Arlington has set yet another record for the daily rate of Covid cases, while hospitalizations are rising in the county.
Nine people were hospitalized f0r Covid yesterday, Arlington’s largest single-day hospitalization total since January 2021, according to Virginia Dept. of Health data. The seven-day moving average of daily hospitalizations is now just above four, also the highest point since last January.
Athletics Ban Not Consistent with County — “Arlington’s newest School Board member opened her tenure by intimating that, if the county school system’s ban on athletics and extracurricular activities is extended past its current Jan. 14 deadline or resurrected later, the county government should follow suit and shut down park programs for adults.” [Sun Gazette]
Universal Basic Income in Arlington? — “Every Arlingtonian, rich and poor alike, could be given $550 a month, leaving few families below the poverty line, if the property tax rate were tripled. The net income of a family of four living in a house worth less than $1.36 million would be higher, as this UBI dividend would exceed the increase in tax.” [Greater Greater Washington]
Kids dance around tables full of books outside of Arlington Science Focus Elementary School on an overcast December afternoon. There are stories in Spanish, books about Black history, and novels about being the next president, all waiting to be picked up and read.
And parked a few feet away from the book fair is a bright blue “book bus” with a dragon painted on the side.
A group of neighbors is calling on the county to take a moderate approach to residential redevelopment in the shadow of Amazon’s HQ2.
Next month, on Tuesday, Feb. 22, the Arlington County Board is poised to consider adopting a new planning document that lays out a vision for the next 30-plus years of growth in the Pentagon City neighborhood. The plan calls for a significant amount of redevelopment and infill development, mostly residential, more green spaces and new “biophilic” walking and biking paths.
The new restaurant at the former Green Valley Pharmacy won’t be opening until later this year due to some pushback from the community.
The local Arlington landmark at 2415 Shirlington Road is currently undergoing extensive renovations to transform it from a seven-decade-old pharmacy that served the Green Valley neighborhood into a kabob and burger eatery called “Halal Spot.”
A free Covid testing kiosk opened Monday at Central Library near Quincy Park.
Arlington County sponsors the new kiosk that Curative operates daily between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. at 3809 10th Street N., the southwest corner of the park near the tennis courts.
DCA Has One of TSA’s ‘Top 10 Catches’ of 2021 — “On March 6, 2021, TSA officers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) stopped a traveler carrying a well-worn, heavy-duty, wooden-handled machete. Officers noted the blade showed significant wear, as if it had seen a lot of use.” [Patch]
Arlington Apartment Rentals Rebound — “After falling 13 percent in 2020 as the pandemic roared in, median apartment rents in Arlington were up a tidy 16.8 percent in 2021, according to new data, leaving renters paying more now than they did before the COVID crisis started.” [Sun Gazette]
(Updated at 4 p.m.) Arlington County police responded to a pair of gun crimes in and near Rosslyn over the weekend.
The first happened around 4:30 p.m. Sunday on the 1500 block of 17th Street N. Arlington police do not typically reveal which businesses have been the victims of crimes, but that’s the same block at the standalone Rosslyn Starbucks store.
(Updated at 1:25 p.m.) There’s some hope that the current Omicron wave of Covid cases in the D.C. area may be near a peak, but new data in Arlington is a mixed bag in terms of whether that’s actually the case.
The county’s seven-day moving average of new cases hit a fresh high today, with 548 new cases being reported each day, on average. Saturday also reached a new single-day case record, with 867 new cases.
Icy Conditions Possible This Morning — “The risk of dangerous driving conditions will continue Monday morning — after freezing rain coated parts of the D.C. region Sunday — with the potential for wet roads to refreeze overnight.” [WTOP, Twitter]
Mail Delivery Complaints in 22207 — The local Nextdoor social network was abuzz last week with mail delivery complaints from residents of northern Arlington neighborhoods, specifically in the 22207 zip code. Amid snowstorms and a Covid wave, residents reported not receiving any mail for several days. A spokesman for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) tells ARLnow that the congressman’s office “had a call with USPS” on Thursday. “Rep. Beyer is working on getting answers on why this is happening (snow is a factor but it seems like many of the issues preceded the storm) and trying to get it fixed,” the spokesman wrote.
Local child care centers will have to stay the course with longer quarantine and isolation periods, says Arlington County’s Public Health Division.
That could mean multiple contingency plans for parents with kids in child care, who have already weathered holiday closures and winter-weather closures. (Many facilities follow the snow closure or delay lead of Arlington Public Schools, which was closed all week.)
George Mason University is breaking ground on the massive $235 million expansion of its Arlington campus.
“This is the start of something big for Mason,” Carol Kissal, the university’s senior vice president for administration and finance, said in a statement. “And when it’s done, it will have fundamentally changed our campus, as well as the broader Arlington community.”
