(Updated at noon) Air quality measurements have exceeded Code Red levels in the D.C. area, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
It’s no surprise to anyone who can see and smell the smoke outside. The thick haze has been wafting into the region from the north, amid severe wildfires in Canada.
The Council of Government says it expects tomorrow to be a Code Red day as well.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) has issued a Code Red Air Quality Health Advisory for the metropolitan Washington region. Current air quality conditions have reached Code Red, unhealthy levels for everyone. In addition, tomorrow, June 8, is currently forecast to be a Code Red day.
The region has experienced 6 Code Orange days (unhealthy for sensitive groups) so far this year, and no Code Red days until today.
Smoke coming from fires in Quebec, Canada is contributing to the increased levels of fine particle pollution.
COG advises the following health precautions:
- Everyone may experience health effects and should limit outdoor activity.
- Members of sensitive groups like individuals with respiratory and heart ailments, emphysema, asthma, or chronic bronchitis may experience more serious health effects.
Residents can check current air quality conditions and the forecast on COG’s website or by downloading a free air quality app from COG’s Clean Air Partners program.
Among other impacts, at least one Arlington elementary school postponed a planned outdoor field day due to the unhealthy air. And, just before noon, Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation cancelled all outdoor programs.
It’s not only people who are being urged to stay inside. The Animal Welfare League of Arlington is reminding residents to keep their pets inside as well.
The DC area is under a Code Red Air Quality warning due to the wildfires in Canada. We will be limiting our dogs’ time outside to short bathroom breaks and encourage our community to do the same! Keep your pets (and yourself) indoors as much as possible today and tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/FU4CNMlAP8
— AWLArlington, VA (@AWLAArlington) June 7, 2023
As of 11 a.m., as pointed out by a reader on social media, the air quality level in Arlington has reached 204 AQI, or the purple “Very Unhealthy” category above Code Red.
“Everyone may experience more serious health effects and should avoid outdoor activities,” the MWCOG air quality table says about the level.
The Arlington County Fire Department, meanwhile, has responded to several calls this morning for people — including an Arlington Public Schools student — experiencing trouble breathing, according to scanner traffic.
Sprayground season has finally arrived in Arlington.
Families will be able to put the county’s spraygrounds to use starting this Friday — the beginning of Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start to consistent summer weather.
These outdoor spaces, where children can play for free in water during hot summer months, are located throughout the county:
Spraygrounds
- Drew Park at 3514 22nd Street S. in Green Valley
- Hayes Park at 1516 N. Lincoln Street in Virginia Square
- Lyon Village Park at 1800 N. Highland Street in Lyon Village
- Virginia Highlands Park at 1600 S. Hayes Street in Pentagon City
Interactive Water Features
- Penrose Square at 2597 Columbia Pike in Penrose
- Mosaic Park at 544 N. Pollard Street in Ballston
“Spraygrounds at Drew Park, Hayes Park, Lyon Village Park and Virginia Highlands Park will be open on Friday, May 26,” Dept. of Parks and Recreation Jerry Solomon told ARLnow. “Spraygrounds at Mosaic and Penrose Parks will be undergoing some final system adjustments and open on Saturday, May 27.”
Weekly hours vary by location and are listed online.
Although the parks are open to everyone, the parks department requires appropriate swimwear and adult supervision, as no life guards will be present.
The spraygrounds are scheduled to remain open through Labor Day weekend.
After reaching No. 3 among local park systems last year, Arlington County has fallen a couple of spaces in the national “ParkScore” rankings.
The county was ranked No. 3 in the U.S. on the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore index in 2022, after several years of being stuck at No. 4. This year, the county is No. 5.
A PR rep for the Trust for Public Land said the change was less about Arlington and more about two other park systems.
“It’s mostly because Irvine and Minneapolis opened new parks that pushed them ahead — not because of problems in Arlington,” said Matthew Kagan.
D.C. repeated as No. 1 in the nation this year. St. Paul, Minnesota is No. 2.
