clarendon Tonight
Local soccer fans will be gathering at Clarendon Grill (1101 North Highland Street) tonight to mark the start of the 2011 Major League Soccer season.
DC United goalie Bill Hamid is expected to stop by and greet fans at the event, which is being organized by the Arlington Athletic and Social League. There will be gift bags for the first 50 fans who arrive, plus raffles for DC United opening day tickets (the game will be held on March 19 at RFK Stadium) and other memorabilia.
In addition to the soccer festivities inside, organizers plan to set up pick-up games of cornhole outside on the patio.
The event will be held from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Admission is free. It will be immediately followed by the start of the LA Galaxy vs. Seattle Sounders MLS opening night game on ESPN2.
BGR: The Burger Joint Prepares for Clarendon Opening
BGR: The Burger Joint is preparing to open its new Clarendon location next month.
The restaurant, located near the corner of Wilson Boulevard and North Highland Street, next to Hard Times Cafe, is still in the midst of construction. But exterior signs are up and much of the interior decorating is complete. General Manager Greg Comer says he expects the restaurant to open at the beginning of next month, perhaps as soon as April 1.
“It’s coming along pretty well,” he said outside the store today.
The restaurant will employ 20-25 people and seat about 40. The menu will be similar if not identical to other BGR locations. Comer said he’s still hiring for a few positions, adding that details are available on Craigslist.
He said he’s not afraid of competition from the similarly-named but otherwise unrelated Brgr:Shack restaurant up the road in Ballston. In fact, he said, he’s hired a few of their employees.
This is BGR’s sixth location. The company’s Lee Highway location — its fourth — opened a year ago.
Comer said that the company has been learning how to handle the large crowds its restaurants seem to attract. He promised that wait times for burgers won’t be as long as they were shortly after the Lee Highway location opened.
DMV Experiences Licensing Outage
The computers that control driver’s license transactions in Virginia went down this morning, causing a backlog that may affect DMV locations this afternoon.
The statewide licensing outage lasted “a couple of hours” and was resolved by noon, according to Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman Melanie Stokes.
The problem was caused by a faulty server, Stokes said. Licensing systems at some DMV offices may still be experiencing latency issues as a result.
“We’re still having some locations that are experiencing slow transaction times, but that should be worked out fairly quickly,” she said.
This morning’s outage may increase DMV wait times this afternoon, depending on how many of the customers who were turned away this morning decide to return later today. Stokes said that some customers may have been given “return letters” that will allow them to skip the line when they return.
A similar outage occurred on Wednesday, March 9, but only lasted 20 minutes, Stokes said. Both outages were isolated to DMV licensing computers and did not affect other DMV transactions. Stokes said the outages were not related to the extended Virginia DMV outage last summer, which was caused by statewide computer problems.
This is at least the third time in a month that the Four Mile Run DMV office has had to turn away customers. On Feb. 25, a wind storm damaged a large section of the building’s metal roof, forcing it to close for the day.
Zimmerman Plans Small Business “Listening Session”
Update at 3:30 p.m. — Zimmerman unveiled a new “Business Center” web portal at this afternoon’s board meeting. The portal is “designed to make the County web site work better for Arlington business owners,” according to county spokeswoman Mary Curtius.
On New Year’s Day, County Board Chairman Chris Zimmerman kicked off the year by declaring that the board wanted to be seen a “facilitator, a partner to small business” in 2011.
The subtext of his comment was that the county was looking to reverse course from 2010, when a series of mini-controversies over enforcement of county ordinances had some entrepreneurs questioning Arlington’s commitment to small business.
Among the dust-ups: American Flatbread’s request for patio seating was denied in July. Then Screwtop Wine Bar and Bakeshop had their sandwich board-style signs confiscated and thrown in a dumpster by a county employee. Then some soon-to-open businesses began complaining about delays caused by zoning issues. And finally, the icing on the cake was a lawsuit filed by a doggy daycare owner over a mural that the county argued was disallowed under the sign ordinance. (A judge later sided with the county.)
With that unpleasantness behind him, Zimmerman is now organizing a small business “listening session” on March 31. In a letter to business owners, Zimmerman writes that “to make improvements that really work for business, we need direct input from our business owners and those who support them.”
The forum also comes at a time when the county is in the process of rewriting its zoning ordinance, including the sign ordinance, to correct inconsistencies and ambiguities. Zimmerman has also hinted that the board may relax certain regulations.
“Many feel [the zoning ordinance] is overly restrictive and unnecessarily hard to understand and comply with,” Zimmerman said at the Jan. 1 board meeting. “There has to be a better way. In 2011, we’re going to find one.”
See Zimmerman’s letter to business owners, after the jump.
Naked Pizza Coming to Pentagon Row
Fast-growing all-natural pizza chain Naked Pizza is coming to Pentagon Row.
A Naked Pizza restaurant will be replacing Pizza Milano, in a storefront that faces the Harris Teeter parking lot on the northern end of Pentagon Row. Pizza Milano, which used to offer free delivery, is now closed.
New Orleans-based Naked Pizza is noted for its devotion to making positive social change — it claims to be “part of the solution to the global epidemic of obesity and chronic disease” by making fast food “healthful instead of harmful” — as well as its health-minded pizza.
Some of the “favorite” pizza recipes on the menu at Naked include the Ragin’ Cajun (sausage, chicken, garlic bell pepper onion), the Superbiotic (artichoke, spinach, bell pepper, mushroom, garlic, red onion, cliantro), the Pima (black beans, jalapeno, cheddar cheese, tomato, onion, cilantro and lime) and the Smokehouse (hickory-smoked BBQ sauce, onion, chicken).
No word yet on when the restaurant plans to open.
Photo via nakedpizza.biz. Hat tip to @RahulG86.
Outdoor Warning Siren to Sound This Morning
Arlington will be testing its outdoor warning systems in Rosslyn, Courthouse and Pentagon City this morning.
Between 10:00 a.m. and noon, the county’s Office of Emergency Management will sound a series of three loud beeps in each area, followed by a voice broadcast in English and Spanish.
Today is Tornado Preparedness Day in Virginia, with a statewide tornado drill scheduled for 9:45 a.m. A test tornado warning will be broadcast on television and radio stations, as well as on NOAA weather radio. The period between March and May is generally considered peak tornado season.
Morning Notes
Sign Goes Up at Penrose Square Giant — The Giant supermarket that will be opening at the corner of Columbia Pike and South Adams Street this summer is teasing residents with a new sign. The sign went up recently on the side of the new Penrose Square apartment complex, in which the 60,000 square foot store will be located.
Fitness Center Coming to the Pike This Summer — Just up the street from the aforementioned Giant, a new 12,000 square foot Xsport Fitness Center is planning on opening on the ground floor of the Siena Park apartment building this summer. Xsports plans to stay open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. [Pike Wire]
East Falls Church Hearing Scheduled — The County Board has voted to advertise an April 16 public hearing on its controversial East Falls Church development plan. If the vocal opposition to the plan at Saturday’s board meeting was any indication, April’s hearing ought to be interesting. [Sun Gazette]
Courtesy photo
