With the reopening of the Dash Transit Center at the future WestEnd development years away, Alexandria is looking to ask Richmond to help pay for $800,000 in temporary bus bays, benches and real-time signage.
Concerned about crime, flooding or taxes in Alexandria? There’s a public meeting this Saturday that could answer some of your most burning questions.
The Alexandria City Council will answer public questions in a town hall meeting on Saturday morning at Charles Houston Recreation Center (901 Wythe Street). The meeting is the second of its kind, after kicking off in September.
Nearly 500 signatures have been collected in an effort to name the new and yet-to-be-built athletic fields at Alexandria City High School’s Minnie Howard campus after former Mayor Kerry Donley.
A steering committee of civic leaders, colleagues and friends submitted the petition with 486 signatures yesterday to the Alexandria School Board. In their letter, the steering committee wrote that the name is fitting, as Donley’s contributions were through public governance, education and community service.
After more than a dozen complaints of outdoor grills sending smoke into neighboring Del Ray homes, City Council on Saturday unanimously approved a modified plan to allow Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ to operate behind Evening Star Cafe.
The approval expands the concept’s hours of operation from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. (previously 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.), more outdoor seating (from 50 seats to 124 seats), live outdoor music Wednesday to Saturday, as well as permission to cook food from two outdoor smoker grills and selling the food from a temporary food trailer.
Del Ray’s BBQ scene could be getting a little bigger soon.
A plan to boost the size of outdoor smokehouse Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ (2000 Mount Vernon Avenue) in Del Ray, in the backyard of Evening Star Cafe, is heading to the City Council at a meeting on Saturday, Oct. 14.
The City of Alexandria spent $1.8 million on its Taylor Run and Strawberry Run restoration projects and, at a meeting earlier this week, Mayor Justin Wilson said the city has virtually nothing to show for it.
That $1.8 million went into the project before shovels ever hit the dirt. The plan was to combat erosion and improve the flow of the waterway, but the city’s design attracted considerable pushback from some local environmental activists and city watchdogs who said the plans could do more harm than good to the stream. Critics also noted that pollution levels in the stream were being calculated based on modeling rather than testing in the actual waterways.
Alexandria’s City Council is taking its anti-panhandling ordinance off the books, but city leaders said at a meeting last night the actual impact of the change should be minimal.
City Attorney Joanna Anderson noted that the panhandling change is part of an update to bring obsolete sections of the city code in line with evolving case law.
When a pedestrian walk signal comes on at a T-intersection, the light for turning vehicles comes on at the same time: meaning every vehicle is turning into a crosswalk that has an active walk signal.
A memo from Adriana Castaneda, director of Transportation and Environmental Services, concurred with the broader planning community: T-intersections are uniquely dangerous. Now, the City of Alexandria wants to make enhancements across the city’s 80 T-intersections to make them safer.
Saturday morning rain wasn’t enough to dampen this year’s Art On The Avenue in Del Ray.
As expected, thousands of visitors descended on Mount Vernon Avenue for the annual festival. The Visit Del Ray event featured more than 300 artist booths, live music on three stages, a pie baking contest, as well as a kids corner to create art at Pat Miller Neighborhood Square. City leaders and local business owners also cut a ribbon recognizing new Del Ray businesses.
(Updated at 2:55 p.m.) A School Board work session on restructuring the makeup of the Board stopped short late last night after one member, Willie Bailey, walked out of the meeting.
Board Members were hammering out whether to expand terms from three to four years, stagger elections and switch from districts to at-large elections. The work session was held after a two-hour Board meeting and ended after 11 p.m. because the Board no longer had an in-person quorum after Bailey left.
Asking for spare change could soon no longer be a crime in Alexandria.
City staff contend that restrictions against panhandling are unconstitutional, violating the freedom of expression of those begging for money or help.
