Exterior signage is up at the future Shake Shack at the Pentagon City mall.
The burger-and-shake restaurant is opening within a new, still under-construction expansion of the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City along S. Hayes Street. It’s the chain’s first restaurant in Arlington.
Arlington-based coffee startup Commonwealth Joe says its planned coffee shop in Pentagon City will be the company’s flagship location — and will offer something beyond just a morning pick-me-up.
“Arlington deserves great coffee,” Commonwealth Joe co-founder and CEO Robert Peck said Monday. “We aim to deliver powerful experiences built around that cup of coffee, and also to provide an environment that makes you feel at home and gives you a sense of place — somewhere where you want to bring your friends and family and can also have chance encounters with others in the community.”
Arlington County will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony at Virginia Highlands Park on Sunday, marking the completion of a nearly $2 million renovation project.
The renovations include new basketball courts, tennis courts, tennis practice courts, drinking fountains, water bottle fillers and site furnishings. There’s also new “dark sky” lighting and parking and accessibility improvements.
Pacers Running’s “Love the Run You’re With” race is scheduled to take over parts of S. Joyce Street and Army Navy Drive Sunday morning. The 5K kicks off at 9 a.m. and begins and ends at Pentagon Row.
Doubling as a matchmaking affair, the race uses bib numbers that correspond to runners’ relationship statuses. Racers can register as single (“Stupid Cupid”), it’s complicated (“Love ’em or Leave ’em”) or in a relationship (“Co-Dependent”).
Pentagon City Apartment Complex Gets Financing — The Altaire, the high-end residential development at 400 Army Navy Drive, has obtained $100 million in financing from Wells Fargo and is expected to begin construction this month. The 20-story complex will have two towers with a total of 453 units. Construction is expected to be complete by the second quarter of 2018. [Washington Business Journal]
History of Hall’s Hill — This year is the 150th anniversary of the historically African-American neighborhood of Hall’s Hill, also known as High View Park. An event on the community’s history last week revealed the origin of its name. Hall’s Hill is named after Bazil Hall, a white slaveholder who sold plots of land to freed slaves after the Civil War to spite his white neighbors. [InsideNova]
Violent Attack at Pentagon City Metro — A seemingly random act of violence at the Pentagon City Metro station injured a man late last month. Details of the attack were just released: a 19-year-old man collapsed on the platform after being sucker-punched. Witnesses took cell phone photos of the attacker, who fled. The incident is one of a string of recent violent incidents at Metro stations. [Fox 5 DC]
GGW Questions Garvey’s Leadership — Will new County Board Chair Libby Garvey move Arlington forward with smart infrastructure investments, or pull back and scale down the county’s ambitions? That’s the question being posed by urbanist blog Greater Greater Washington, which has been critical of Garvey’s anti-streetcar stance. [Greater Greater Washington]
Update at 4:50 p.m. — The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward in the case.
Earlier: Arlington County Police are on scene of a bank robbery at the Wells Fargo in Pentagon City, across from Costco.
The new Starbucks will be located in the Acadia at Metropolitan Park apartment building, on the same block as the future Whole Foods on 12th Street S., according to a building permit application.
This will be the eighth Starbucks store in Pentagon City and Crystal City. That excludes Starbucks locations in the Pentagon and Reagan National Airport, which have at least two apiece.
ARLnow Suffers Server Issue — ARLnow.com’s web server was down this morning due to a technical problem. It came back up at almost exactly noon. We apologize for any inconvenience. For those seeking an explanation of what went wrong, we’ve compiled some of our tweets from this morning. [Storify]
Big Apartment Development Proposed in Pentagon City — Vornado, which recently put several planned projects in Crystal City on hold, has filed a preliminary site plan application for a huge new apartment tower in Pentagon City. The 22-story, 558-unit residential building would be part of the Metropolitan Park development, next to a currently under-construction, Whole Foods-anchored apartment building, also owned by Vornado. Expect objections from some residents in nearby single-family home neighborhoods, who are already fretting about Vornado’s proposed addition of 1,100 apartments at the RiverHouse complex. [Washington Business Journal]
Prosecutor: Black Asked for Help Killing Wife — At a bond hearing Monday, prosecutors said that David Black asked a friend to help kill his wife in a classic case of domestic violence. Black was denied bond and will remain in jail, charged with killing his estranged wife Bonnie Black in their home near Pentagon City. The trial is set for Feb. 29. [WUSA 9]
One of the Worst Traffic Bottlenecks — Arlington has one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country, according to the American Highway Users Alliance. I-395 between Washington Blvd and the GW Parkway ranked No. 26 on the list, wasting 1.1 million hours and 322,600 gallons of fuel annually. [WTOP]
Lime Fresh first opened its Pentagon Row location, near the Harris Teeter, in May 2012. It promised a “signature blend of fresh, mouth-watering Mexican dishes, dynamic ambiance, stylized interiors and scrupulous service,” but garnered mixed reviews online.
A Clarendon outpost of the Ruby Tuesday-owned restaurant chain opened a few months earlier, but closed a year later, in 2013.
McMenamin, a former Arlington County Civic Federation president who’s endorsed by the Arlington County Republican Committee and County Board member John Vihstadt, says he shares concerns about traffic and a strain on local services with residents from a nearby neighborhood.
Residents of Arlington Ridge — an affluent neighborhood overlooking Pentagon City — have long protested planned development in Pentagon City and Crystal City areas on the grounds of negative impacts to their community. Among the projects causing concern: approved development on the Pentagon Centre shopping center site and the as-yet vacant PenPlace site, plus proposed additions to the RiverHouse apartment complex.
