Notification of the nighttime blasts will come in the form of amber blinking lights as a five minute warning and red blinking lights as a one minute warning. The "all-clear" will be marked by a green flashing light.

The Rosslyn station improvement project include a new entrance to the Rosslyn Metro station via three high speed elevators located on the block between North Moore and North Lynn Street across from the existing entrance, as well as a new underground mezzanine level with fare gates, ticket machines, and a station operator's booth.

After the first couple of months, crews will be able to blast during the day and the street and surrounding metro accesses will not need to be closed, according to the county.

In addition to the usual precautions, Arlington County is requiring its contractor to take additional measures to alleviate disruption from the blasting, according to the alert. These include:

• A cover constructed of steel and wood on the top of the blast shaft along with blast mats - both designed to mitigate vibration and prevent fly rock;

• Water scrubbers incorporated in the ventilation system to reduce fumes; and

• Hydraulic drill to reduce noise.

Questions can be directed to Arlington's Department of Environmental Services at 703-228-3173 or RosslynStationProject@arlingtonva.us.

There were floats from area businesses including Liberty Tavern, Whitlow's on Wilson, Palm Beach Tanning, Red Top Cab, and Artisphere. There were beads, boas, and glow sticks aplenty. And when it was all said and done, there were long lines at most of Clarendon's watering holes. Check out the photo gallery after the jump.

Dale Roberts, the coffeehouse's owner, doesn't usually close up in the evenings. But on Feb. 28,  he found himself filling in for one of his employees. His final sweep of the tiny store's bathroom yielded a strange find: a flier plastered with photos of the shop's heyday as the headquarters of an American Nazi group.

"Gone but not forgotten," states the flier, which also references the "good old days" when the building was owned by the National Socialist White People's Party ("an organization of decent, law-abiding white folk ... JUST LIKE YOU", it adds). Yellow smiley faces adorned with Hitler's trademark 'stache and bangs flank the message.

A scan of the flier that Java Shack owner Dale Roberts found in the store's bathroom last week.

The building that now houses Java Shack and a busy pet store did indeed serve as the headquarters of a national socialist group for almost two decades, as Gene Weingarten pointed out in a 2008 Washington Post article. And a commenter on an ARLNow post in December about some other Nazi fliers that popped up in a different neighborhood also referenced the building.

Roberts is well aware of the building's history — he even has a photo from 1982 of the building adorned with swastikas tucked away in a utility closet. While he was still preparing to open Java Shack in 1996, someone approached him outside the store and warned him to "make sure it's the 'right kind' of coffee shop," he says.

But he hasn't heard much about it for years. He told Weingarten in 2008 that he had brought in a spiritual adviser when he moved in to give the site a ritual cleansing.

"What really struck me about this was that they wedged this behind the toilet paper in the bathroom," Roberts says of the paper he found last week. "If you've got something to say, why don't you hang it on the bulletin board?"

He figures there are still people around that remember the party's activities — started by George Lincoln Rockwell, the party owned the building until 1986 — but what surprised him is that someone still has a number of old photos of the site. The flier includes crudely scanned photos of party members standing inside and in front of the building, which is adorned with a swastika above the door and the Nazi flag handing from the facade.

One customer suggests that someone that had heard the stories just decided to pull a prank. "But someone has those photos," Roberts notes. "I couldn't believe it."

Java Shack as it is today. (Photo: TBD Staff)

An old Giant store on the site closed in 2009 to make way for the construction of Penrose Square. A few years earlier, a tiny, cramped Safeway store closed nearby when construction began on the neighboring Siena Park building.

Penrose Square developer Carbon Thompson is expecting to turn the 60,000 square foot space for Giant over to the grocery company by the end of April, and the store is hoping to be up and running within a couple of months. Penrose Square is also now leasing the apartments, and the first tenants are expected to move in sometime in June.

Giant is happy to get back to serving the Columbia Pike neighborhood, says spokesperson Jamie Miller. "We realize there’s a demand and a need in that community, and we’re very pleased to be part of the multi-use development," he says. "We think the comm is going to be very excited about this brand new store with all the bells and whistles.

