News

The swim and dive teams at the Dominion Hills Pool are ditching the “Warriors” team name and moving away from Native American motifs.

The Dominion Hills Area Recreation Association Board of Directors started soliciting suggestions from swimmers, divers, coaches and families on Friday, according to an email to team families, shared with ARLnow.


News

Two Arlington Public Schools programs offering alternatives to traditional high school will soon be housed in the same building.

New Directions Alternative Program, currently located in the Thurgood Marshall Building in Clarendon, will join the Langston High School Continuation Program located in the Langston-Brown Community Center along Lee Highway before the start of the 2021-22 school year.


News

Crystal City could get more affordable housing under a new agreement between Amazon and Arlington County, announced earlier today.

The tech giant said in a new blog post that it would hand over to the county the rights to $40 million in vacant land within the Crystal House apartment property, on which Arlington County could develop more than 550 new affordable homes.


News

(Updated 5 p.m.) Arlington Children’s Center, a childcare facility that has operated in a county-owned building for 30 years, will close temporarily at the end of August.

Doors to the facility at 1915 N. Uhle Street, near Courthouse, will shut on Aug. 31, when the contract expires between Arlington County and the company operating the program, AA Daycare, according to Arlington County spokeswoman Jennifer K. Smith. The two could not reach an agreement to extend the contract ahead of major renovations slated for January 2022, she said.


News

Facing high rates of pandemic-era apartment vacancies, Dittmar Company is looking to recoup its losses through short-term rentals.

The Tysons-based developer and property management group is asking the Arlington County Board for permission to convert up to 75 furnished apartment units in three Arlington buildings into flexible hotel rooms.


Around Town

(Updated 10:35 a.m.) Tacombi, a New York City-based taqueria chain, is expected to open in Crystal City in a couple of months.

The new spot will be located in the revamped Central District Retail shopping plaza, also known as “Crystal Square.” This recently redone property at 1550 Crystal Drive, owned by JBG Smith, has attracted a number of other retail options that have opened already or are set to open over the course of the year.


News

The average square footage of an Arlington apartment appears to be increasing, according to a new study from RENTCafé.

Among 92 cities and jurisdictions, more than one-third are building bigger apartments now than they did five to 10 years ago, according to the website, which follows trends in the apartment market. And Arlington County had the seventh largest jump in unit size between 2016 and 2021.


News

Wearing a clock as a necklace for turning papers in late. Carrying a hose stuffed with sand and rocks for losing a flag.

These were two “alternative learning opportunities” or ALOs that one instructor in Arlington County Fire Department’s Training Academy allegedly prescribed to former firefighter EMT recruit Brett Ahern in one week for mistakes that he made.


News

(Updated at 9:45 a.m. on 7/8/21) Three water “elements” will be the focal points of the planned park space at PenPlace, the second phase of proposed Amazon’s HQ2.

And Kate Orff, the landscape architect designing this park, is drawing her inspiration from Roaches Run and the historic Alexandria Canal, as well as the churning waters of Great Falls Park and the sylvan streams of Rock Creek Park.


News

Arlington County just became the first jurisdiction in the Commonwealth to use a private sector financing program to help local businesses go green.

The county and the state’s first business to get a clean energy boost is Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling Company, which recently had loans approved through a new county program to pay for upgrades to its roof at 3471 Washington Blvd in Virginia Square, as well as the installation of solar panel systems on two nearby properties. The work will likely be complete in October.


News

Arlington County is looking to restart an initiative aimed at helping condominium owners stay in their condos that was halted by the pandemic.

The Condominium Initiative, which is part of the county’s Housing Arlington program, is focused on strengthening condo associations. A series of workshops this fall will include information on when capital improvement assessments should be performed and who should do them.


News

Amid a local surge in opioid-related overdoses, George Mason University announced its Arlington campus will now house a $20-million, 5-year program studying opioid addiction.

GMU is part of a network of a dozen universities and research institutions that have been studying substance abuse across the U.S since 2019 with funding from the National Institutes of Health. Most of the campuses in the NIH’s Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) conduct research, but GMU’s center has a different focus.


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