The 27th annual Columbia Pike Blues Festival plans to shine a spotlight on female musicians as this year’s headliners.
Stretching across multiple blocks, the festival — scheduled for June 15 — is set to offer its usual mix of performances, local food and drink, and family-friendly entertainment.
What sets this year’s celebration apart is its exclusive lineup of women musicians, all paying homage to the legacy and influence of female blues artists.
“This year the Festival celebrates women in blues with a lineup of all-women-fronted bands offering a full array of blues, R&B, and funk performers of national and regional note,” an email announcement said.
Taking center stage at the festival is Brooklyn native Bette Smith, a soul artist whose musical journey traces back to the gospel tunes she sang in church, infusing her soulful sound with spiritual roots.
In addition to being inducted into the New York Blues Hall of Fame in 2012, Smith — otherwise known as Sharon Meriel Kathleen Smith — has worked with several famous blues, jazz, rock and country musicians, including Jimbo Mathus, Kirk Fletcher, Luther Dickinson and Patterson Hood.
Smith is also gearing up to release her third album, “Goodthing,” next month with with Grammy-winning UK producer Jimmy Hogarth just a few weeks before the festival kicks off.
Blues artists Eden Brent, Mama Moon & The Rump Shakers, The Stacey Brooks Band and The Honeylarks are also set to perform.
“Mark your calendar,” the festival’s website says. “This free outdoor music event sees thousands of residents and visitors come together each year in South Arlington.”
The outdoor music event is free to the public and made possible through sponsorship from the Columbia Pike Partnership and Arlington Cultural Affairs.
Longtime Arlingtonian and local leader Cecilia Cassidy passed away yesterday in Frederick, Maryland, at the age of 75.
In Arlington, she was best known for her housing advocacy and her leadership of two local organizations: the Rosslyn Business Improvement District and the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization, now the Columbia Pike Partnership.
“Cecilia was a connector and leaves many friends, old and new,” her obituary says. “She will be missed.”
Cassidy was born in Brooklyn, New York on Aug. 20, 1948, and grew up on Long Island. Cassidy got her start in journalism, reporting for the Susquehanna Sentinel in Oneonta, New York, and went on to have articles published in The Washington Post, USA Today and Newsday, among other newspapers and literary journals.
She lived in Arlington for 45 years. She kicked off her housing career tenant organizing in Arlington Village, where she lived along Columbia Pike, during a condo conversion in the 1980s, according to her obituary. Together with Arlington County, she helped establish the first limited-equity housing co-op in Virginia and she later went on to head up community relations for the affordable housing developer AHC, Inc.
Cassidy was also instrumental in standing up the Rosslyn BID — Arlington’s first such organization — and serving as its executive director for more than a decade.
“It was her work that really made the BIDs work here in the county,” County Manager Barbara Donnellan said when Cassidy retired from this post in 2013.
Cassidy then served for three years as the interim leader of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization after the sudden resignation of former executive director Takis Karantonis, now an Arlington County Board member. She retired from CPRO in 2018, after overseeing the organization’s largest period of financial growth in 30 years and the adoption of a strategic plan, per a press release at the time.
“CPRO is grateful for Cecilia’s leadership and her contributions to the organization but even more grateful for the spirit, enthusiasm, and friendship Cecilia has shared with us,” then-board president John Snyder said at the time.
Cassidy was a member of the Leadership Arlington Class of 2000 and was named to the board of directors of the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing, or APAH.
But her other great love was to travel, according to her obituary.
“Her junior year abroad had her hitchhiking all over Europe,” it says. “She did her first of many cross-country trips at the age of 21 in a refurbished telephone truck with Tara’s playpen in the back and her sister Carol sharing the wheel. Over the years she visited friends in Poland, Russia and Puerto Rico, and after an extensive genealogy search, found long lost relatives in Ireland.”
Cassidy moved to Frederick in 2019 to be close to her daughter, Tara. Cassidy is survived by three siblings, her daughter Tara and a grandson and four nieces and nephews.
In lieu of flowers, people can make a donation in Cassidy’s name to APAH, AHC, the Writer’s Center in Bethesda or the Wroxton College of Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she studied abroad.
There will be a public viewing on Saturday, Nov. 11 from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. at Rollins Life Celebration Center in Frederick. A service will be held the following day, Sunday, from 12-1 p.m. followed by a repass in the hall. The service will also be livestreamed.
A memorial Mass and inurement will be scheduled sometime next spring or summer at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Arlington.