Although the area is served by an older Food Lion grocery store, many residents have opted to head to more updated stores in Bailey's Crossroads or Shirlington since Giant and Safeway closed.

The Giant pharmacy that is currently operating out of a temporary space across the street will be moving into the new store, there will be full meat, fish and bakery departments in addition to a large selection of prepared foods, says Miller.

Unfortunately for unwitting drivers, the parade does also snarl up traffic at the tail end of the evening commute and throughout the evening. Keep these road closures in mind if you're driving in the Courthouse or Clarendon areas Tuesday.

The list of closures after the jump.

— Wilson Boulevard from North Veitch Street to North Barton Street, closed from 6:45 PM to 9:30 p.m.

— Wilson Blvd. from North Barton Street. to North Irving Street, closed from 7:30 PM to 9:30 p.m.

— North Adams Street and North Wayne Street, between Clarendon and Wilson Boulevards, closed from 6:45 PM to 8:00 p.m.

Guajillo and Casa Oaxaca owners Karen Barroso and Rolando Juárez will run the restaurant, and their aim to bring their own brand of Latin cuisine to Artisphere clearly affected submissions. Two of the three finalists, Artesano and También, are Spanish words. The third choice finalist is here. (No, that's not an un-linked hyperlink. The other option for Artisphere's new restaurant's name is the word "here." And yes, the lowercase is specified.)

Clearly, the venue's management — and the restaurant's owners, who helped narrow the choices down the final three — prefer the one-word name. But in my mind, "here" as a restaurant name is way too reminiscent of something out of Zoolander to be taken seriously.

"Artesano" is (yup, you guessed it) the Spanish word for artisan, which sort of plays nicely on Artisphere's status as an arts venue and the restaurant's interest in hand-crafted dishes. Similarly, I get "También", the word for "also", if the restaurant's owners want to highlight that Artisphere is also food, and not just art.

When news of the contest first appeared on TBD, I tweeted that voters had the chance to fight the good fight against addresses as restaurant names. Personally, I'm glad to see that "1100" is not on the list. So what do you think? Let us know in the comments, and then head over to Express to vote.

The project will expand the area of the Metro plaza and make improvements to the park — which is apparently the "Central Park" of Arlington, according to its official name — by this summer.

The improvements will make the front section of the plaza wider, providing more space for the Wednesday farmers market, and also remove the grassy area stretching back from the escalator entrance to the elevators. There are also plans to install a covered bike storage rack, and modular newspaper racks. (Will it keep them from blowing over? Only time will tell.)

Crews are out there now installing one segment of the new paving stones that will cover the entire walkway as a test, according to Arlington County Parks and Recreation spokesperson Nathan Spillman. The completed park will also include movable tables and chairs, a "historical representation of Clarendon," and electrical outlets so the park can be used for more events, according to the plans.

The schedule outlined for the project on the county's website predicts it will be complete by June 2011, although Spillman says that the work is expected to "commence this summer."

Mala Tang is to be Arlington's first Chinese restaurant offering the "hot pot" concept, as far as we can tell, and its owners are planning to open sometime this spring, according to a rep. The restaurant will be located at 3434 Washington Boulevard, in the same complex as the George Mason law school.

The restaurant's chef, Liu Chaosheng, knows his way around a hot pot. He opened Uncle Liu's Hot Pot in Falls Church last year, and also owns Hong Kong Palace, according to this Washington Post review of Uncle Liu's. One of his co-owners, as well as Mala Tang's general manager, are former managers from Asian fusion restaurant Mie n Yu in Georgetown.

If you've never had hot pot, think fondue, but only the brothy kind. Servers bring you large, bubbling pots of flavorful broth, and a number of utensils to use for dipping. A wide range of seafood, meat, and vegetables, and noodles can be dunked in the broth to cook, making for a family-style, communal eating experience.

Stay tuned to Mala Tang's Twitter feed for updates on exactly when the restaurant will open.

He also speaks with ABC7's Sam Ford.

In a letter he addressed to the university community, Sessoms criticizes the FOX 5 report, but notably he doesn't deny the accuracy of the information behind the report, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request for details on Sessoms' travel expenses and compensation.