Last year, after ranking in the top 3, the county touted that 99% of Arlington residents live within a 10-minute walk to the park.
“Our parks and recreation opportunities are a key contributor to quality of life in Arlington County,” Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol said in 2022. “From livability, bikeability, fitness, health and more, our community benefits from our parks.”
Arlington got lower marks, however, for overall and median park acreage.
The full press release about this year’s rankings is below.
One person’s vacant building is another’s future pickleball facility.
Not to be topped by a County Board candidate’s suggestion to put pickleball facilities at the condemned Key Bridge Marriott, Board Vice-Chair Libbey Garvey mulled whether vacant office buildings could be retrofitted for courts.
“We’ve got these office buildings that are kind of empty, and we’re trying to figure out what to do with them,” she asked at the Board’s Tuesday meeting. “Is that a possibility?”
Already recognized in some rankings as a great place to play pickleball, Arlington County is looking to add more courts in response to the sport’s booming popularity. But it has found itself in a pickle, balancing pressure to add courts with pressure to address pickleball-related noise and land use concerns from some neighbors.
During the Arlington County Board conversation with the Dept. of Parks and Recreation, members took a diplomatic approach, in contrast to the threats of legal action, accusations of bullying and public urination, and late night TV lampooning that have characterized the ongoing local pickleball battle.
In addition to Garvey’s vision for pickleball taking over vacant office buildings, others floated nudging private clubs to get in on the fun. They said private courts could ease the burden on the local government to add facilities, mute the “pop” the paddles emit and help address the stubborn office vacancy rate.
Such possibilities would require working with Arlington Economic Development, said Dept. of Parks and Recreation Director Jane Rudolph.
“There’d have to be an evaluation with others who understand layouts of office building and warehouses and things and with [Arlington Economic Development] colleagues about what we could be doing in existing private spaces and if they could be built out,” she said.
Arlington Economic Development’s Director of Real Estate Development Marc McCauley told ARLnow that zoning changes the Arlington County Board approved on Saturday do open up opportunities for private pickleball facilities in vacant retail and commercial spaces.
“These private facilities, such as national operator Chicken N Pickle” — a sport, restaurant and event space — “are emerging concepts that could theoretically relieve some demand pressure on use of pickleball courts in public facilities,” McCauley said. “Challenges may include ceiling height, floor plate size and noise attenuation, but those issues would need to be studied by a property owner and potential tenant on a case by case basis.”
Another example is Kraken Kourts, with two locations in D.C. that offer pickleball, axe throwing, roller skating and a rage room — a place to break things to let off steam.
Board Chair Christian Dorsey asked whether DPR has considered how the the county could “encourage some operators to set up some pickleball facilities so that this doesn’t become solely a government responsibility.”
In communities known for their pickleball amenities, Dorsey observed there are major, private indoor-outdoor facilities which sometimes have “really substantial membership costs or drop-in fee costs.”
This includes, Board member Takis Karantonis noted, “some very private places with a lot of tennis courts — a lot of new tennis courts, actually.”
Arlington County’s Dept. of Parks and Recreation says it has a surfeit of programs for teens — but not enough teens to fill them.
Between July 2021 and June 2022, DPR logged 6,350 visits to its teen programs, down from 46,500 visits during the same span of months across 2018 and 2019. The dramatic drop was caused by the cancellation of programs during the 2021 fiscal year, according to County Manager Mark Schwartz’s proposed budget.
That year, DPR logged a low of 3,286 check-ins to teen programs. Now, the parks department is aiming to get those kids involved in activities once again. It projects 24,000 visits to teen programs in the next fiscal year.
“I think that, during the pandemic, a lot of teens reverted to their phones, to their rooms, and really didn’t get out into parks and into our centers,” Jane Rudolph, the director of the parks department, told Board members during a budget work session last week. “I look forward to working with our partners to get them back.”
The Arlington County Board is also motivated to see higher participation in these programs, which are geared toward preventing risky behavior and increasing physical activity, among other goals.
