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Patricia Washington has spent the last decade building Visit Alexandria into a major force for tourism and will be honored as The Chamber ALX’s Business Leader of the Year.

The Chamber ALX announced that recently retired President and CEO of Visit Alexandria Patricia Washington is their 2024 Business Leader of the Year.


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Alexandria’s Summer Sidewalk Sale is returning to Old Town and Del Ray next month, followed shortly by Alexandria Restaurant Week.

The annual Alexandria Summer Sidewalk Sale is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 10, according to Visit Alexandria. The streets around Old Town and Del Ray will likely be lined with local boutiques setting up shop outside of their storefronts and offering discounted summer merchandise. A list of participating shops is available online.


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California wine country marketer Todd O’Leary has been named the new president and CEO of Visit Alexandria.

O’Leary will replace Patricia Washington, who announced her retirement in December after leading the city’s tourism bureau for more than a decade. He was hired by the nonprofit’s board of governors after an executive search with SearchWide Global, and starts work on July 8, according to Visit Alexandria.


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Alexandria is one of the best small cities in the U.S., an argument bolstered by being listed in the top five for the last six years in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards survey.

Staff from Visit Alexandria just got the city nominated for the seventh year in a row.


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Update at 3:35 p.m. — The Interstellar Influencer commemorates the Chesapeake Bay impact crater, not the Chicxulub crater 35 million years earlier that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs

Earlier: The asteroid collision 35 million years ago will be the latest public art at Alexandria’s Waterfront Park.


News

After a decade running Visit Alexandria, the organization’s president and CEO Patricia Washington announced today that she’s retiring in June.

Washington took over the tourism agency in 2012 and has overseen a growth in city tourism pre-pandemic and a difficult rebound after Covid. Visit Alexandria receives funding from both the city and state sources.


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With Alexandria’s consumption tax revenues hitting an all-time high in fiscal year 2023, Mayor Justin Wilson says that the city has emerged from the economic spiral created by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

The city’s consumption tax revenues (sales, meals and transient lodging) peaked at $81 million in fiscal year 2023, a 7% increase over the $76 million collected in FY 2022 and 23% more than the $66 million in FY 2019, according to figures presented at Visit Alexandria‘s annual meeting on Tuesday night.


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Alexandria Restaurant Week, a biannual event where restaurants around the city offer pre-set dinners, is making its return this August.

Visit Alexandria said in a release that the summer Alexandria Restaurant Week is set to run from Friday, Aug. 18, to Sunday, Aug. 27.


News

Alexandria’s summer will kick off this weekend with the Portside in Old Town Summer Festival. Here’s what you need to know.

The free event, which includes the 45th annual Alexandria Jazz Fest, will be held at Waterfront Park (1A Prince Street) on Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 1 to 9 p.m.


News

Personal security cameras, speed cameras in school zones, summer youth employment programs and eviction prevention funding are just a few of the final additions included in the fiscal year 2024 budget by the Alexandria City Council on Tuesday.

Council approved funding a $20,000 program to encourage businesses and homeowners with a “small incentive” to set up security cameras to deter crime, as well as increase their coordination with the Alexandria Police Department.


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