“The receipts used in the story were taken out of context and do not fully address the purpose and nature of each trip, as well as any extenuating circumstances surrounding the travel," he writes.

He then goes on to write about the purposes of the trips to Cairo and London, and that “any expenses incurred by my office are paid for out of University generated revenue.”

Read his response below:

UDC Letter

You have until 10 p.m., today to head to an area IHOP and get a free short stack. IHOP just asks that you consider making a donation to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in lieu of pancake-payment.

The IHOP in Columbia Heights had a considerable wait around 2 p.m., but TBD photographer Jay Westcott reports that the Ballston IHOP wasn't all that busy around lunchtime. Check out his photos.

The Friends of Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium are endeavoring to raise more than $400,000 for capital improvements to the planetarium by the end of June. At this point last year, APS opted to cut funding for the science facility from the budget, essentially closing it while the group tried to raise the money.

Murphy ultimately relented and agreed to fund a half-time employee to keep the planetarium open, and planetarium supporters had been hopeful that the substantial $100,000 gift they received in December would eliminate such a standoff this year.

The proposed 2012 budget includes the half-time employee, and also allocates the school's portion of improvements to the planetarium. "In order to honor its commitment to the Friends of the Planetarium, APS is placing $230,000 in a reserve for a portion of the capital improvements needed for the Planetarium building," according to budget documents.

Alice Monet, executive director of the planetarium group, says the budget is great news for the success of their efforts. "This is a clear indication that the Superintendent is confident of their success," she said, adding that the group had "turned a major corner."

The group will be testing several new projectors for the planetarium during the next few months in advance of purchase, and the first demonstration comes this Thursday and Friday, March 3 and 4. For more information, check out saveplanetarium.org.

Zpizza is next door to Baja Fresh and just downstairs from Chinese restaurant China Garden, making the veritable building a melting pot of lunch options.

The restaurant's menu features standards like pepperoni and mushroom pizzas, but also stocks some of its signatures like the ZBQ with barbecued chicken, the Thai pizza, and the Berkeley Vegan. There's also a range of salads, sandwiches and pastas, if the proliferation of pizza joints in Arlington has you pizza'd out.

But it looks like that may have been too good to be true. The Lyon Park Civic Association wrote to the County Board this week to delay action on the parking restrictions until the two sides can negotiate further, ARLNow reports.

And the latest proposal from the county would reduce parking on the street by 44 percent, according to Edgewood Street resident Ron Salazar. Neighbors have been fighting a county plan to restrict parking to just one side of the street since late last year, when a complaint prompted the Arlington County Fire Marshal to look at the street and determine that it's too narrow for emergency vehicles to pass.

After the county's initial proposal, residents proposed an alternative scheme that would have alternated the restriction on different sides of the street in different sections. The county seemed amenable to that plan when we spoke to staffers last month. But a revised plan that came back last month tweaked the residents' parking outline, and neighbors say would reduce parking on the street by roughly 44 percent.

"We were all shocked and saddened, because the county seemed to take our proposal, and from our perspective, applied every potential county parking code that could be applied as far as traffic goes," Salazar says.

The neighbors went out and measured the street, and estimate that there are about 45 "legit" parking spots there, according to Salazar. Their proposal would have reduced it by 10. The county's latest proposal would reduce it by almost 20, he adds.

"There wre some pretty draconian additional measures on top," says Salazar.

Neighbors are still hoping to sit down with the county and work something out. Wayne Wentz, the county's transportation engineering chief, says implementation of a new parking scheme on the street had been delayed since before the civic association sent its letter to the county board.

"We had already delayed implementation to refine the design before the Board received the letter from the civic association," Wentz says in an email. "We were working directly with residents on the block and trying to resolve conflicting requests. We are trying to minimize the loss of parking on the block."

The civic association is asking the Arlington County Board to analyze the overall narrow streets policy before making parking changes on any more of the county's streets.

Street sweeping didn't begin until March 22 last year, but given that the District's new snazzy signs clearly state that sweeping is supposed to begin today, it's probably in your best interest to err on the side of caution. Don't tempt the parking enforcement gods!

A temporary roof was installed and the location is open today, however, just in time for all those customers rushing in at the end of the month.