County Board members indicated they would like to see these programs figure into the county-wide effort to tackle the mental health and substance abuse epidemics affecting Arlington youth. Member Takis Karantonis kicked off a round of questions for Rudolph about how her department plans to boost offerings for teens and tweens.
“It’s not so much expanding the offerings but getting people into the programs we offer. That’s where we see our biggest challenges,” Rudolph said. “Where we need to do better, to be honest, is getting word out more about our programs, working better with schools so kids understand where they can come to us.”
Before the work session, ARLnow had asked DPR to share its offerings for teens and tweens. It provided a long list of offerings, including:
- “Out of School Time” programs daily at Gunston and Thomas Jefferson Community Centers
- More than 100 summer camps from exploring outdoors to coding, as well as volunteer and employment opportunities through other camps
- Esports, flag football and basketball leagues
- An annual soccer tournament in partnership with the Arlington County Police Department Gang Prevention Task Force
- DJ and music production classes
Recent community meetings on opioid use, however, encapsulate the gulf between what is offered and what the community actually knows about.
When a group of Latino parents convened the same week 14-year-old Wakefield High School student Sergio Flores died from an overdose, many parents did not know what options were available but seemed desperate for after-school programs and open recreation time at the school gyms, meeting organizers told ARLnow.
In another meeting ARLnow attended a few weeks later, at Kenmore Middle School, a representative from Arlington County Police Department asked the audience to guess how many programs the county has for youth. The answer was more than 300, but one parent challenged how helpful sheer volume if there is a lack of awareness and enrollment is a challenge.
(Updated at 11 a.m.) The namesake of Maury Park in Virginia Square is Matthew Fontaine Maury, a pioneer of oceanography and a Confederate commander during the Civil War.
The park’s name could change, however, if renaming is included in a planning and renovation process slated to begin at the end of 2023.
“It is likely that the renaming of Maury Park may be considered during its upcoming master planning process, similar to other park renaming efforts,” Jerry Solomon, a spokeswoman for the Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation, tells ARLnow.
References to Maury have been removed over the last few years, prompted by the racial reckoning catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd by police officers. Last week, the U.S. Navy announced it will rename the oceanographic survey ship USNS Maury.
In July 2020, a statue of Maury in Richmond was removed after the mayor ordered the removal of all Confederate statues on city property.
Maury Park (3550 Wilson Blvd), a small green space behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, formerly the Arlington Arts Center, may be next. The old school building that has housed the arts center since 1977 was renamed in 1944 to honor Maury.
Arlington does not currently have a process for surveying all county structures for potential renamings, but DPR considers name changes as parks and facilities come up in the renovation cycle, Solomon said.
Through the renovation process, the county renamed Henry Clay Park to Zitkala-Ša Park — at the suggestion of the Lyon Park Citizens Association — “in order to honor the prominent author and activist from the indigenous community as opposed to a known owner of slaves,” Solomon said.
Maury Park is one of three urban parks in the Virginia Square Planning Area and in the Ashton Heights Civic Association, including Herselle Milliken Park and Gum Ball Park, set for upgrades in the near future.
“The project will master plan all three parks simultaneously to identify community needs and priorities while taking into consideration that the parks are located in close proximity and should have complementary rather than duplicative features,” per the Capital Improvement Plan.
Citing the county’s renaming policy, Solomon said, “renaming will be considered if a valid justification for the renaming is provided, the name change will not cause undue confusion with the community, and an appropriate level of community support exists.”
There are no plans to officially rename the building, according to Cynthia Liccese-Torres, the coordinator for Arlington County’s historic preservation program. The school is known interchangeably as the Clarendon School and the Maury School, though it has long been identified by the Arlington Arts Center, now the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington.
Signage referring to Maury was replaced with signage for the Arlington Arts Center before 2008 during building renovations, she said.
Born in 1806 in Fredericksburg, Maury joined the U.S. Navy in 1821 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1836, according to a county webpage for the Arlington Arts Center building, which it calls the Clarendon (Maury) School. He served as superintendent of the Navy Department’s Depot of Charts and Instruments from 1842 to 1855 and from 1858 to 1861.
