Author: Vernon Miles

Vernon Miles is the ALXnow cofounder and editor. He's covered Alexandria since 2014 and has been with Local News Now since 2018. When he's not reporting, he can usually be found playing video games or Dungeons and Dragons with friends.

News

New private academy in Old Town headed to Planning Commission

By Vernon Miles

A new private school, The Linder Academy, could move in above the Old Town if it gets permission Planning Commission and City Council meetings next month.

The Linder Academy is headed to the Planning Commission on Tuesday, June 1, to review the proposal to allow the academy to operate at 601, 607 and 609 S. Washington Street and 710 Gibbon Street.

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News

School Board says swimming pool colocation a form of ‘reparations’ for Alexandria

By Vernon Miles
Athlete on the T.C. Williams Swim and Dive Team (photo via T.C. Williams High School/Facebook)

School Board chair Meagan Alderton is pushing for the last-minute addition of an aquatics facility to the planned Alexandria City High School expansion, noting that the addition would help toward rectifying a longstanding racial disparity.

Alderton said Alexandria is guilty of the same nationwide disparity in swimming proficiency, with lack of access to pools for Black Americans creating disproportionately white aquatics sports teams. It’s a disparity Alderton said the city can start to push back against with a new pool at the Minnie Howard expansion planned as part of the high school overhaul.

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News

New &pizza open and baking in the Bradlee Shopping Center

By Vernon Miles

In the same shopping center where locally beloved Atlantis Pizzeria and Family Restaurant recently slipped into history and myth like its namesake, a new pizza restaurant has opened to fill the void.

Regional franchise &pizza announced on May 20 that its Bradlee Shopping Center location at 3690 King Street was now open — along with a kind of bizarre, rambling message about the “arch of history.”

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News

Developer offers tours of abandoned Alexandria power plant before demolition

By Vernon Miles
Exercising near the closed GenOn power plant in Alexandria near the Potomac River. (staff photo by James Cullum)

If you’ve been yearning for a tour of the Chernobyl-looking GenOn abandoned power facility overlooking the Potomac River before its torn down for redevelopment, the property’s developer is offering a unique opportunity to do so.

On Friday, June 4, and Saturday, June 5, from 8-11 a.m., Hilco Redevelopment Partners is planning to host guided tours of the Potomac River Generating Station (PRGS) site in Old Town North.

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News

Local educators meet with Senator Warner to highlight dire state of early childhood education

By Vernon Miles
Campagna Center CEO Tammy Man and Senator Mark Warner meet early childhood educators (staff photo by Vernon Miles)

Sandra Redmore is the executive director of Clarendon Child Care Center at 1305 N. Jackson Street in Arlington, a local childcare facility. She works with the  Virginia Cooperative Preschool Council and the Arlington County Child Care Initiative working group. In 2019, she was awarded the Woman of Vision award by the Arlington Commission for the Status of Women.

She also cannot afford childcare for her own family.

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News

Here’s a preview of what’s ahead for Alexandria’s post-pandemic economic development

By Vernon Miles

Alexandria has gotten knocked down, but is looking to get back up again in 2021.

In a report outlining the city’s response to the dire fiscal impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (ADEP) outlined the allocation of grant funding to businesses in the city. Beneath lingering concerns about the years it will likely take to return businesses to a pre-pandemic levels of vitality, the report outlined some of the major new tenants and changes coming to the city in the next year or two.

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News

Catholic Charities hopes to turn vacant Carlyle restaurant into workforce training kitchen

By Vernon Miles

As part of the expansion of Catholic Charities USA’s (CCUSA) expansion into Carlyle, the non-profit is requesting permission to build a cafe and conference center on the ground floor of its 2050 Ballenger Avenue headquarters.

The expansion is part of an application headed to the Planning Commission on Tuesday, June 1. The space is owned by CCUSA and until recently was leased to a restaurant, but the non-profit said in its application that the restaurant closed in January.

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Opinion

Poll: Do you call it the ‘Parker-Gray’ or ‘Braddock’ neighborhood?

By Vernon Miles
A trail near the Braddock Road Metro Station in Alexandria (staff photo by James Cullum)

Within the rather obscure confines of the Board and Architectural Review staff report this week resurfaced a long-simmering discussion: what is the cultural identity of the Parker-Gray neighborhood in 2021.

For years a historically Black neighborhood, Parker-Gray draws its name from the the Parker-Gray School that educated the city’s Black children when the the city’s school system was still divided by segregation.

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News

Cleanup ends for Lake Cook chemical spill, fishing to resume later this week

By Vernon Miles

A week after an accidental discharge from Cameron Run Regional Park contaminated Lake Cook next door, the City of Alexandria said the cleanup process is finished and the lake will be safe for activities like fishing at the end of the week.

“According to the Fire Marshals Office, NOVA Parks has completed the cleanup process with the environmental contractor,” said Kelly Gilfillen, a spokesperson for the city, “[they] are are permitted to resume normal operations of the pool at this time, as it appears they have satisfactorily addressed the obvious issues they were cited for.”

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News

New Parker-Gray development pushed to veer away from Old Town aesthetics

By Vernon Miles
Proposed 805 N Columbus Street development (image via City of Alexandria)

(Updated 5/20) A stretch of vacant land and parking lots in the Parker-Gray could soon become a five-story, multi-family residential development with a redesign meant to evoke the neighborhood’s unique heritage.

The development is headed to its second Board of Architectural Review (BAR) meeting tomorrow (Wednesday). The building underwent a slight redesign after a February meeting when the board scolded the architect for trying to make an industrial waterfront-style building in lieu of respecting the historically Black neighborhood’s own unique — and distinctly not Old Town — aesthetics and style.

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