Roof damage from Friday's storm at DMV in Shirlington. (Photo: TBD Staff)

Given the tornado watch and severe storms headed our way today, however, you have to wonder if that temporary covering is going to hold. DMV spokesperson Pam Goheen says that the temporary roof was reinforced with additional nails "in anticipation of severe weather." A permanent roof will be installed as soon as a contract can be awarded, Goheen says.

Sorry folks, but manager Desiree Herschberger says the opening is slated for March 10 (and, given how bar and restaurant openings go, this may be pushed back even more).

But Herschberger did provide some details on the new watering hole being built out by the owners of Tonic. The space will be accessible through Tonic, with room for about 30 to 35 people.

"It’s going to be a very intimate space," Herschberger says, "and a little more focused on cocktails, higher end beer, craft brews."

Sure, those cocktails may be a little pricier than the typical drink at nearby Raven, but it's probably a lot more reasonable than the Gibson.

At the height of the outage, about 47,000 customers were without power.

Update 7:23 p.m.: About 37,000 customers remained without power across the region Friday evening, with nearly two thirds of them in Montgomery County, Md. Dominion Virginia power reported about 11,00 customers without service. Pepco reported about 26,000 customers in the dark, including 21,399 in Montgomery County. The utility issued a news release included in its entirety below.

WindStormwork2-25

Update 5:51 p.m.: Nearly 60,000 customers are without power.

Dominion:
NoVa:
25,609

Pepco
District of Columbia 3,476
Montgomery 25,368
Prince George's 4,982

Update 4:10 p.m.: More than 73,000 customers have now lost power across the region.

Dominion:
NoVa: 28,550

Pepco:
District of Columbia 5,385
Montgomery 36,727
Prince George's 2,848

Update 3:17 p.m.: Pepco now reports more than 19,000 outages across Montgomery County. Here are the latest numbers.

Dominion:

NoVa: 14,882

Pepco:

District of Columbia: 3,408
Montgomery: 19,029
Prince George's: 422

Update 2:39 p.m: It seems that nearly all of the power is back up for Rockville's Pepco customers, but the weather has just knocked out power for thousands more in Montgomery County.

Power is now out for 10,912 Montgomery County residents, 1,065 D.C. residents, and 550 Prince George's County residents.

Original: Today's high winds haven't even kicked in yet and we already have reports of thousands of Pepco customers without power, mostly in Montgomery County.

A large chunk of those power outages are concentrated in Rockville, where early this morning large tree limbs fell onto transformer lines and caused a fire, knocking out power for more than 2,000 customers.

Pepco spokesman Clay Anderson says they still need to conduct an investigation to find out what exactly caused those limbs to come down, but he notes that it all happened before high winds were even a factor.

“The ground is saturated and becoming more saturated," he says, saying "soggy soil" may be to blame for the tree becoming lose and dropping major limbs.

But things may get worse later this afternoon, when winds are predicted to reach up to 60 mph. Anderson says Pepco began preparing last night for the possibility of wind-related outages today by keeping their call center staffed 24 hours.

If your power does go out, you will need to call Pepco at 1-877-PEPCO-62 to let them know (nope, they won't know otherwise. And yes, you still need to call if your neighbor does).

"We're waiting for one more permit, and then there should be full force construction," Xenohristos says. "But if you looked in there now, there's nothing major going on."

They're still hoping for an opening in late April or early May, he says. Overall, there's been about a three-month delay, he adds.

Cava, which is building out the space next to 3 Bar & Grill in Clarendon, will serve lunch and dinner both inside and on a back patio in the center of the Station Square building. The restaurant is also expected to serve brunch on Saturday and Sunday, according to Xenohristos.

Cava features food prepared in the Greek style that Xenohristos and his partner, Chef Dimitri Moshovitis, grew up eating both at home and on frequent trips to visit family in Greece. The menu will largely mirror those at the duo's other locations in Rockville and Capitol Hill, he says.

The old building at 4200 Kansas Ave. NW was closed down more than a year ago and, much like over in Shaw, library services were relocated to a much-smaller nearby temporary trailer. Now, the Petworth Library is set to reopen 10:30 a.m., Monday, with a bright, airy new entrance, shiny Dell and Mac computers, and lots and lots more space.