In the 1850s, he worked on a project to “resettle slaves from the U.S. to the Brazilian Amazon as a way to gradually phase-out slavery in the U.S.,” an effort that “ultimately went nowhere,” according to a blog post by the Library of Congress.
“Maury was neither a slave-owner nor a proponent of slavery,” the post said. “Nevertheless, in declining to fight against his native Virginia, Maury resigned his post and joined the Confederate Navy, initially to direct coastal and river defenses and develop naval mine technologies to use against the Union.”
He ended up spending most of the war abroad, “hoping to persuade Europeans to support the Confederate cause and bring the war to a quick end,” the Library of Congress post said.
According to Arlington County, Maury served as commander in the Confederate Navy and later as its secretary.
Following the end of the war, Maury remained abroad for several years before taking a professorship in meteorology at the Virginia Military Institute, in Lexington, where he would teach until his death in 1873.
Local residents can now weigh in on the “future of pickleball” at the Walter Reed Community Center.
A survey was sent out earlier this week by the Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation (DPR) asking the community to provide input and feedback about the new outdoor pickleball courts coming to the community center at 2909 16th Street S., south of Columbia Pike.
The dedicated courts will replace the tennis courts that are currently there.
The survey asks a series of questions, some with multiple choice answers and some with a text box, including the survey taker’s “current relationship” with the community center, how often they use the pickleball courts already there, and when they typically play.
There’s also a question that addresses the noise coming from the courts, a prickly topic that has led to threats of legal action.
“Noise is a concern associated with pickleball play,” reads the question. “The County is committed to incorporating sound reduction measures as part of this project. What are some creative ideas to consider?”
Locals have through Tuesday, February 28 to provide the county with their thoughts.
Residents voted in November, as part of the bond referendum, to spend $2 million to convert and update existing tennis courts into pickleball courts across the county, including at Walter Reed.
The plan is to convert the current tennis court area into nine dedicated pickleball courts by adding pavement, netting, lighting, fencing, and other needed equipment. There will also be seating, shade, signage, landscaping, ADA-accessible walkways, and “sound reduction measures.” As part of the project, the basketball court will also be converted back to its original use.
This online survey is actually the “start” of the engagement process for the project, DPR spokesperson Martha Holland told ARLnow in an email.
“The County wants to hear from all stakeholders to create a project that serves the pickleball community while fitting into the community context,” she wrote. “The online feedback form is the first step to gather input to inform concept designs. The County hopes to learn and gain insights on a wide range of issues from uses and user experience, as well as considerations, designs, and demographics – to ensure we’re hearing from as many community members as possible.”
Community meetings are set to be held throughout this year to discuss the project, per a recently published timeline on the county’s website. The first is planned for Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. at Walter Reed, Holland said.
There are expected to be additional community meetings and online surveys throughout the year, with several currently scheduled for the spring and summer.
“It is important to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of this project and have a chance to provide input throughout,” Holland said.
With all of this community engagement, construction of the pickleball courts is being pushed back.
Construction is not expected to start for more than a year from now, in spring 2024, per the timeline. Completion is estimated for early 2025, a full two years from now.
In recent years, pickleball has become a hot-button issue in Arlington. The sport soared in popularity during the pandemic, with the county adding more courts to meet demand.
As courts increased, though, so did complaints from some locals about the noise.
When a pickleball hits a paddle, it can often produce a loud pop sound that has become infamously known as “pickleball pop.” This has led DPR to close certain public courts that are situated near homes. At least one court was eventually reopened.
Then, late last year, two citizen groups threatened legal action against the county.
This included a number of neighbors who live across the street from Walter Reed with one resident saying the noise already coming from the courts was “excessive” and “intrusive.” That resident told ARLnow at the time they did not support the plan to build even more outdoor courts.
“It sounds really comical, but when you live across the street from an endless stream of just popping, it’s not funny,” they said.
The area around the John Robinson, Jr. Town Square has a public urination problem.
