Arlington spent $74,000 in two months combating a lawsuit over Missing Middle housing, public records show, drawing the ire of a County Board candidate.

The county, which hired law firm Gentry Locke at the start of this year, paid $49,251 for services in January and $24,536 in February, according to invoices. Meanwhile, a GoFundMe campaign for the lawsuit — which alleges that Arlington failed to adequately study the impacts of Missing Middle before approving the zoning change — has raised about $69,000 since last June.

The change allowing for the development of smaller multi-family homes in previously single-family-only neighborhoods is one of the defining issues of this year’s Arlington County Board race.

One contender for the Democratic nomination, Natalie Roy, asked residents to “please consider contributing to the lawsuit” in a newsletter last week.

“We are in the homestretch, and the lawsuit needs your support,” wrote the real estate agent and outspoken critic of Missing Middle. She told ARLnow that she agrees with the plaintiffs’ assertion that the county should have conducted more impact studies.

“That is what the core of this lawsuit is about, and because I wholeheartedly agree that those studies should have been done, I support the lawsuit,” Roy said.

In the newsletter, she suggests that the county should acquiesce to the plaintiffs and spend the money going to legal costs elsewhere.

“During these tight budget times, when the County Board is about to approve a steep tax rate increase, these monies could be better spent on keeping a nature center or community library staffed full-time or expanding after-school programs,” Roy wrote.

Fellow Democratic primary candidate Julie Farnam says she is also supporting the suit against the county. Farnam said she attended and contributed to a March 24 fundraising event for the lawsuit and plans to attend the next one later this month.

And James DeVita called opposition to Missing Middle, also known as Expanded Housing Option (EHO), “the central issue for my campaign.”

County Board candidate Tenley Peterson, meanwhile, declined to comment on this story because, as Vice-Chair of the Planning Commission, she is a defendant in the lawsuit. The Commission unanimously supported Missing Middle last year.

JD Spain did not respond to a request for comment, but his website says he “successfully pushed the county… to end exclusionary zoning” in his role as president of the NAACP Arlington Branch.

The candidates are all competing in the June 18 Democratic primary. A single County Board seat, that of outgoing Chair Libby Garvey, will be up for grabs in November.

As for the lawsuit, Arlington Neighbors for Neighborhoods — the group responsible for the fundraising campaign — said the county’s attorneys have been filing numerous discovery requests in recent months, adding to their costs.

The county has asked for extensive records about the plaintiffs’ communications regarding Missing Middle as well as “all documents they created or reviewed in the process of purchasing their Arlington homes,” the group said.

“Responding to these requests is very expensive,” Neighbors for Neighborhoods said. “NfN has been raising money through GoFundMe with more than 400 donations made.”

The lawsuit is on track to go to trial in July despite the county’s multiple motions to have it dismissed. Some housing experts believe the litigation may be deterring local developers from filing EHO applications, since a loss on the county’s part could jeopardize previously approved projects.

Even if the county loses the suit, the ultimate impact is unclear. The Virginia Supreme Court struck down a similar zoning ordinance in Fairfax County early last year — but within a couple months the county’s Board of Supervisors re-adopted the same change after fixing procedural issues.

Given the recent kerfuffle on Instagram over ARLnow’s use of an AI-generated image to illustrate a story, we wanted to update readers on our use of artificial intelligence.

AI technology is rapidly developing and the extent to which it will ultimately reshape the media industry is unclear. The CEO of a news organization down the street from us, in Clarendon, believes AI will “eviscerate the weak, the ordinary, the unprepared in media” and is part of “a very fundamental shift in how people relate to news and information… as profound, if not more profound, than moving from print to digital.”

That may be, but for the time being our use of AI is much more practical in nature.

As an organization, we believe that AI as it currently exists is a tool that allows us to improve efficiency in secondary tasks so that we can focus human effort on the two things that matter most to our readers and our business: news reporting and client service.

What does that mean, in practice? It means that AI is used in some of the dozens of back-end automations we have deployed over the past few years, taking things like posting on social media, reviewing event submissions, and writing article summaries off the plates of our editors and reporters.

The following are ten ways we are using AI at present.