The Petworth Library was designed by the same architects behind the renovation of the Georgetown Library, which was rebuilt after a 2007 fire nearly burned the building to the ground. So, yeah, you'll notice some similarities between the two.

Although the square footage of the library building didn't increase, the interior was restructured in a way that increased the amount of usable space by 42 percent, says D.C.'s chief librarian Ginnie Cooper. So go ahead and enjoy a book by a (non-functional) old fireplace, or bring your toddler to the new picture book room, or heck, schedule your ANC meeting in a bright conference rooms, one of which used to be a garage.

Don't trust my words describing the library's design? Then check out TBD photographer Jay Westcott's photos instead.

The ECC was receiving a steady barrage of calls, and one shift stayed an additional six hours once the second shift of employees came on to relieve them, because there just wouldn’t have been enough people working.

“I was not only calling them back, but calling in other people not scheduled,” says Crawford, who calls the recent storm “an eye opener” for the center’s staffing issues.

“They worked through literally hundreds of calls for hours on end. I could see that the people who were here going on 16 hours were exhausted,” Crawford adds.

The Jan. 26 storm presented extenuating circumstances, but the scramble to staff up the ECC is a familiar one even on a regular day, Crawford says. There are a minimum number of employees that are supposed to be on the floor at any given time in the ECC; last year, the center frequently fell short of those minimums.

A report accompanying the county’s proposed 2012 budget [PDF] — in which the ECC and the Department of Emergency Management are asking the Arlington County Board for a more than 10 percent increase in funding — shows that the ECC met minimum staffing just 47 percent of the time in Fiscal Year 2010.

And even now, the ECC only has enough call takers and dispatchers on staff to meet the minimums with regular staffers on half of its shifts. There are four shifts, each of which are supposed to include 10 people. On the regular schedule, two of those shifts only have eight and nine people scheduled, respectively. It’s up to the ECC management to fill those extras with overtime workers each week. If anyone is sick, on vacation, or in training, that means even more overtime.

Staffing up for a larger event requires even more overtime workers. “Every day it’s a challenge to find the skill sets needed and get the people here to make sure we’re serving the public,” Crawford says. “We sometimes have to deny leave because we don’t have the skill sets.”

The overtime also comes with its own set of problems. The ECC has overspent on overtime every year for the past five years, meaning additional charges of anywhere from $450,000 to $660,000.

The ongoing staffing issues are why the Office of Emergency Management is making a pitch for a pretty dramatic uptick in staffing and benefits in next year’s budget. The current proposed budget includes eight additional staff members for ECC, as well as other salary increases for existing employees, to the tune of $1 million, according to Office of Emergency Management director Jack Brown.

But a report the ECC provided to the county in 2009 show that the need for more ECC staffers has been ongoing since at least 2002. (Two studies were conducted, on in 2002 and one in 2005, both of which recommended additional staff members.) It begs the question, why is the county just ramping up staffing now?

Brown says that they wanted to make sure they identified the root causes of the constant staffing issues in the ECC, many of which are caused by turnover. Once they figured out what they had to do, the county was in the throes of a couple of really bad budget years, with little room for increase. “The last two budget years were particularly tough on the county, so if we were going before the County Board and asking for additional positions in that budget climate, we really wanted to have our ducks in a row,” Brown says. “This is the year to do that.”

The ECC has seen turnover rates of more than 20 percent in recent years, according to the budget documents. Crawford says the reasons range from staffers getting burned out from havin to work so much overtime to not enough advancement opportunities to better pay in neighboring jurisdictions.

“In the past couple of years, we were losing a number of people to other emergency call centers for more money,” Crawford says. “That was a huge red flag to us.” A recent pay increase for existing ECC staff brought them in line with what call takers and dispatchers are paid in Alexandria and Fairfax County, he adds. “We now have a very competitive pay scale at a variety of levels.” The 2012 budget, if passed, would also add another level of promotion opportunity for staffers in the form of a “deputy commander” position.