The square used to be a grassy area with trees, until it was closed off for the construction of the neighborhood hub. With nowhere else to go, people began relieving themselves on the sidewalk along 24th Street S., we’re told.
Formerly Nauck Town Square, before it was renamed after a long-time Green Valley civic leader, the new park opened this spring. Since then, more neighbors have encountered the issue while enjoying the square or participating in community programming there.
“We have our neighbors saying, ‘I’ve had to walk my kid around urine as it’s flowing,’ or ‘It is on sidewalks,'” Sarah Kirwin said. “[People are] peeing on a person’s house, regularly. They’re peeing against The Shelton [an apartment building]. I see it all the time. Kids see it.”
Kirwin says the people who have nowhere to go also would like a restroom and have encouraged her to advocate for one.
“I do talk to the people who are peeing,” she said. “We all agree that that’s a need. This is something on which we are unified.”
This is not the first time a problem like this has cropped up at a county park. In 2014, such a situation spawned the memorable ARLnow headline, “Peeing and Pooping in Penrose Park Peeves Parents.”
Kirwin asked the Arlington County Board to do something about the latest lacking lavatory during the public comment period of last Saturday’s Board meeting. County Manager Mark Schwartz and County Board member Takis Karantonis both said the Dept. of Parks and Recreation is aware of the problem and working on solutions.
A staff member from DPR “has been out talking to members of the community about a location for a portable restroom,” Schwartz said. “We had some other ideas for a permanent facility that will take a lot longer to realize… We’re aware of the problem and know it needs to be resolved.”
While the department has not received any formal complaints about public urination, staff will attend the February meeting of the Green Valley Civic Association to “discuss potential options for a portable restroom and to gain consensus on the next steps,” DPR later told ARLnow.
“A short-term solution would include the installation of a portable restroom,” DPR spokeswoman Martha Holland says. “A possible long-term solution would be the installation of a permanent restroom facility. This would be part of the county’s Capital Improvement Plan process.”
While there is currently no funding allocated for a permanent restroom, it could be included in future budget processes if there is “community interest and available funding,” she said.
Holland said there’s no bathroom currently because “there was no consensus on the need for a permanent restroom” during the park’s planning process.
Nine months after the summer camp registration process completely broke down yet again, the Arlington County parks department says it has identified ways to improve the process for summer 2023 and beyond.
Every year, parents get their clicking fingers ready to register at a given time — 7 a.m. for summer camps — and every year, error messages and spinning wheels thwart their ability to snag an enviable spot for their kids. In February, the Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation department promised new changes would ensure this didn’t happen again.
But it did. On Feb. 23, DPR says registration volumes caused a “system-wide failure” while parents reported long wait times for the call center. Frustrated moms and dads wrote to ARLnow, tweeted and brought their complaints to the Arlington County Board, which penned a lengthy statement about expectations for reforming the process — only for the platform to fizzle and call center to get overwhelmed three weeks later for spring class registration.
Over the last seven months, DPR reviewed what happened.
“Our registration system could not handle peak volume,” Director Jane Rudolph told the County Board on Tuesday. “We really don’t have a ton of staff who are skilled at that technology piece of knowing how to use the system, so we have a lack of redundancy on our side. We didn’t have a great crisis communications plan.”
It asked staff and two focus groups — the general public and specifically, families who report receiving registration fee reductions — about changes they would like to see. Mostly, people said “fix the system,” but some suggested different registration times and dates and requested improvements to registering multiple children.
Ahead of 2023 registration, DPR says technology provider Vermont Systems will modernize its platform, last updated in 2015, and introduce a virtual “waiting room” function to manage volumes. The parks department will allow families with documented hardships to register a week early and expand its call center from 50 lines to 100.
The “waiting room” functionality was first rolled out for fall class registration and seemingly solved the issue of the system crashing completely, though some parents still reported problems, including errors, slow load times and classes that seemingly filled up within a minute.
“We wanted to create a less stressful registration process, so that parents and caregivers can go into the summer being confident their kids will have a great experience at Arlington camps,” she said.