1. Transcribe interviews
2. Re-check articles for typos and grammar issues upon publication
3. Evaluate submissions to our event calendar and automatically approve those that meet certain criteria
4. Write summaries of published articles for use in our ARLnow Press Club morning newsletter and elsewhere
5. Generate suggested social posts for sponsored content and analyze links for use in readership and engagement stats
6. Write the weather forecast in Morning Notes (based on National Weather Service data)
7. Select emojis for Morning Notes social posts
8. Select the Thought of the Day and an appropriate weather emoji in the Daily Debrief post
9. Select emojis for announcements and events section of email newsletter
10. Automatically reformat articles to be printed and framed

Additional planned uses of AI include automated creation of a weekly “things to do” post based on event calendar data, plus optimizing and monitoring the performance of sponsored content and display advertising on behalf of our local advertisers.

There are also several ways we are explicitly not using or no longer using AI.

ARLnow has tested several potential tools for writing news articles based on source material such as press releases. None produced work that was deemed to be publication quality. Humans, frankly, are better and more interesting writers, who can add local context to stories in a way that AI struggles with.

Our teams likewise avoid using AI to write emails, preferring a more personal touch.

Finally, we have suspended our use of AI-generated images. Previously, such illustrations were used in certain situations where a more generic image was preferable to a specific, real-life local photo.

Though a slight majority of respondents to a morning poll were okay with AI images in certain situations, the poll found that 48% of readers did not want us to use such images under any circumstances.

So, we have commissioned human-created illustrations for the real estate and local business stories for which AI images were previously used. And the following rendering of a sad robot artist will be the last custom AI image we use for awhile. Farewell, robot!

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

After a year of delays, plans to open a well-regarded Mediterranean restaurant in a former Clarendon music venue appear to have fizzled.

The space that the Fairfax-based Kirby Club identified for a second location back in 2022 is now listed as “available” on The Crossing Clarendon’s retail leasing page.

The shopping center’s general manager, EJ Enciso, declined to comment on the restaurant’s status but said “maybe we’ll have an update within the next few weeks.”

The Eastern Mediterranean-inspired eatery planned to occupy the spot previously filled by the IOTA Club, a popular attraction that closed in 2017 after more than 23 years in business. Kirby Club, founded by award-winning restaurateur Rose Previte, had pushed back its opening date at 2832 Wilson Blvd from spring 2023 to fall of that year.

The restaurant’s Mosaic District location opened in late 2022 to plenty of fanfare and has received a number of accolades since.

While Kirby Club’s future is in doubt, a new barbershop is opening next door. Signage for Bold Blade Barbershop, which promises “masterpiece” haircuts that heighten individual senses of style, has appeared at 2836 Wilson Blvd.

Yorktown Baseball Coach Fired — “Eight months after being hired as the new head baseball coach at Yorktown High School, Josh Cook has been let go from that position with a bit more than a month remaining in the regular season. A school official confirmed that Cook, a 2013 Yorktown graduate and former varsity player for the Patriots, was dismissed April 9 because of remarks he made during an open-mic comedy routine at a venue that was a non-school and non-team function. Some of those remarks came to light on social media.” [Gazette Leader]

Pentagon Row Sign Removed — “Pretty surreal seeing the @PentagonRow signage coming down after almost 25 years but excited for what’s to come.” The shopping center changed its name to Westpost in 2020. [Twitter]

Home Price Plateau? — “Don’t panic – much – but the average sales price for single-family properties that sold in March across Arlington declined slightly from a year before. The average price of $1,355,179 was down three-quarters of a percent from the $1,365,411 recorded a year earlier, according to figures reported April 10 by Bright MLS.” [Gazette Leader]

Baby Born in Jeep with ACFD Help — From Alan Henney: “Arlington FD assisted with a childbirth in a white Jeep Grand Cherokee. Parents were likely driving to Virginia Hospital Center at 1701 N George Mason Dr., because they were stopped on N George Mason Dr right after the Arlington Blvd overpass.” [Twitter]

Wild Turkey Seen in Rosslyn — “I don’t know where to report this, but there is a wild turkey at the base of the Turnberry Tower and it does not seem to be doing great.” [Twitter]

Shoplifting Suspect Nabbed in D.C.  — “Police are more aggressively targeting suspected thieves. In one instance, according to court documents, officers hid in a CVS store on Capitol Hill and watched as a man stole $33.47 worth of merchandise. Police said the man already had been charged with shoplifting in Arlington County, where authorities had an arrest warrant for him.” [Washington Post]