Brown also highlights that despite the ongoing staffing issues, the ECC is still getting to everyone’s calls. (Crawford notes that the center didn’t receive any complaints about long waits or busy signals during the January storm, as happened in some other local jurisdictions.)

But they’re not always moving as quickly as they’d like. The center aims to process and dispatch all emergency calls within 90 seconds. Last year, they hit that target about 75 percent of the time, according to OEM data.

Crawford says he’s hopeful that the ECC budget increase will go through, and kick off a three-year plan to stabilize staffing at the center. The OEM directors meet with the County Board today to discuss the proposed 2012 budget.

So where are the worst spots for this kind of traffic nightmare in Arlington? Thanks to some digging on the part of the Arlington County Police Department and a grant from the Virginia Department of Transportation, now we know.

After the jump, the map of Arlington's most dangerous intersections, meaning the ones where the most accidents were reported during the past four years. The short version? Columbia Pike is a death trap. So is Washington Boulevard. The multiple iterations of Glebe Road? They're all pretty bad.

View Arlington's 23 most dangerous intersections in a larger map

Why is this noteworthy? Well part of the Virginia Department of Transportation grant is going toward Arlington PD's enforcement at these intersections. For the entire month of March, officers will be assigned to these spots, and issuing tickets for the kind of infractions that can lead to accidents: speeding, running red lights, failure to yield, improper lane changes.

The police department is hopeful this targeted enforcement will help bring down the accident numbers at these spots — although they acknowledge for the program to have any kind of long term impact, it's going to require some follow-up.

Each officer is going to look at the possible improvements that could be made through traffic engineering to the intersection to help prevent accidents. "Enforcement alone is not going to solve it," says officer Adam Stone, who'll be perched at the George Mason Drive/Lee Highway intersection for the month of March as part of the program. "It gets people aware out there, but two weeks later, they forget all about it. There might be some traffic engineering aspect to it though."

The top 23 most accident-ridden intersections in Arlington:

1. Arlington Boulevard/Rt. 50 and South Washington Boulevard/Rt. 27, 113 accident calls in 2010

2. Columbia Pike and South Washington Boulevard, 60 accidents

3. Columbia Pike and South George Mason Drive, 55 accidents

4. Columbia Pike and South Glebe Road, 55 accidents

5. 23rd Street South and  Jefferson Davis Highway, 52

6. South Walter Reed Drive and South Washington Blvd, 47

7. Lee Highway and North Lynn Street, 45

8. Lee Highway and Spout Run Parkway, 38

9. Lee Highway and Washington Boulevard, 36

10. North Glebe Road and Washington Boulevard, 36

11. 2nd Street South and South Washington Boulevard, 35

12. Fairfax Drive and North Glebe Road, 35

13. South Glebe Road and Jefferson Davis Highway, 34

14. North Glebe Road and North Pershing Drive, 33

15. North Glebe Road and Wilson Boulevard, 31

16. 26th Road South and South Glebe Road, 30

17. Army Navy Drive and South Hayes Street, 29

18. North Courthouse Road and Eastbound Arlington Boulevard/Rt. 50, 27

19. 850 Army Navy Drive, 27

20. 24th Road South and South Glebe Road, 26

21. North Glebe Road and Westbound  Interstate-66, 25

22. South Glebe Road and South Walter Reed Drive, 25

23. North George Mason Drive and Lee Highway, 23

Carolina Garcia is hardly the first person to become obsessed with France's bread. Unlike some others that ended up baguette-less back in the U.S., however, she decided she couldn't live without it.

She turned that obsession into a business, and now she's turning out French baguettes, pain de Campagne, and other kinds of French breads and pastries from an Arlington kitchen, and delivering them to her neighbors' doorsteps. She's the brains behind LeoNora Bakery — "the bread lady," to her customers — and she took NewsChannel 8's Whitney Bright along on some of her deliveries last week.

If you're not the type to see delicious baked goods without wanting them, you're in luck. Boccato Gelato and Whole Foods in Clarendon are both now carrying of Garcia's baked goods. Boccato has some of LeoNora's breads and madeleines, and Whole Foods has just signed on to carry the madeleines as well. Or you could always place your own order, and have it delivered right to your door.

