Two teens were taken in custody after an unsuccessful armed carjacking attempt in Pentagon City over the weekend.
The incident, which happened early Saturday morning a few blocks from Amazon’s HQ2, was caught on camera. Local public safety watcher Dave Statter posted video of the suspects hiding in wait, then the would-be victims fleeing on foot.
Fresh off a successful first year in D.C., a family-operated Ethiopian restaurant lauded as one of the best in the region is planning a potential new Arlington location.
Eatopia Eatery, which The Washington Post recently named one of the region’s best Ethiopian restaurants, has been searching for an Arlington space since October, owner Surafel Gizachew told ARLnow. It would be the restaurant’s second outpost, joining the U Street location that debuted last April.
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…)
An Arlington leader is among several local officials opposing a proposal to merge bus systems in Northern Virginia in a quest for greater efficiency.
Though the possibility of merging transit systems came up during DMV Moves meetings late last year, leaders including County Board member Matt de Ferranti expressed skepticism after the concept re-appeared during a meeting last week.
A group of protesters carrying a coffin draped with a Palestinian flag received trespassing citations this morning after entering a Rosslyn office building.
A crowd of about 30 people entered Arlington Tower, home of the Israel-based defense firm Elbit Systems, around 8:30 a.m. Monday, according to scanner traffic.
Join Jadin O’Brien, Olympic athlete, 3x NCAA pentathlon champion and 10x All-American (heptathlon) winner for this in-person and virtual 5K. This event is sponsored by The Alex Manfull Fund to raise awareness and advance research on debilitating infection-associated neuroimmune disorders (including PANS and PANDAS) that affect young people. The 5K is part of the organization’s 36 Hours for PANS and PANDAS Advocacy in Motion event. Runners will receive a Finisher’s Medal, Technical (Drifit) Event Shirt and A Chip Timed Event. The event commemorates the life of Alex Manfull, who died at age 26 due to PANDAS. Susan and William Manfull established the Fund in their daughter’s name with the vision that no life ever again be cut short—or interrupted—by these illnesses. Learn more at TheAlexManfullFund.org.
The population of every jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, including Arlington, increased between 2023 and 2024 for the first time in seven years.
The region as a whole saw its largest population increase in quite a few years, rising by 35,181, according to new estimates from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. Arlington’s population estimate increased by just under 2%, while the region as a whole grew by 1.4%.
Arlington County’s heavily subsidized 55+ programming may get more pricey for participants in coming years.
County Board members have unofficially tasked the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) to examine the fee scale for the approximately 7,000 people — most county residents — participating in these programs.
Another Near Miss at DCA — “A Delta Air Lines jet narrowly avoided a mid-air collision with a U.S. Air Force T-38 military aircraft on Friday near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport – just miles from the site of a deadly crash in January that killed 67 people. Delta Flight 2983, an Airbus A319 bound for Minneapolis-St. Paul, had just departed DCA around 3 p.m. when a cockpit warning system… issued a “resolution advisory,” directing pilots to take evasive action.” [USA Today, Washington Post]
Plane Strikes Kite at DCA — “A United plane made contact with a kite while attempting to land at Reagan National Airport Saturday afternoon, witnesses told WUSA9. The pilot of United Airlines Flight 654 from Houston can be heard over air traffic radio, giving details about the kite to an air traffic controller.” [WUSA 9, NBC News, Spencer Allan Brooks/X]
Driver Nabbed After Crash — “We have new details of the man apparently trying to hide from police behind a planter in Pentagon City this morning. As you’ll see in the video, he apparently came from a car that wrecked at high speed on I-395N… The video shows police catching up to him about 45 minutes after the crash.” [Dave Statter/X]
Update: Egg Prices Down — An ARLnow article about high egg prices appears to have been published just as those prices started dropping. From Axios: “Egg prices are suddenly plunging as the bird flu begins to wane and imports surge to fill the gap… It’s down 63% from a record $8.15 in the Feb. 21 report.” [Axios]
It’s Monday — Expect isolated showers to develop into afternoon thunderstorms with a high near 79°F and south winds gusting up to 26 mph. Rainfall amounts may reach up to a quarter of an inch. Tonight, thunderstorms continue before 8pm, followed by potential showers until 2am, with a low near 45°F. Southwest winds shift northwest after midnight, gusting up to 24 mph. Chance of precipitation remains high, with up to three-quarters of an inch of rainfall possible. [NWS]
Today’s Morning Notes are brought to you by Industrious. ARLnow has been in an Industrious office for years and we love the convenience — you get to focus on your work rather than worrying about brewing your own coffee or keeping the copy machine stocked. Industrious has several Metro-accessible coworking locations in Arlington.
A house fire in the Fairlington neighborhood sent three firefighters to the hospital Sunday evening.
The fire broke out shortly before 5:45 p.m. in a townhouse on the 4100 block of 36th Street S., near the Alexandria border. While battling the flames, a firefighter fell through the floor — from the second floor to the first, according to radio traffic — and a mayday was called.
The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City was shut down Saturday evening after a series of large fights led to a massive, multi-agency police response.
The fights started breaking out among groups of teens and mall security around 6 p.m., according to scanner traffic. By 7 p.m., additional fights in the food court started escalating and all available officers were urgently dispatched to the mall.
