If you’ve been grumbling about potholes in Alexandria’s northern neighborhoods, there’s good news: relief is on the way.
The City of Alexandria released the lineup for upcoming street repaving and the list of prioritized streets is a whose-who of northern Alexandria residential avenues.
Alexandria Police Chief Don Hayes thinks police need to stay in Alexandria City Public Schools — at least for now.
Hayes spoke with ALXnow in his office before the fatal stabbing of Alexandria City High School senior Luis Mejia Hernandez, and also before APD announced last week that due to short-staffing that it is reducing its services to the community. Officers will no longer respond to calls for service that fall under another agency’s responsibility or respond to old crime scenes that show no danger to the public.
Changes coming to the Torpedo Factory Art Center have been among the more contentious discussions in Alexandria over the last few years, but the City of Alexandria is looking for two locals to serve on a board to help direct the art center’s future.
The city is looking for two at-large members for the Torpedo Factory Art Center Stakeholder Task Force.
As COVID numbers continue to rise, the Alexandria City Council will allow the city’s state of emergency to expire on June 30.
The declaration was made by Council in March 2020, and has been extended five times.
The Alexandria Police Department is beset by morale issues, according to a report obtained by ALXnow.
In the 2021 APD Organizational Assessment — an annual anonymous survey conducted by the department — 173 department staffers (out of 421 total staff) self-reported their wellbeing as employees.
Updated at 7:45 p.m. — A short-staffed Alexandria Police Department is reducing its services to the community, the department announced on Wednesday (June 2).
Police will no longer respond to calls for service that fall under another agency’s responsibility or respond to old crime scenes that show no danger to the public.
With a potential wave of evictions incoming next month, a group representing tenants of Southern Towers is trying to indirectly pressure the building’s owner into giving residents a reprieve.
The 2,261-unit Southern Towers complex at 4901 Seminary Road is one of the last bastions of market-rate affordable housing — housing that’s affordable without being set at a certain level by agreement with the local government. The West End building was purchased in 2020 by California-based real estate company CIM Group.
After two decades of Landmark Mall redevelopment being just out of reach, city officials and developers alike let out wild roars of satisfaction as the wrecking ball crashed into the side of the building today (Thursday).
There’s still a long way to go before the first buildings of the new hospital and mixed-use development start coming online — currently slated for 2026. Still, demolition marked the furthest point of progress for redevelopment since meetings to that effect started in 2008.
The Alexandria City Council, on Tuesday night, unanimously approved Visit Alexandria’s grant application request to secure nearly $1 million in federal tourism recovery aid.
Virginia Tourism Corporation received $50 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds last October, and $990,000 has been set aside for marketing to improve the city’s hospitality sector.
While City Council usually has the final say over big decisions, much of the city’s future starts taking shape in Alexandria’s boards and commissions. After two years of those meetings going online and recorded for public viewing, many of them are starting to go offline again.
The Waterfront Commission, for example, has been where many of the details about flooding in Old Town have been hashed out. The 7:30 a.m. meetings have historically had fairly light public attendance. With the start of the pandemic those meetings were recorded and published online until last month, when the group stopped recording meetings.
Alexandria’s annual budget process wrapped up this week with a $839.2 million fiscal year 2023 budget approval and special tax relief for car owners.
Meanwhile, an uptick in opioid overdoses among children has Alexandria City Public Schools considering adding Narcan to schools and city officials issuing warnings about counterfeit Percocet.