Product: Squirrel underpants

Tagline: “Protect the world from squirrel nudity.”

Available at: Pulp, 1803 14th St. NW, D.C.

Cost: $6.99, plus tax.

Why you might want it: You’re annoyed by all of these squirrels running around in the buff as if they own these streets and can do as they please. The product’s packaging explains: “A portion of the profits from this product will be donated to the ‘Small Animal Decency Fund’ which seeks to rid our neighborhoods of any potentially offensive naturally occurring indecent exposures.”

How it works: It’s highly unlikely a squirrel would willingly put these underpants on, so you’ll probably have to subdue the squirrel to force them on. It should be noted, however, that TBD discourages such sedation of wild animals, so maybe you can just give the underpants as a joke to a friend who is particularly adverse to public nudity. 

The bottom line: And now, a final testimonial from the back of the packaging:
“‘The poor little things don’t even know that they are naked! We’ve got to educate the animals and protect our children.’ – Worried Mother.”

Now that the house is slated to be torn down, however, some people are wishing that the 1890s structure had taken a bit more of the limelight.

The Overlee Community Association, which runs the private swim club, is undertaking a large renovation of its property that includes tearing down the house, which currently serves as a clubhouse and the club manager’s residence, and building a new one. The project also includes replacing the main pool on the property, as well as expanding the deck around the pool area.

Members present at a membership meeting Feb. 9 voted in a landslide for the plan to knock down the building to build a new community center structure, 55-4. (There are more than 700 club members, but club officials say that 60 members was actually a pretty good turnout for such a vote.)

But there are others — both in the club and the surrounding community — who are sad to see it go.

“My first impulse is to try to save it,” says Mike O’Malley, a club member and history professor at George Mason University. “There aren’t that many interesting buildings in Arlington. It’s mostly banal architecture.”

Michael Leventhal, Arlington County’s historic preservation program director, says that he would have liked to see the club reuse the house as their clubhouse. “I recognize fully that to run a pool is paramount to their thoughts,” he said of the club. "But I think they have a larger responsibility having something that old, and that important to the community."

"To tear down this historic structure, circa 1900, that’s also been part of their club for 50 years, I wish more people had paid attention maybe within the club, and were more interested in saving the house,” says Jennifer Perunko, a board member of preservation group Arlington Heritage Alliance.

The Alliance had advocated for the design scenario that involved reusing the existing building, Perunko says. But ultimately, that option wasn’t the one the club’s Long Range Planning Committee recommended.

Unfortunately for preservationists, it’s largely out of their — and Arlington County’s — hands. The Febrey-Kincheloe house was never put on any national or state registers of historic buildings, and it’s not within any Arlington-designated historic district. The county will have very little to say about the club’s plans, because the changes to the site fall within their “by-right” property development rights, and therefore won't require county board approval.

The county does have a Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board, but they are only permitted to review projects that would change buildings within existing historic preservation districts or sites.

The house is one of the last of its kind in Arlington — an old house on a much larger piece of property. A study done in the 1980s identified about 30 such properties of one acre or more, but Leventhal now estimates that there are probably closer to a dozen left.

“It’s a real sense of loss that you have the stewardship of something that’s been in existence for more than 100 years, and you couldn’t find a way to get what you need, as well as utilize the building for some of those uses," Leventhal says. "I find that very sad, that they didn’t look at their stewardship commitment as something that was stronger."

But Overlee board president Pat Shapiro says that the majority of club members — who pay between $500 and $700 per year in membership dues — were more concerned with getting the best use out of the club’s property than saving the house. In a survey filled out by more than 275 members, almost half of respondents said that saving the house wasn’t a priority for the project. Another quarter said that it was somewhat important, but not at a higher cost.

“We’re a swim club first and foremost,” Shapiro says. "Our emphasis is on the pool."

The club’s board of directors were presented with two plans, one that would have renovated and added on to the existing house for a new clubhouse and manager’s residence, and one that involved knocking down the house and building a new structure on a slightly different location. The cost estimate for the plan with the new building was $3.1 million. The estimate for the project that reused the old building was $3.5 million.

