Volunteers plan massive tree planting in 4MR Park this weekend

The magazine of the
Casey Tree Foundation

Following a couple recent successful stream clean-ups and park renovations, a cadre of volunteers will be back at it again this upcoming weekend planting about 2 dozen trees in Four Mile Run Park.

As featured in the most recent issues of The Leaflet, the electronic newsletter of Casey Trees, volunteers organized by Tree Stewards of Arlington & Alexandria. Spearheaded by resident Kurt Moser, the project is being funded entirely by a grant from Casey Trees, who provide the plant material and tools. The planting marks the first year that Casey Trees has expanded its program outside of the District of Columbia. Casey Trees is a D.C.-based urban forestry non-profit dedicated to restoring, enhancing and protecting the tree canopy of the nation's capital.

The work will be performed Sunday, April 14th from 9am-Noon, during the opening day of the Four Mile Run Farmers & Artisans Market. Local businesses plan to support the effort by providing meals to the workers. MOM's Organic Market has planned a breakfast. Other details are still being finalized.

Sketch of the tree planting plan

 Volunteer: Four Mile Run ParkVolunteer Community Tree Planting event, open to all volunteers. 22 trees will be planted with the help of the Tree Stewards of Arlington on these park grounds.Start: April 14, 2013 9:00 am
End: April 14, 2013 12:00 pm Venue: Four Mile Run Park Address: 4131 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria, VA, 22305

Conceptual view of 4MR Expand from Four Mile Run Restoration Plan

The Casey Trees support of the Tree Stewards efforts is a continuation of a series of private initiatives to revive, restore and expand this public space. The trees will be planted as part of the Four Mile Run Park Expansion (4MR Expand), a project that has been a decade in the works. Originally conceived as part of the 2003 Arlandria Plan, 4MR Expand was incorporated into the Four Mile Run Restoration Plan adopted in 2005. Four parcels were acquired in 2007 with Alexandria City Open Space funds but sat idle for a number of years due to lack of money for planning and implementation. A group of architects, known as Architects Anonymous, banded together to create a workable plan for the site that could rolled out over time making the best use of contributions from grants and the community. The non-profit Four Mile Run Farmers and Artisans Market adopted the site as the site for a farmers' market and provide maintenance and financial contributions to further the project. Architects Anonymous contributed additional plans to re-purpose the former paint store at 4MR Expand and to prevent its demolition. 

The Arlandria Plan Implementation Group supported the project by requesting that the City direct some funds that would have otherwise be lost to help complete the community's vision. Since then, 4MRMarket has solicited private contributions to enhance the site and the City's Parks department has coupled those funds with grants that they've solicited to create a venue to showcase the arts and environmental best practice. To date these include: a performance stage, permeable pavers and rain gardens to collect stormwater run-off. Planters to collect additional stormwater run-off and arts grants are still pending.

Realization of 4MR Expand in progress

The current City Manager proposed budget does not anticipate any tax money being directed to the plan.


Previous related posts from The Arlandrian:

• Four Mile Run DOWNSTREAM Clean-up April 6th
• Tales of an Arlandria Twitcher
• Four Mile Run Park is for the birds!
• Tales of an Arlandria Twitcher: The Ides of March Edition
• Community Comments on 4MR Park
• New Views on 4MR Expand
• Architects Anonymous win for Four Mile Run Park Designs
• Why plan a park?
• Discuss Path Forward for 4 Mile Run Park Expansion Sites
• "Architects Anonymous" Donates Time, Vision To Four Mile Run Park
• How Alexandria City Bureaucracy Didn’t Steal Christmas

Help solve an Animal Control Mystery

Signs posted around Four Mile Run Park today are asking the public to help identify a dog that was involved in a biting incident on Saturday, April 6th at 2:30 in the afternoon near the end of Edison Street. Alexandria officials would like to verify that the dog has been vaccinated against rabies. 

The dog is described as brown, medium to large in size, fluffy and owned by a white male who may have been wearing a red shirt. 

