A ribbon cutting ceremony has been scheduled to celebrate the completion of the new Glebe Road bridge over Route 50.
The event will be held Wednesday morning near Thomas Jefferson Middle School, just to the southeast side of the 100-foot-long bridge. Among those expected to ribbon cutting are County Board Chair Mary Hynes, state Sen. Barbara Favola, Del. Patrick Hope, and officials from VDOT, which oversaw the project.
As part of its plan to reduce school overcrowding, APS is planning a new 90,000 square foot, 3-4 story, 600 seat neighborhood elementary school on the Williamsburg campus. The school is projected to cost $35 million to build and construction should last from Jan. 2014 to Summer 2015.
Toole Design Group, a transportation consultant hired by Arlington Public Schools, will present the results of a Traffic Impact Study at a community meeting scheduled from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. tonight (Thursday) at the Williamsburg Middle School auditorium. The meeting is open to the public.
Committee Debates Aquatics Center — Arlington’s Committee of 100 debated the merits of the planned $79 million Long Bridge Park aquatics and fitness center last night. A park bond that would help fund the center is on the Nov. 6 ballot. [Sun Gazette]
Marymount University and Diversity — WUSA 9’s Peggy Fox profiles Marymount University, which she says is one of the “most diverse regional universities” despite a “race blind” admissions process. Instead of considering race during the admissions process, the university instead actively encourages minority students to apply. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider a case that challenges the legality of affirmative action, which allows race and ethnicity to be considered in school admissions processes. [WUSA 9]
The first of 24 planned enhanced transit stops along Columbia Pike is less than a month away from opening.
At 24 stories and 719,704 square feet, the building — 1900 Crystal Drive — will be second only to the Pentagon in Arlington in terms of floor space.
(Alhough 1900 Crystal Drive will be the tallest in Crystal City, the 580,000 square foot, 35-story office building currently under construction at 1812 N. Moore Street in Rosslyn is still expected to be the tallest countywide.)
The new, under-construction Arlington Mill Community Center recently celebrated its “topping out” — the moment when the last beam is placed at the top of a building.
The Board will consider a $573,000 contract to build a new “sprayground” at Virginia Highlands Park, at 1600 S. Hayes Street near Pentagon City. The park was originally scheduled to open this past Memorial Day, but the project has been beset by delays. According to the staff report, the project was finally put out for bid in May, only to have the bids from contractors all came in higher than expected.
The sprayground was redesigned in order to put it within budget. A new water re-circulation system, which should save 113,000 gallons of water per week, was put into place. The sprayground was also reduced in scale, and certain features like a steel fence and a designed rock structure were eliminated.
According to police, two individuals were doing work on an electrical panel inside a closet. One of the workers walked away to get more supplies, and then heard a strange noise. Upon returning, he found the victim being electrocuted. The co-worker ran to get a board or some other object to knock the victim away from the electrical panel, but by the time he returned, the worker was unconscious.
Emergency crews administered CPR at the scene, and the victim was transported to Virginia Hospital Center with critical injuries. The man, believed to be in his 20s, died shortly after. According to police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck, the department is working to find and notify the victim’s family members, who do not live in the area.
(Updated at 2:45 p.m.) A major water main break has shut down a number of roads in Crystal City.
For at least an hour, water was spraying about 5 feet in the air out from buckled pavement at the intersection of 12th Street and S. Clark Street. Arlington County crews managed to shut off several valves, which reduced but did not stop the water flow for several hours. As of now, the water flow has been stopped, but not before it created a large pond in and around the intersection.
Alexandria-based Bowman Consulting, the landscape architecture firm on developer JBG’s 10-story office building at 800 N. Glebe Road, recently designed and installed a historical marker to honor the dealership’s iconic Googie architecture style.
In January, builders added a diamond-shaped facade to the front of the building to mimic the style. Bob Peck Chevrolet was demolished in 2008.
With about 36,000 combined entries and exits per weekday, the Pentagon City station is the second busiest station in Northern Virginia — second only to Rosslyn — and the 10th busiest in the entire Metro system.
A study conducted by WMATA in 2010, at the request of Arlington County, concluded that a new elevator should be built on the west side of S. Hayes Street, near the Pentagon City mall, and across from an existing elevator on the east side of Hayes.
While there’s no word on exactly when demolition is expected to begin, we’re told a crane has been sitting in the building’s parking lot for the past couple of weeks, while the Chamber just announced that it is in the process of moving to a temporary office in Ballston.
Replacing the office building will be a new 16-story, 254-unit apartment building called the Tellus. The mixed-use building will also include more than 15,000 square feet of office and retail space. Construction had been set to begin in 2010, but financial difficulties forced it to be delayed.