Winning Start for W-L Soccer Teams — “The Washington-Liberty Generals girls and boys high-school soccer teams began this week with identical 5-1-1 overall records. In Liberty District play, the girls were 1-0 and the boys 0-1.” [Gazette Leader]

Taller, Skinnier Buildings in Rosslyn? — “An already urban environment in Rosslyn could get even more urban-y if a proposed zoning change wins approval from the Arlington County Board. That body on April 20 is set to advertise for a public hearing later in the year for a zoning change that would give elected leaders the power to permit development of properties in the Rosslyn area with a floor-area-ratio (FAR) of greater than 10.” [Gazette Leader]

It’s Tuesday — Expect a mostly sunny day with a high around 75 and a northeast wind at 6 mph, shifting to the south in the afternoon. Tuesday night brings a 40% chance of showers after 2am and a mostly cloudy sky with a low of 56. [NWS]

Good Monday evening, Arlington. Let’s take a look back at today’s stories and a look forward to tomorrow’s event calendar.

🕗 News recap

The following articles were published earlier today — Apr 15, 2024.

• 9:30 am: JUST IN: Protests against military contractors underway in Crystal City | 🗣️ Comments
• 10:30 am: Office building in Ballston may be redeveloped as apartment building | 🗣️ Comments
• 11:30 am: Lululemon, Warby Parker among new additions at Pentagon City mall | 🗣️ Comments
• 12:30 pm: Adoptable Pet of the Week: Batgirl | 🗣️ Comments
• 1:45 pm: Police break up big teen party in newly built North Arlington house | 🗣️ Comments
• 2:05 pm: UPDATE: Hail falls on much of Arlington amid Severe Thunderstorm Warning | 🗣️ Comments
• 3:55 pm: Recreational weed veto sets back change by several years, proponents say at Arlington forum | 🗣️ Comments

📅 Upcoming events

Here is what’s going on Tuesday in Arlington, from our event calendar.

• 10:00 am: District Day 2024
• 3:00 pm: Innovation Station: Mini lava lamps, pinwheels and catapults.
• 3:00 pm: Anti Procrastination Café
• 6:00 pm: Rep & Revive with Spenga
• 7:00 pm: Celebrate Relative Strangers by A.H. Kim!
• 7:00 pm: Advance Screening of the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

🌤️ Tuesday’s forecast

Expect mostly sunny skies with temperatures reaching around 75 degrees, accompanied by a gentle northeast 6 mph wind, shifting to a southerly direction in the afternoon. For Tuesday night, there’s a 40% chance of showers starting after 2 am, as cloud cover increases and temperatures drop to approximately 56 degrees. The south wind will maintain at around 6 mph. See more from Weather.gov.

💡 Quote of the Day

“You can never plan the future by the past.”
– Edmund Burke

🌅 Tonight’s sunset

The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to discuss the day’s happenings in the comments.

Address: 1201 N. Nash Street #102
Neighborhood: Rosslyn
Type: 2 BR, 2 BA condo — 2,068 sq. ft.
Listed: $1,495,000

Noteworthy: Boutique Luxury at its Finest

Discover boutique luxury at its finest in the prestigious Memorial Overlook Condominiums. This meticulously crafted residence spans 2068 sq. ft., boasting 2 bedrooms, a den, and 2 full baths, exuding sophistication, and charm at every turn.

Upon entering, you’re greeted by a foyer adorned with marble detailing, setting the tone for the grandeur that awaits. The gourmet kitchen beckons with chef grade appliances, custom cabinets, and a wall oven, catering to the most discerning chefs. The expansive living and dining area features a gas fireplace and a bay window offering lovely views of the wooded tree line. Step outside onto the balcony, providing ample space for outdoor entertaining and relaxation. The primary suite, secluded on one side of the condominium, boasts two walk-in closets with custom built-in cabinetry. The luxurious bath features double sinks, a separate makeup vanity, a soaking bath, and a shower, offering a blissful retreat.

On the opposite side, you’ll find the den, second bedroom, and another full bath, providing ample space and privacy for guests or a home office. This residence includes two assigned garage parking spaces and two storage units. Residents enjoy access to on-site management, a dedicated concierge, a state-of-the-art gym, and inviting lounge areas. The condo fee includes gas and hot water.

Conveniently located near iconic landmarks such as the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, as well as vibrant neighborhoods like Georgetown and Downtown D.C., Memorial Overlook offers easy access to Rosslyn Metro and DCA, making city living a breeze.

Take a video tour today!

