Around Town

In an exasperated email sent to customers this morning, restaurant management claims they were misled by building owners about the ease with which they would be able to obtain an outdoor seating permit. The email bemoans the “mixed signals, confusion and thousands in lost revenue” caused by the year-long, fruitless effort to get a permit.

The homeowner’s association president for the townhouses across the street from the restaurant “has made it his personal goal to use his new position of HOA president to attack all of our seating,” the email says. The Clarendon-Courthouse Civic Association has also joined the effort to block outdoor seating, despite efforts to find a compromise, according to the email.


News

The League of Women Voters of Arlington is bristling at a snub by the Committee for a Better Arlington (CBA).

The Committee did not respond to the League’s repeated requests for information about the effects of CBA’s proposed change to Arlington’s form of government, prompting the League to issue a press release today saying it’s “concerned” about “the depth of the public dialogue” regarding the change.


News

County leaders got an earful about the proposed relocation of the Columbia Pike Branch Library at a town hall meeting last night.

“An angry standing room crowd” holding “signs and banners” loudly engaged library and county officials at the Arlington Career Center, a resident who attended the meeting tells us.


News

The East Falls Church (EFC) development plan calls for the creation of a “transit town” of neighborhood-oriented retail and restaurants, six to nine-story mixed-use buildings, and pedestrian-oriented walkable and bike-able streetscapes. Development is inevitable, EFC task force chairman Mike Nardolilli says, since the station will soon become the transfer point to Tysons Corner and the Silver Line. Members of the task force spent three years working on the plan and says it mostly incorporates ideas that most residents welcome, based on a neighborhood survey.

But according to one man, supporters of the plan are “passive sheep,” the task force wants “to limit our freedom,” and the proposed narrowing of Sycamore Street is “idiotic.” That invective, and any other criticism of the plan, was greeted by loud applause from like-minded folks in the audience, who were clearly in the majority.


News

Supporters of Matthew Berry have taken to the comment section of the local Republican politics website RedNoVA to vent their frustration.

Said one: “People I’ve spoken to in the last three days are shocked and disgusted by Murrays tactics… There is no better chance that I will [support] Murray than there is of Murray defeating Moran. Period.”


Around Town

Why? Because the spot — boldly staked out between Baja Fresh and Chipotle — apparently wasn’t sitting well with management at Baja Fresh, who complained to Monday Properties, which was renting the space to District Taco.

Well, Osiris Hoil and his crew were back on the streets of Rosslyn this morning, bringing their breakfast burritos to the masses. They found a new spot on North Lynn Street, between Wilson Boulevard and 19th Street, according to their Twitter feed.


News

The family of the late astronaut David Brown, for whom the David M. Brown Planetarium is named, has written a letter opposing Arlington Public Schools’ plan to close the 40-year-old facility, according to the Washington Post.

Brown was killed in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Brown’s brother, Douglas Brown, asked school officials why it’s necessary to close the only public planetarium in the country’s 10th-richest county.


News

Del. Adam Ebbin (D), who represents part of Arlington and Falls Church, invited imam Johari Abdul-Malik of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center to give today’s opening prayer.

Groups including the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force and the Traditional Values Coalition protested, citing Abdul-Malik’s comments about due process for Muslims arrested on terror charges, along with his mosque’s brief link to two of the 9/11 hijackers. In the past, Abdul-Malik has spoken out against violence and terrorism.


News

Neighbor will be pitted against neighbor at the Arlington Zoning Committee (“ZOCO”) hearing tomorrow night. The issue: parking recreational vehicles in the county.

Currently, the county’s RV parking policy is too stringent for some, who want to be able to legally park large RVs in their driveway, and doesn’t go far enough for others, who see RVs as an ugly, property-value-reducing blight on Arlington’s residential communities.


View More Stories