(Updated 9/13/23) Columbia Pike pet festival “Paws on the Pike” will return this month and unleash a day of pet-centric offerings and activities.
The pet fair, hosted by the Columbia Pike Partnership, is scheduled for Sept. 30 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Penrose Square outdoor plaza, located at 2501 9th Road S.
Attendees can have their pets sit for complimentary pet portraits and participate in a pet costume contest, hosted by the Arlington Animal Hospital in honor of its 85th anniversary. Those interested in portraits must sign up in advance.
There will be a DJ and a “water bar” where pets can sample water. At 1 p.m., Pastor Ashley Goff of Arlington Presbyterian Church will perform a pet blessing.
Pet owners can also connect with local pet service providers and vendors, such as veterinarians, trainers, pet-sitters, boarders, dog walkers and groomers.
For those interested in pet adoption, representatives from the Animal Welfare League of Arlington will be available to inform people about animals in need of homes.
A few weeks later, a Columbia Pike wellness festival showcasing local wellness purveyors will be held in the same location on Saturday, Oct. 14 from noon to 4 p.m.
Photo (1) via Columbia Pike Partnership/Facebook
The real estate company renovating and redeveloping the Barcroft Apartments is helping a local art studio expand its reach.
After renovating a Western Union in the Barcroft Shopping Center on Columbia Pike, owner Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners donated the lease to Studio PAUSE. There, the Arlington-based studio will host art and writing workshops, which will be free for Barcroft residents but for a fee for other community members.
With loans from Arlington County and Amazon, Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners the Barcroft Apartments in 2021 with plans to set aside all 1,344 units for affordable housing. At the time, it also purchased a Penske rental facility and nearby strip mall, which the company says it has no “immediate” plans to redevelop, but could nonetheless figure into future plans.
Instead, Jair Lynch views the shopping center as a place to foster the existing community at Barcroft — through the arts.
“The Barcroft Shopping Center adjacent to the Barcroft Apartments property is not just a convenient location for an arts center, it is already occupied by beloved retail tenants like Goodwill and Café Sazón,” Krista Brick, a representative for Jair Lynch, told ARLnow.
“The location along the Columbia Pike Corridor encourages members of the Barcroft community and our neighbors to learn from each other in a setting that fosters understanding and expression,” she continued.
The former Western Union space will be the third location for Studio PAUSE, which has also received donations from the county.
“Working with local community advocate BU-GATA and the Columbia Pike Partnership, the location was identified as a prime opportunity to work with Studio PAUSE to celebrate the diversity of Barcroft and empower our residents to tell their story through art,” said Mark Hannan, an investment manager at Jair Lynch, in a press release.
Studio PAUSE — an acronym for “People, Art, Understand, Share, Explore” — was started by Sushmita Mazumdar in 2013. The writer, artist and educator wanted to create a space where people could share stories and explore their creativity. Mazumdar is also part of the Columbia Pike Documentary Project, which will display photos, books and interviews in the new studio space.
The studio currently runs programs in the Gates of Ballston apartment complex, run by nonprofit affordable housing developer AHC Inc.
“We believe the collaboration between Barcroft Apartments and Studio PAUSE will provide a much-needed space for creativity, arts, and mental wellness,” said Columbia Pike Partnership Executive Director Kim Klingler in the press release. “We look forward to collaborating and making this a welcoming space for the community.”
Summer movie nights are coming back to Penrose Square and Arlington Mill for a 12th year.
Columbia Pike Movie Nights is a free outdoor summer movie series taking place on Friday nights at the Arlington Mill Community Center Outdoor Plaza (909 S. Dinwiddie Street) and Saturday nights at Penrose Square Outdoor Plaza (2503 9th Road S.).
It’s scheduled to begin July 7 and run for 8 weeks through August 26. The movies will begin at sunset, generally between 8 and 8:30 p.m.
The series is organized by the Columbia Pike Partnership. It returned to the outdoor plazas last year after being drive-in only in 2020 and 2021.
Movies set to be shown are a mix of old and new classics intended to be relatively family-friendly, including Back to the Future, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Top Gun: Maverick, and Till.
The full schedule for each location is below:
Arlington Mill
- July 7 — Spirit Untamed
- July 14 — Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
- July 21 — Dog
- July 28 — Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
- August 4 — Lady and the Tramp
- August 11 — Raiders of the Lost Ark
- August 18 — Lightyear
- August 25 — The Goonies
Penrose Square
- July 8 — Cave Rescue
- July 15 — Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope
- July 22 — Back to the Future
- July 29 — A Man Called Otto
- August 5 — Till
- August 12 — Top Gun: Maverick
- August 19 — The Woman King
- August 26 — Jurassic World Dominion
The movies will be shown in English with Spanish subtitles. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own blankets and chairs. Leashed pets are welcome, organizers note, and alcohol is not permitted at either site.