An un-fenced dog exercise area is situated in Four Mile Run Park at the end of Edison Street and has been criticized for its proximity to playing fields and the running/biking trail. The next closest dog runs are the fenced dog area next to Simpson field on Monroe Avenue (soon to be a neighbor of ANOTHER fenced dog run across the street from it) and further up Four Mile Run across the footbridge from Shirlington. 

 

Previous related post from The Arlandrian:

• Results of Survey About Dog Park at Reed Ave Open Space
• Can a Dog Park Reduce Crime? Some Say "Yes"
• Should Arlandria's New Open Space Be a Dog Park?
• New Park Uncovered At Spring for Alexandria
• How Alexandria City Bureaucracy Didn’t Steal Christmas.

4MR Clean-up SUCCESS!!

This morning's Four Mile Run Stream Clean-up gathered more than 80 participants at 3 staging locations along 4MR between Route 1 and Mount Vernon Avenue. The clean-up is part of larger 25th Annual Potomac River Watershed clean-up effort organized by the Alice Ferguson Foundation.

MOM's Organic Market (one of the sponsor of the AFF event) held a thank-you cook-out for volunteers afterward.

Here's a few photos from today's event:

 

Four Mile Run DOWNSTREAM Clean-up April 6th

Arlandria Businesses and Citizen Groups Offer Support for Four Mile Run Clean-up

MOM's Organic Market Sponsors Thank You Cook-out. 

All volunteers contributing to the Four Mile Run Clean-up are invited to a thank you cook-out behind MOM's Organic Market (3831 Mt. Vernon Avenue) following the clean-up from 11am until Noon. (In case of rain the cook-out will be held at 4109 Mt Vernon Avenue. 

Check Out the Community Efforts.

The Arlandria Civic Association and the Hume Springs Citizens Association have teamed up to reserve the Four Mile Run Community Building at 4109 Mt Vernon Avenue.

The Four Mile Run Community Building will be open from 9am-Noon to provide volunteers with a place to learn more about the Four Mile Run Restoration Efforts. The 4MR Building, a community led effort to help further the revitalization of Four Mile Run Park, will serve as a rest stop for volunteers and the rain location for MOM's cook-out. Restroom facilities are also available on-site.

Parking for the clean-up has been organized in three locations: 

• 3700 Commonwealth Avenue (by the baseball fields)
• Behind MOM's Organic Market at 3831 Mt Vernon Avenue (please park closest to park at edge of lot).
• 4109 Mt Vernon Avenue at the Four Mile Run Community Building

Public Transportation options to the Four Mile Run Clean-up include: Metro Bus 9A, 10A & 10B. Dash Bus AT-10 and AT-3/4 also have stops withing walking distance of the Park. 

Volunteer for the 25th Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup

Saturday, April 6, 9 – 11 a.m.

Every little bit helps.

The City’s Transportation and Environmental Services (T&ES), Office of Environmental Quality (OEQ) and Solid Waste Division, in conjunction with the Alice Ferguson Foundation,  is  hosting sites in Alexandria at Four Mile Run Park.  Families, scouts, students, retirees, and thousands of other concerned citizens will hit the shorelines, neighborhood parks, community streets, and schoolyards of the region to clean up local streams in the Potomac River Watershed.
The Alice Ferguson Foundation created the watershed-wide cleanup in 1989 and has overseen the collection of well over 5 million pounds of trash.
The City is hosting two sites on Four Mile Run:

• End of 3700 Commonwealth Avenue
• 4109 Mt. Vernon Avenue

Please RSVP to Jeremy Hassan at jeremy.hassan@alexandriava.gov, or show up to help out.  Visit Potomac River Watershed Cleanup for more sites in Alexandria and the region.

Alexandria Kills Pedestrian Crossing at Glebe Road (UPDATE)

Originally posted April 1st, 2011...

"The whole thing was just surreal," said Arlandria resident Melissa Garcia, upon hearing the news. "It looked like everything was moving right along and this just came out of nowhere and broadsided us."

