(Updated at noon) The Arlington County Circuit Court rejected a plea bargain that would place a Maryland man on two years of probation for allegedly bringing 50 pounds of marijuana and 400 cartridges of hashish oil into the county.
The suspect is accused of arriving on a flight to Reagan National Airport in November 2018 with a checked bag stuffed with drugs. He was arrested by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority at baggage claim.
Has the rate of new coronavirus cases in Arlington plateaued? Or just paused its upwards trajectory?
It’s unclear, but for the past five days the trailing seven-day average of new daily cases has remained within a tight range, between 30 and 33.
When Eddie Kaufholz and his family moved to Arlington nearly five years ago, they were not thinking about starting a business. They wanted to live in a place that was diverse, interesting and full of opportunity, with a school system they could rely on. Arlington fit.
In the years that followed, working out of a home office off Columbia Pike, he consulted with organizations across Northern Virginia and around the country: nonprofits, advocacy groups, mid-sized companies, agencies of various sizes. The work itself was good. But somewhere across all those projects, he started to notice a pattern.
”The agency model has gotten really bloated,” Kaufholz says. ”Layers, handoffs, middle management. The senior people who pitch the work often disappear once it starts. The idea with PILLAR was to strip all of that down; keep senior people on the work, approach each client with humility and care, do world-class strategy and execution, and pass the efficiency back to the client instead of absorbing it as agency margin.”
That thinking, slowly, became PILLAR, the Arlington-headquartered creative, communications and marketing agency Kaufholz founded.
PILLAR, he says, is built on an old idea. ”An idea that has always been possible but rarely practiced: that an agency should be structured to serve the work itself.” The team that delivers the work is assembled around the specific needs of each client and only stays as long as the work calls for them.
”The senior strategist on your kick-off call is the senior strategist writing your messaging,” Kaufholz says. ”Every person on a project is there because the work specifically calls for them.”
PILLAR’s recent work has spanned human rights, executive leadership, higher education, advocacy and direct-to-consumer ecommerce. The roster has included national nonprofits, a national multimillion-dollar direct-to-consumer brand and a number of institutions navigating significant moments of strategic change. The model is built to scale up to be the agency of record for a national brand, or to scale down to design a logo for a neighborhood nonprofit. PILLAR takes equal pride and care in both.
What Kaufholz did not understand when he started, he said, was how much the County itself would matter in making any of it possible. (more…)
(Updated at 9:50 a.m.) Thanksgiving is only three weeks away, and with coronavirus on the rise in much of the country, plans for the holiday are in flux.
The usual gatherings of family and friends are now subject to a calculation: is a big turkey dinner worth the risk of contracting a potentially deadly or debilitating disease?
This Memorial Weekend: Argentine Festival USA Returns May 23
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS:
Frederick-to-Arlington Transit Proposal — “Proposed transit service connecting Arlington to Frederick (Md.) and points in between remains on the table, but barely, after scoring low in a recent cost-benefit analysis conducted by the Virginia and Maryland state governments… As envisioned, the transit route would start at Frederick six times each workday morning and terminate an hour later at the Pentagon, with intermediate stops at Monocacy, Urbana, Germantown, Gaithersburg, Montgomery Mall and Rosslyn.” [InsideNova]
Women Groped in Aurora Highlands — “At approximately 7:18 p.m. on November 3, police were dispatched to the late report of an assault. Upon arrival, it was determined that at approximately 6:30 p.m., the victim was running in the area when the suspect approached her from behind and grabbed her buttocks. The victim yelled, and the suspect fled on foot, then entered the passenger side of a vehicle and left the area.” [ACPD]
Friday, May 29, 2026
8pm (Doors open at 7)
(Updated at 10:45 p.m.) Dozens gathered in front of Arlington County government headquarters in Courthouse for a rally calling for every vote from Tuesday’s election to be counted.
The “Protect the Results” rally, which kicked off at 5 p.m., was organized and promoted by a variety of local Democratic and progressive groups. It was held as the 2020 presidential race hangs in the balance, still too close to call in a number of key states.
(Updated at 4:15 p.m.) Arlington County Democrats enjoyed a clean sweep in their bids for County Board and School Board, with clear results in early on Tuesday night.
County Board Chair Libby Garvey (D) was awarded four more years in office, garnering 72% of votes. Cristina Diaz-Torres and David Priddy — endorsed by the local Democratic party in the nonpartisan School Board race — earned 43% and 36%, respectively.
Changes are coming to the Boundary Channel Drive and I-395 interchange, and with a public hearing on the plans set for Thursday.
VDOT is set to hold the virtual design public hearing at 7 p.m. tomorrow (Nov. 5) via Cisco Webex. It will discuss the agency’s plans “to upgrade the Boundary Channel Drive interchange at I-395 to improve safety, traffic flow and enhance accessibility and connectivity for bicyclists and pedestrians.”
This column is sponsored by Arlington Arts/Arlington Cultural Affairs, a division of Arlington Economic Development.
Amid the many challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic poses for the arts and culture community, artists are taking the opportunity to strengthen capacity.
Update at 9:40 a.m. — Mystery solved: the helicopter was being used for aerial photography of Rosslyn.
We were taking aerial photos of Rosslyn. pic.twitter.com/OwB1fbhYaL