Free parking will be available, though bus and bike travel is encouraged. There will be restroom access inside of Arlington Mill Community Center and at the businesses around Penrose Square.
In case of inclement weather, check the event’s webpage and social media channels for updates. Information will be “typically posted at 3:30 p.m. on the day of each screening.”
The Columbia Pike Blues Festival is returning this summer for its 26th edition.
The annual summer music festival is set to take place on June 17 this year and will span several Columbia Pike blocks. It will feature a collection of performances, local food, beer, and family-friendly activities, as it usually does.
This year’s headliner is Judith Hill, a singer and songwriter featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Feet from Stardom.” She’s performed and worked with John Legend, Josh Groban, Prince, and Michael Jackson and has self-produced several of her own albums.
Also playing at the festival are Annika Chambers and Paul DesLauriers, local blues guitarist Bobby Thompson, Gayle Harrod Band, and Spice Cake Blues.
A number of local restaurants will be providing food and drinks, including New District Brewing. As co-owner Mike Katrivanos told ARLnow last month, the Green Valley-based brewery will be serving beer at the festival again this year despite the fact they may be without a home come June.
Another now-shuttered business, Rincome Thai, is still set to curate the wine list for the Blues Festival.
There will also be a kids activity area, while 9th Rd. S. will be transformed into an “art alley” where the Arlington Art Truck is set to have interactive exhibits, activities, and an exhibit from the Columbia Pike Documentary Project.
More programming and activities are still expected to be added to the line-up this year, Arlington Arts marketing director Jim Byers told ARLnow. Those additions will be announced via social media as it gets closer to the festival.
Arlington Arts co-produces the event with the Columbia Pike Partnership.
About 7,000 people are expected to come to the festival this year, though that depends on the weather, Byers said. In 2022, it’s estimated about 8,000 people attended, as the festival returned to being fully in-person for the first time in three years. It was also the festival’s 25th anniversary.
The Columbia Pike Blues Festival started in 1995 and, according to organizers, it is considered the largest music festival of its kind in the D.C. area.
(Updated at 5:20 p.m.) It’s set to be a busy month at the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington as it continues to look for a permanent home.
The museum is participating in a number of Black History Month programs while preparing to put up new exhibits, museum director Scott Taylor told ARLnow.
This past weekend, the museum partnered with the Columbia Pike Partnership and the Embassy of Switzerland on a program focused on the importance of museums in the community.
On Sunday (Feb. 5), families and staff from Tuckahoe Elementary School visited the museum. Plus, Taylor monitored a panel last night for the local PBS station WETA discussing the production of last year’s documentary series “Making Black America.”
Coming up on Sunday, Feb. 19, the museum is again partnering with WETA as well as the Arlington Public Library for a screening of the documentary American Masters: Roberta Flack at the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse on Columbia Pike.
Flack is known for several number-one hits including “Killing Me Softly” and grew up in Green Valley.
All of these events and programs have kept Taylor so busy that he hasn’t had a chance to put up any new exhibits, but that’s hopefully changing this week.
The museum is planning to set out a display featuring items from what was once Hoffman-Boston High School, Arlington’s only high school for Black students at a time when the county’s schools were segregated.
“We have some sixty-plus-year-old yearbooks that people see and feel and look at,” Taylor said.
There will also be a “few new things” from Fire Station 8, including several firemen hats and boots. Located in Halls Hill, it was Arlington’s only fire station staffed with Black firefighters. A state-of-the-art station is replacing the old one and is expected to be completed later this year.
Later this month, Taylor plans to put up an exhibit about Camp Casey featuring a gun from the era as well.
All of this comes as the museum continues its search for a permanent home. In September, it moved into a new space with the Columbia Pike Partnership on the first floor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council building at 3045B Columbia Pike.
While Taylor appreciates the temporary home, it is small and the museum is often unable to do everything it wants to do.
“Arlington needs this and, most people who come through, want [us] to expand,” he said. “I have things that I can’t even put up because we don’t have enough space.”
The museum is not close to finding its own home, Taylor said, noting money is the main obstacle.
“The rent in Arlington is just crazy. These new buildings want $10,000 a month,” he said.
At their grand re-opening in September, Taylor said he had a conversation with several County Board members about possibly moving into the building across the street if it ends up getting redeveloped by the county into a library.