"It really came down to a matter of cost and usability," Shapiro says. Members were looking for a larger space to hold private events than the house provides, as well as more deck space around the pool areas, two things that were restricted by reusing the existing building. “The original plan was to renovate it and update it, but the more we looked into that, the more issues we had,” she adds.

Shapiro admits that when the idea to knock down the old house first surfaced roughly a decade ago, she balked, as both a member at the club and a neighbor of the property.

“It’s an absolutely charming looking house, and I was like ‘oh my God, we can’t do that, that would be a horrible thing,’” she says. “But I wasn’t on the board at the time, and I really didn’t have a huge understanding."

Now, as she walks through the old building’s winding corridors, it's clear she's become all too familiar with some of its less charming aspects. (The spot where the ceiling caved in on the club manager’s daughter, the third floor closet where bits of blue sky are visible through the roof, and the deteriorating mortar of the foundation, to name a few.)

The house, although obviously historic, has oddly incongruous features. What began as a farmhouse for the family of Ernest and Grace Febrey, later became the Kincheloe residence and then was operated as the Crestwood Sanitarium by Mrs. Kincheloe.

These previous uses bring an eerily institutional feel to much of the upper floors. Wire-filled shatter proof glass reminiscent of McMurphy’s prison in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest filters your view down the staircase. An old-fashioned sprinkler system covered in red wire cages hangs from the ceilings in every room.

It has also been changed several times over the years, Leventhal notes, pointing to areas where the porch has been turned into a side entrance, or an addition put on. But still, "there are a lot of ways it could work," he says. “They just chose not to. And I find that very sad, that they didn’t look at their stewardship commitment as something that was stronger.”

AHA is also arguing that the building could be maintained. "Most things with historic houses are fixable," says Perunko. "We’d like to see them maintain the house as the manager’s residence."

But O’Malley says he doesn’t get the sense that most of the club members were concerned about preserving the house for its historic value. “I was surprised at how uninterested they were in saving it," he says. “I did not at all get the sense that that was the sense of the community."

The Heritage Alliance is in the process of drafting a position statement asking the club to reconsider, according to Perunko. The house could remain as the manager’s residence and a new building could be built for the clubhouse, she says. At the very least, they’d like to have Historical American Buildings Survey drawings and photographs taken of the house before it is torn down, she adds.

Then we woke up. The power outages peaked around 600 and the numbers have been dropping since. What gives? Did all of that public shaming work? Was Pepco's apology tour sincere? Or did they just luck out weather-wise?

Turns out, it's a mixed bag.

For one, the weather just wasn't as bad this time around. January's thundersnow, for instance, was so bad that motorists were trapped on the roads for upwards of nine hours in its aftermath. The power lines didn't fare that well, either. Last night's storm didn't come close to causing as much damage, says Pepco spokesman André Francis.

But Pepco did prepare a little differently ahead of yesterday than it has previously. Ahead of last night's storm, Pepco scheduled crews and staff well ahead of time to work overtime and be on call earlier than usual. That wasn't necessarily the cause in January, when Pepco waited until after the storm actually hit to call in for mutual assistance crews.

“That’s definitely one of the lessons we learned. We caught flak in the media and from customers over that and we want to make sure that that was something that wasn’t going to be an issue at all,” says Francis.

Extra workers were also called in earlier than usual ahead of Saturday's high winds, which knocked out power for nearly 35,000 customers. All of those people got their power back by 8 a.m., Sunday. Pepco had 600 crews members working 16-hour shifts to get that accomplished.

But whether that preparation made that big of an impact is another matter, especially given that the weather wasn't nearly as bad.

"I don’t want to make it seem like it’s only us, that we’ve been doing something we haven’t done before. The weather didn’t pose so much of a problem that it would have made a huge difference anyway," Francis surmises.

The caution in holding crews for longer hours seems to be the post-thundersnow trend. Pepco held its mutual assistance crews Jan. 31 when another round of ice was going to hit (mass outages didn't materialize). Pepco held its own crews and contractors over for extra shifts  Feb. 14 when high winds were in the forecast, but alas, no mass outages.

How much are those additional man hours costing Pepco? Francis says they are still compiling the costs and won't have that information until they've filed their official financial report. We'll update once we know more.