Around Town

Nook Play Space is slated to open at 5649 Lee Highway in mid-October, providing an alternative to play areas like Chuck E. Cheese, owner Maria Vogelei said.

She said that many of the D.C.-area play places she and her young daughters have visited are overcrowded and in dark, windowless spaces that are “completely outdated.”


News

The 4-1 decision was made as part of the Board’s deliberation on the adoption of the county’s proposed Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), which includes the replacement of Fire Station 8.

The vote, based on a recommendation from the board’s Fire Station No. 8 Task Force, marks the likely end to a long and contentious saga over the station’s future.


News

Last year, after a proposal to move the station from Lee Highway to county-owned land near Marymount University prompted an outcry from both residents who live near the current station and the proposed location, the county established a task force to consider the issue. With input from the task force, Board is expected to make a decision on the station location by the time it approves the CIP next Tuesday.

Residents near the fire station want it to remain where it is largely because of its historic significance to the community. Those near the proposed site are worried about noise and traffic issues, as well as a loss of green space. A majority of the task force agreed, voting in May to recommend keeping it at its current site.


News

The crash happened around 4:30 p.m. at the intersection of Lee Highway and N. Nash Street, near the Key Bridge Marriott hotel. Police say the bus driver was at fault.

“A Metrobus was traveling westbound on Lee Highway when the driver of the Metrobus proceeded through a red light and struck a pedestrian in the crosswalk,” said Arlington County Police Department spokeswoman Ashley Savage. “The pedestrian was taken to George Washington University Hospital in critical but stable condition. The driver of the Metrobus was issued a summons for failure to obey a traffic light.”


News

To help deal with traffic congestion during the track outages that are planned as part of Metro’s SafeTrack project, Arlington County is considering a plan to implement a bus-only lane on part of Lee Highway.

The bus-only lane would be implemented on the three-lane section of Lee Highway from N. Veitch Street near Courthouse to N. Moore Street in Rosslyn, and only during the morning rush hour. That portion of Lee Highway often experiences heavy traffic congestion in the morning.


News

The incident happened Saturday, at a market on the 5100 block of Lee Highway, around 10:15 p.m.

A clerk was clearing out the cash register around closing time when a masked man entered and brandished a gun. A second employee, in defense of her coworker, then started throwing bottles at the armed man, according to Arlington County Police.


Around Town

The sign on the front door says it all: new pie store Livin’ the Pie Life expects to open “April-ish.”

Located at 2166 N. Glebe Road, near the intersection with Lee Highway, the store is the bricks-and-mortar manifestation of what has up until now been a business that sold its wares primarily at local farmers markets.


Around Town

The original District Taco at 5723 Lee Highway reopened at 11 a.m. this morning, after closing last month for renovations.

The restaurant doesn’t look all too different than it did before the renovations. We’re told much of the work focused on the kitchen; if anything, District Taco has been a victim of its own popularity in the form of out-the-door lines during the lunch and dinner rushes.


Opinion

The draft plan envisions a tree-lined Lee Highway that’s more pedestrian- and bike-friendly, with mid-rise development concentrated in “mixed-use activity nodes.”

The rationale behind the plan, and the community process that helped inform it, is to set an aspirational vision for future development and transportation improvements along the Lee Highway corridor. The community can thus have more of a voice than if it were to just let piecemeal development take place along the corridor without a unified plan.


Around Town

(Updated at 12:40 p.m.) The public comment period on a draft plan for the Lee Highway corridor is ending after Thursday.

The draft, first published online last month after a public “charrette” planning process in 2015, outlines a sweeping vision for the corridor, which currently is a primarily car-oriented mish-mash of strip malls, aging apartment buildings and other assorted low-density businesses and infrastructure.


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