One of the most frustrating aspects of the implementation of the 2003 Arlandria Plan has been the decade long challenge trying to initiate the few modest investments in the streetscape called for by the plan.  As we discussed before, $500,000 were earmarked back then to bring in some basics like better bus stops, crosswalks, trashcans and intersection improvements.  A few things happened, even if they were only half measures, but most did not.  The most heavily used bus stops can't accommodate shelters (not enough room). There's no place for bike racks. The problems go on.

For the last few years, however, the focus of the spending the capital improvement money has been on the intersection of West Glebe Road and Mt Vernon Avenue, a crossing residents have long considered problematic.  

After a good bit of study, the plan for improving this intersection grew to also include a crossing at nearby West Reed Avenue, as both intersections were historically accident-prone. The streets are in such close proximity that the engineers felt the improvements needed to occur in tandem.  A year ago, the preliminary costs estimate of improving both intersections came to about $300,000 -- well within the monies alloted in 2003. Neighborhood residents, glad to finally see some utilization of the funds, were heartened at that news and gave these constructive, cost-effective projects their blessing. 

The momentary euphoria was not to last.  Arlandria residents more recently received news that was not so good.  At the January meeting of the Arlandria Plan Implementation Group, City staff informed the neighborhood that the much awaited improvement plan for the West Glebe/Mt Vernon Avenue intersection had come to a screeching halt.  What had been vaunted as a well considered plan to...at long last...provide a safer pedestrian crossing, had suddenly been deemed unfeasible. Improvements would have to await redevelop of the surrounding properties --nothing was currently possible without infringing on private property.  And what's more, the price tag had also escalated beyond the City's means.  

The $300,000 that was originally all that was needed to make improvements to both the West Glebe and West Reed intersections, was now necessary to install just the crosswalk at West Reed Avenue. The project, conceived originally as merely a secondary part of a larger, more important holistic enhancement, had instead taken the main stage. The 2003 Capital Improvement Funds - touted as being driving force in Arlandria's revitalization - were now to be spent mostly on a lonely, isolated,  and somewhat pathetic (albeit very nice) crosswalk.

The prognosis for the West Glebe pedestrian improvements is uncertain. City staff are adament that funds will not be available for such a project for a very long time. Redevelopment of the nearby properties...now a prerequisite for pedestrian safety...is held up in similar uncertainty, with economic feasibility studies showing that construction is not financially viable and property owners complaining that the City government is making unreasonable and inequitable demands. The pedestrian crossing at West Glebe Road might not be dead, but it is in an indefinite coma. Don't bring out the crash cart, it's going to take more than the defibrillator to bring it back to life.

"You used to say I couldn't save you enough, 

so I've been saving it up, I started saving it up. 

And when you said I couldn't give you enough, 

I started giving you up, I started giving you up." 

-from"Arlandria" by the Foo Fighters

Meanwhile, new spending projects are filling the City's Capital Improvement Plan should the Commercial Add-on Tax for transportation projects become a reality this Spring. The City has spent twice the amount of the Arlandria funds on JUST the plan for the Waterfront. And the $11.5 Million surplus from the $18 Million that Virginia gave Alexandria to support redevelopment along Eisenhower Avenue has also found other beneficiaries. Up against competition like the $600,000 Fairy riding the Frog, West Glebe Road no longer makes the cut. (If you would like to donate to the Save Arlandria Fund, please contact us here at the Arlandrian.)

April Fool's Day brings about a whole lot of joke headlines. Maybe our double entendre is in a similar vein as those.  Or maybe it's really too sad to be funny...even if you were to read it in a comic strip.

UPDATE:
Two years on and "the patient" is still on life-support. The City never got around to fixing the intersection. The intersection funds...what were left of them...were diverted to finally help start fixing the vacant lots Alexandria created to expand Four Mile Run Park. We all got on board with that and then...Alexandria pulled the plug again. De-funded. 

And those transportation funds? They've yet to materialize. Some were going to fund the ill-fated Arlandria-Del Ray trolley, but that was...well, boondoggled out of existence and no word on what happens to the unspent funds. Other fixes are promised but only if the promised redevelopments happen. Meanwhile: The $125,000 Model Metro Train Set

Excerpted from Warwick Village Voice, March 2004