Other recommendations include:
- beginning registration at noon on a weekday, rather than at 7 a.m.
- splitting up registration for DPR-led and contracted-out camps
- enforcing a stricter refund policy to discourage last-minute dropping out
- increasing capacity at popular camps to upwards of 100 slots
- adding more full-day, year-round offerings
- reducing camps with low-enrollment, low-capacity or which run half-day
- implementing a crisis communications plan
Board members welcomed the work, particularly the effort to improve access for underserved families.
(Updated at 11:20 a.m.) A local civic association says a lawsuit may be imminent over the infamous pickleball pop.
In a recent community newsletter, Old Glebe Civic Association leaders detailed their displeasure with the county ending a pilot program that closed a popular standalone pickleball court at Glebe Road Park earlier this year.
The program was initially enacted as a means to mitigate the noise of the loud pop sound produced by a pickleball hitting a paddle that was bothering some close-by neighbors, primarily those who live on a dead-end block near the courts.
The OGCA called that pilot program a “compromise” since it also looked to appease players by restriping a nearby tennis court for pickleball so there were now four courts, as opposed to the previous three. But with the program now being “abandoned,” the newsletter says, “the noise issue has become more contentious.”
The county has since proposed another pilot program that would reopen the standalone pickleball court but with limited hours and surrounded by a “noise reducing fence,” a spokesperson with the Department of Parks and Recreation tells ARLnow.
However, the OGCA opposes any reopening of the pickleball court and wrote that if the county doesn’t find a better way to mitigate the noise, legal action might be taken.
“We hope that a new compromise can be reached before affected parties turn to law courts for resolution of the issue, as has happened repeatedly in other cities throughout the country,” the newsletter reads.
Pickleball has exploded in popularity over the last several years in Arlington. It has prompted players to ask the county for more courts — which the county is now expected to deliver after a bond referendum including $2 million for pickleball has passed.
The impact of the sport’s rise has not sat well with everyone, though. The crowds and noise — particularly the loud pickleball pop — at certain local courts have bothered some surrounding neighbors. This includes those who live near Glebe Road Park.
“The noise from pickleball has become a major problem for residents of nearby houses — particularly those living on the section of Tazewell Street off of 38th Street,” reads the OGCA newsletter. “Some of the houses are only 135 feet from a ‘stand alone’ pickleball court; the noise from the court reverberates across the amphitheater-like terrain downhill to Tazewell Street and can be heard distinctly (and constantly) inside the houses.”
These concerns are not unique to Arlington, with the county looking to other jurisdictions to figure out how best to broker a pickleball peace. The initial pilot program, which ran from April to early September, closed down the pickleball court closest to the houses, but also added two more courts to the park by restriping a tennis court.
While the county “learned a lot” from the pilot, it didn’t paint a “full picture” about the best way forward, a county official told ARLnow.
“Over the last several months tennis and pickleball players, despite some inherent conflicts, have adjusted to sharing the two multi-use courts at Glebe Park. The courts have been very busy,” DPR spokesperson Martha Holland said. “Throughout the duration of this pilot, we have heard from park users and neighbors alike about the need to reopen the stand-alone court and to allow for pickleball plus other recreational options (soccer, fitness workouts, etc.).”
So, in response, the county is instituting a “Phase 2” pilot program that will keep the striping on the park’s tennis courts and install a “noise reducing fence” on three sides of the standalone court.
“The side of the court that touches the basketball court will not be wrapped, for safety reasons. Once the fence is up, DPR will reopen the court and monitor its use,” said Holland.
In addition, the court will be available via a reservation system and the court lights will be turned off at 10 p.m.
Your poop could give Arlington County natural gas to power buildings or buses.
The county is developing plans to upgrade its Water Pollution Control Plant, where local sewage goes. One change involves installing technology that can harness the methane emitted when human solid waste is processed, turning it into renewable natural gas, a process some municipalities have already implemented.