But that remains only a possibility and somewhat far in the future.
The Black Heritage Museum is a “big asset” to the county, he said, one that he says needs to be cherished and given assistance to.
“This history is not being taught in schools. We bring voices to unsung heroes,” Taylor said. “This history belongs to Arlington.”
The Black Heritage Museum of Arlington and the Columbia Pike Partnership are nearly ready to open the doors to their new home.
The two Pike-centric organizations will host a joint grand opening celebration on Sept. 16 from 4- 6 p.m., on the first floor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council building at 3045B Columbia Pike. Local officials are expected to attend and the public is welcome to attend with an RSVP.
“The Black Heritage Museum of Arlington is excited about the grand re-opening of our museum in a new space!” the museum’s president Scott Taylor said in a statement. “We are so thankful to so many of you, who have been with us every step of the way so that this day would finally come again for us to display information and be a voice to many unsung Arlington heroes who have certainly a hand in making Arlington the great county/city it is today.”
We reported in May that the museum and the Columbia Pike Partnership (CPP) had found a new home a few blocks from their former one at 2611 Columbia Pike. Both were forced to vacate — along with all of the businesses at the Fillmore Gardens Shopping Center — due to the impending demolition and redevelopment of the shopping center.
It took about four months to settle into the space, CPP’s deputy director Amy McWilliams told ARLnow, but now they are ready to start welcoming the public. Their new home was originally intended as retail, not an office space, but with a majority of employees still working from home often the reconfiguration isn’t a big deal, said McWilliams.
Part of the office will be taken up by a display of photos from the Columbia Pike Documentary Project.
The Black Heritage Museum will be taking up a large chunk of space for its displays, exhibits, and artifacts. Museum president Scott Taylor said this allows the museum to display a few new artifacts and a couple of newer displays, including vintage items from an old drug store as well as photos of Arlington-raised singer Roberta Flack.
“A new space and change is always good,” Taylor wrote ARLnow in an email. “We still have some of this same items that we’ve always had in which is okay because there are still a lot of people who have not experienced us yet.”
Taylor told ARLnow in May that the museum was still hoping for its own space. With the county acquiring 3108 Columbia Pike, there remains a possibility the museum could go back to the building it occupied several years ago.
For now, the museum is once again sharing space with CPP and taking advantage of what they do have.
“Unfortunately we still don’t have as much space as we would like to have but we are making the best of what we do have and I can’t wait for everyone to see!” said Taylor.
The Columbia Pike Partnership and Black Heritage Museum of Arlington are moving down the Pike due to the imminent redevelopment of Fillmore Gardens Shopping Center, both announced yesterday (May 18).
The two local organizations are set to move by the end of the month into the first floor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council building at 3045 Columbia Pike, only a five minute walk from its current home at 2611 Columbia Pike. Among their new neighbors is a Subway sandwich shop.
They are moving because the shopping center is set for demolition and redevelopment. In March, the Arlington County Board officially greenlit turning the aging retail strip into “The Elliot.” The new building will feature 247 market-rate apartments above a grocery store (maybe an Amazon Fresh), a renovated CVS, and a relocated Burritos Bros.
What it won’t include is a number of the current tenants, including the partnership and the museum.
“When the news came that we would need to move, our Board of Directors decided it was important for the organization to have a presence on the Pike — people need to find us, and we need to stay in touch with the community as well,” CPP’s Amy McWilliams tells ARLnow. “After a long hunt, we found the space at 3045B Columbia Pike, and realized it could house the Columbia Pike Partnership as well as the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, continuing our collective partnership.”
Last year, the Black Heritage Museum moved into the offices of the partnership, then called the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization. Sharing the space was supposed to be temporary as the museum looked for a permanent home.
That’s still the plan for this new space, says the museum’s president Scott Taylor, as the museum continues to search for a new location — possibly in its old home.
“We have just recently signed a two year contract with our new landlord. We will continue to strive for a permanent location,” says Taylor. “There is even some talk about us going back to 3108 Columbia Pike as the county has acquired that property and may allow us some room there when they complete the new project there.”
CPP and the museum hope to have the space open to the public by June 18.
With all businesses needing to vacate the shopping center by May 31, several others have closed or announced their next moves in recent months.
H&R Block closed earlier this year while CVS will move into a trailer during construction and, then, back into the new building when completed. Atilla’s, a Turkish restaurant and grocer that’s been there since the 1970s, is closing next weekend and is in search of a new location.