Listed by:
Sheri Grant — TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
[email protected]
(703) 405-1016

In the wake of a recent veto of a Virginia recreational marijuana bill, proponents are still holding out hope for future change — but not for at least a couple years.

At an Arlington Committee of 100 meeting last week, State Sens. Adam Ebbin and Aaron Rouse said the chances of the Virginia General Assembly overriding Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s decision earlier this month are slim to none.

Legislation to legalize retail sale of cannabis passed the state House and Senate on thin margins before getting the ax from the governor, who cited public health concerns. Since overruling a veto requires a two-thirds majority, the Democratic senators said the bill’s near-term future will likely hinge on the 2025 governor’s race.

If a Democrat wins, they believe the legislation could potentially pass in 2027.

“I think there’s a recognition even [on] the other side of the aisle that this is what’s coming, with the lack of their effort to try and repeal the progress that we’ve already made,” said Ebbin, a longtime advocate who represents part of Arlington and led the charge to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2020.

Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize medical marijuana in 2021. Rouse, the Virginia Beach senator who introduced the legislation, argued that creating a taxed and regulated retail market would curb the influence of an unregulated black market and generate tax revenue to benefit disadvantaged communities.

“Making sure there’s a market where these products are tested, they’re labeled, they’re sold in safe and licensed places; making sure that kids don’t have … access to these products — it’s needed,” Rouse said.

No matter what path Virginia takes in coming years, speakers at the Committee of 100 meeting said the stakes are high.

Shawn Casey, a deputy chief officer with the nonpartisan Virginia Cannabis Control Authority, noted research on marijuana’s addictive properties and potential harm to brain health and cognitive development. A 2021 survey found that 13% of Virginia high schoolers were using marijuana at least once a month, and 4% of high schoolers had tried the substance for the first time before age 13.

Northern Virginia, Casey said, has a lower portion of marijuana users than the state as a whole, with 20% of the region’s population using the drug in the past three months compared to 24% of surveyed Virginians.

“Data right now is something that’s still emerging in the cannabis world, and so not all of it is as complete as we’d like,” she noted.

Youngkin said in his veto statement that legalizing marijuana’s recreational sale would mean “compounding the risks and endangering Virginians’ health and safety with greater market availability.”

But Rouse argued that the current ban on retail sales encourages people to turn to dealers selling products of unknown potency, which have a chance of being laced with other substances. Complexities in enforcement also allow for a thriving “gray market” of informal sales in which unauthorized cannabis proliferates.

“This was an opportunity to really drive that market away and really put in a safer market,” the state senator said.

Trent Woloveck, chief strategy director at the marijuana cultivator and seller Jushi, estimated that retail sales would generate between $250 million and $300 million in Virginia tax revenue each year. (Casey’s estimate was more conservative, at around $185 million per year.)

Authorized distributors track potency down to the gram and can easily trace all of their products back to their source. Virginia’s medical marijuana dispensaries, Woloveck said, currently help to “counteract” the illicit drug market and “bring real product to bear.”

Rouse pledged to continue advocating for recreational marijuana for as long as it takes.

“The might must go on, and I’m looking forward to continuing that effort,” he said.

Little Ambassadors’ Academy is thrilled to announce that we will be entering our fifth school year offering a Kindergarten program at our Overlee Campus!

Dedicated to early childhood development, Little Ambassadors’ Academy provides a safe, nurturing environment where children can learn and grow through discovery.

As teachers and administrators, we provide an encouraging and creative school environment in which students develop intellectual curiosity and outstanding moral character. We celebrate the individuality of each child and work with them to reach their full potential.

We believe in a supportive learning environment where children can become active and engaged learners. Little Ambassadors’ Academy is dedicated to building a solid foundation for lifelong learning.

A well-balanced program is essential for a positive early childhood development experience. LAA creates well rounded students by exposing them to strong learning components. Through daily healthy living activities, students are developing the tools they need for personal growth and gross motor development.

The art of language is supported by our Spanish lessons and visits to our school library. Music enrichment and process based art projects encourage the creative strengths of children. Our hands-on approach with science creates opportunities for critical thinking, observation skills, and the ability to form conclusions. Our curriculum creates a diverse learning experience for our students and contributes to their overall development which fosters their growth into bright, responsible, and caring citizens.

Little Ambassadors’ Academy is actively enrolling students for Fall 2024. For more information, please visit the Kindergarten page on our website!