The energy could be used to power the wastewater plant, homes and commercial buildings or become an alternate fuel for ART buses. The “sludge” created through this process can also be used as a fertilizer for gardens, forests, farms and lawns. (If you’ve ever used Milorganite brand fertilizer, you’ve used dried sewage sludge from Milwaukee.)
Improvements to the wastewater treatment facility, to the tune of $156 million, are part of a $177 million bond request for utilities upgrades, which also includes improvements the regional Washington Aqueduct system ($15 million) and new gravity transmission mains ($3 million).
Funding for this work would come from a half-billion dollar bond referenda that voters will be considering on Election Day tomorrow (Tuesday). Over $510 million will go toward this work as well as a host of initiatives, upgrades and maintenance projects that Arlington County adopted as part of its 2023-32 Capital Improvement Plan.
Some big-ticket items have already grabbed headlines, like the $136 million requested to build a new Arlington Career Center campus and $2 million to design a proposed Arlington Boathouse on the Potomac River near Rosslyn. But there are dozens of other upgrades proposed for facilities that Arlingtonians of all ages use on a regular, and sometimes daily, basis.
Renovations to existing county buildings and the construction of new ones surpass $53 million.
Highlights include:
- $13.1 million for various renovations to Arlington’s police headquarters and, for the county’s courts building, technology upgrades, new finishes, a redesigned entrance and a relocated Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts division.
- $12 million to fund the construction and renovation of some floors of 2020 14th Street N. to make room for ACFD Fire Marshal and Battalion Chiefs offices and other public safety staff and functions. It will also see the replacement of the building’s 60-year-old HVAC system.
- $7.5 million to acquire land next to the Serrano Apartments to build a fire station there and improve response times on the west end of Columbia Pike, given the pace of development along the Pike.
Overall, Arlington Public Schools is asking for $165 million. Of that, some $12.24 million would pay for safer school entrances, a measure many school systems nationwide are implementing in the wake of high-profile shootings, and new kitchens to allow more meals to be made in-house.
“Upgraded kitchens will allow students to eat high-quality meals that include more fresh fruits and vegetables that are prepared on-site,” according to APS. “The entrance and security vestibule updates will comply with current safety and security standards while ensuring all visitors check in at the main office.”
Another $16.8 million would pay for a new roof for Escuela Key, the Spanish-language immersion elementary school, HVAC replacement at Hoffman-Boston Elementary School and lighting upgrades across schools.
The Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation is asking for nearly $22.5 million for a dozen projects.
That includes some funding $1.5 million to replace and renovate some stretches of the county’s nearly 40 miles of off-street, multi-purpose trails, 56 pedestrian bridges and 11 low-water fords.
Preschool- and school-aged kids could have new playgrounds at Bailey’s Branch, Monroe and Woodmont parks sometime in 2024 ($2.8 million). Douglas Park will see $2 million in improvements, including a new picnic shelter, pedestrian bridge, stormwater management, invasive species removal and reforestation.
Athletes who play at Kenmore Middle School could have new turf fields ($300,000).
There’s $1.1 million in funding to design new facilities at Short Bridge Park, near the border of the City of Alexandria, as well as $1.8 million to redesign Gateway Park in Rosslyn, which the budget says is “difficult and dangerous to access due to the surrounding high-speed roadways” and is “under-utilized.”
People who live in the Ballston and Virginia Square areas would be able to get in on the ground floor of master planning processes ($1.5 million) next year to upgrade Maury, Herselle Milliken and Gum Ball parks starting as early as 2025.
The second, $4.4 million phase of work on Jennie Dean Park will move forward, including demolishing the existing WETA building, two parking lots and a portion of 27th Street S., installing a lighted basketball court and converting the existing court for tennis use.
The growing pickleball population, sometimes at odds with neighbors, and the dirt trail-less mountain bike enthusiasts could get new facilities through $2 million to convert tennis courts at Walter Reed Community Center for pickleball use, draw pickleball lines on some multi-use courts and fund “design improvements to natural surface trails and mountain biking improvements.”