Legend Kicks, which re-opened in its current location in 2018, is also set to close and possible move, but it’s unclear where.
ARLnow reached out to the business and its owner, who also owns the still-yet-to-open Eska just down Columbia Pike in the former location of the Purple Lounge, but has not heard back as of publication time.
It’s been two months since Arlington County and Amazon agreed to loan more than $300 million to facilitate the sale of the Barcroft Apartments on Columbia Pike.
In exchange for these loans, developer Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners agreed to preserve 1,334 units on the site as committed affordable units for 99 years.
Since the deal in December, Jair Lynch has started conducting initial property assessments to understand what substantive repairs and renovations need to be done in the short term to improve residential quality of life and building safety, Anthony Startt, the company’s director of investments, tells ARLnow.
It’s also working with Barcroft Apartments property management company Gates Hudson to meet with residents individually and at welcome events and administer surveys to understand their living situations.
“We are assuring all of our residents that no one will be displaced,” he said.
The garden apartments at 1130 S. George Mason Drive sprawl across 60 acres and house more tenants than some rural towns. They happen to be some of the last market-rate affordable apartments in Arlington, and proponents of the county’s $150 million loan heralded the significant investment in preserving affordable housing, while critics said the deal went through too quickly and without enough community oversight.
Now, the hard work on the county side begins: drafting a long-term investment plan and figuring out how to involve the community, particularly Barcroft residents, in the planning process. Community leaders and County Board members say this will have to balance blue-sky ideas with the financial constraints that come with an affordable housing project, all while working within the parameters of the Neighborhoods Form-Based Code that governs development in the area.
“There are a lot of cool things people would love to see, but the money first has to go toward preservation of 1,334 units, which I don’t know of a larger housing preservation deal in the D.C. area, ever,” says John Snyder, the chair of the Columbia Pike Partnership board (formerly the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization, or CPRO).
He served as a representative of the Douglas Park neighborhood on the working group that developed the the Neighborhoods Form-Based Code.
Snyder’s must-haves include an on-site bus stop and bicycle stations to ensure there isn’t a large influx of cars clogging up S. George Mason Drive. His wish list includes a municipal swimming pool and playgrounds. There’s also interest in a daycare or a school.
“It’s going to be very interesting as all of this moves forward in the planning process,” Snyder says. “I just envision people getting great ideas and looking at the other end of the table where the engineers and accountants are sweating, wondering how they can do this… In other places, maybe we can raise the rent, but we can’t here.”
The County Board has encouraged county planning staff to prioritize a review the Neighborhoods Form-Based Code — which has some guidance on building size and placement, but not other topics such as form or ground-floor retail — to ensure the plans act as a floor, and not a ceiling, for whatever Jair Lynch proposes.
The Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization (CPRO) celebrated its 35th anniversary last week with a party at Penrose Square, while unveiling a new name: The Columbia Pike Partnership.
Shannon Bailey, vice-chair of the organization’s executive committee, along with executive director Kim Klingler, made the announcement at its 35th anniversary party on Wednesday (Oct. 13) evening.
“It really does take all of us to create an ecosystem here,” Bailey said. “So we do this together moving forward as a partnership.”
Along with the new name, there’s also a new logo, color scheme, and branding.
“Everything that we do requires our partners and we really realized that during Covid,” Klingler told ARLnow moments after announcing the name change. “We wanted a name that truly reflected who we are today. We have the same mission. We have the same values, but people really didn’t know who we were and we wanted our name to reflect that.”
The Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization formed in 1986 in response to the Arlington County Board awarding a $50,000 grant to help make the moribund corridor a more vibrant place to live and do business.
The hope was the money and an organized effort would be “the first step in what some see as a 10-year effort to coordinate improvements that could lead to revitalization of the highway as well as a return of community pride.”
But times and the Pike have changed.
First enacted in 2003, the Columbia Pike Form-Based Code has led to an organized development effort and a standardization in how buildings along the Pike will look going forward.
“This really jump started [development] on Arlington’s oldest main street,” Takis Karantonis, former CPRO executive director and current county board member, told ARLnow at the celebration. “Urban development is a slow game. A very slow game. But [the form-based code] and CPRO have brought diverse communities together — developers, shop owners, residents — to make it happen.”
The Pike has a reputation for being one of the more affordable and diverse areas in the county. Columbia Pike and its 22204 zip code is often referred to as a “world in a zip code.”
Klingler said it was time to make clear the organization’s role in preserving this reputation.
“We really want to marry diversity and development. People say that is a very challenging thing to do, but I believe we can find that balance,” she said.
