Reston was under the lens on Friday (Aug. 25), as FOX 5 featured the planned community in its series on notable neighborhoods in the D.C. region.
The series, called Zip Trip, broadcast from Reston Town Center’s pavilion in the morning. The show highlighted the top five attractions in Reston: Reston Community Center (#5), Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (#4), Lake Fairfax Park (#3), Lake Anne Village Center (#2), and the town center (#1).
Reporter Erin Como said that Reston Town Center “offers all forms of fun,” ranging from the iconic Mercury fountain to shopping and events under the recently renovated pavilion.
Featured businesses and other organizations included:
- Ted’s Bulletin
- Scrawl Books
- The St. James Performance Club
- Reston Museum
- Cornerstones
- NOVA Wild
- South Lakes High School
- Lake Anne Brew House
Bike Lane Brewing & Cafe and the Lake Anne Brew House put their drinks to the test in a battle of the brews, while NOVA Wild presented its animal friends — including recent additions to the rebranded zoo’s family.
The feature also included a roundup on the real estate market in Reston.
Rob Tucker, a local pickle ball and tennis instructor who works for Reston Association, was recognized at the a hometown hero during the trip.
“My work is to promote the live, work, play motto,” Tucker said.
The last Zip Trip for the year will take in National Harbor on Friday (Sept. 1). FOX 5 visited 15 cities in the summer tour.
Screenshot via FOX5
A popular taiyaki pop-up based out of Chantilly is settling down near the Dunn Loring Metro station for its first-ever permanent shop.
After working the D.C. area’s farmers market circuit since 2021, Rice Culture will start selling the fish-shaped, Instagram-ready Japanese treats out of a brick-and-mortar store in the Shops at Avenir Place — potentially as soon as this October.
The new location at 2672D Avenir Place will offer an expanded menu with taiyaki ice cream to take advantage of the space built out by Bruster’s Real Ice Cream, which closed in 2020, Rice Culture co-founder and baker MikkiJo Bayawa says.
“We’ll be serving Asian-inspired soft-serve flavors in the taiyaki, and the taiyaki will act as the cone,” Bayawa told FFXnow. “So, that’s something that’s going to be new and exciting, a menu item that we wouldn’t have been able to serve at farmers markets.”
Rice Culture began early in the COVID-19 pandemic out of a similar craving for comfort that spurred a national frenzy of bread-baking.
A native of New Jersey, Bayawa moved to Northern Virginia about five years ago to work on Amazon’s data centers. Upon arriving, however, she found no substitute for the taiyakis hawked at the Jersey-based Japanese grocery store Mitsuwa — a void that particularly stood out once the pandemic limited her and fiancé Kevin Tsai’s travel away from their Centreville apartment.
So, she decided to fill the gap herself, buying a machine that could make up to six taiyakis at a time. Though the waffles are traditionally filled with red bean paste or vanilla custard, Bayawa experimented with different flavors, from cream cheese and Nutella to ube jam — a nod to her mixed Japanese and Filipino identity.
Within a couple of hours of posting some of her creations on Instagram, a “complete stranger” reached out and asked if they were for sale, she says.
“I just got excited and I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll deliver them to you too,” Bayawa recalled, dating that first delivery to January 2021.
From there, the operation grew quickly. After five days, Bayawa and Tsai had to cut off orders, and within a week, baking and delivering the treats became an all-day affair, prompting a search for a professional kitchen and additional staff.
In March 2021, Rice Culture moved into Chantilly’s Frontier Kitchen, and since then, it has regularly appeared at farmers markets, festivals and shopping centers throughout the D.C. region, including the FreshFarm market at Merrifield’s Mosaic District and The Block food hall in Annandale.
Rice Culture can’t claim to have introduced taiyakis to the D.C. area. That honor appears to belong to the Lai family behind the now-shuttered Vietnamese restaurant Four Sisters, who offered taiyaki ice cream at their Boba & Bites shop that opened at the Mosaic District in 2018.
However, Rice Culture remains rare in the region for specializing in the desserts and serving a wide variety of flavors, with 10 or more on rotation every month.
“I think that’s really appealing to customers in this market who want to try something new,” Bayawa said. “They want to try something different, and they want to try also something that is Instagrammable, something they can share with their friends, and our product definitely meets that market need.”
With Rice Culture now successful enough that she could leave her Amazon job, Bayawa has big ambitions for where the business could go, looking at Loudoun County, Maryland, D.C. and even the New Jersey and New York area as potential areas for expansion.
But the temporary pop-ups will be paused once the Dunn Loring store opens, possibly returning in the winter or spring depending on how long it takes to “work out the kinks.”
“We’re trying to create a recipe and a process where anyone that we hire can make the taiyakis just as delicious as me and Kevin, so that me and him can look at growing and opening multiple Rice Culture stores,” Bayawa said. “So, if that means taking a step back from the farmers market, that’s something that we might have to do.”
A Restonian is changing how pizza is made with a new Iron Dome Pizza Oven.
Mike Pilon, who has lived in Reston since 2007, has created an oven that he says transforms the way fresh pizza is made.
The dome is a portable pizza oven that uses two independent heat sources — a bottom baking steel and steel plate inside a carbon steel dome.
Pilon says he was inspired to create a product without the cost and hassles linked with traditional pizza ovens.
“My goal was to create a product that makes the art of pizza-making accessible to everyone , and I believe the Iron Dome Pizza does just that,” Pilon said.
According to Pilon, the dome can bake pizzas in under 90 seconds, heating up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit during that process.
Pilon’s traditional profession is far from the world of pizza-making. He has more than 15 years of experience in the management consulting industry and currently offers consulting services to PasteGroup LLC in support of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Pilon says he has been in and out of entrepreneurship throughout his career. He previously launched MapMuse.com, which provides interactive mapping services to real estate and destination marketing companies. He then created a general mapping website. The venture shut down in 2019.
He says he came up with the idea for the Iron Dome after heating a piece of metal with a high heat capacity to a high temperature and then allowing the heat to be released in a controlled way.
“I love to cook, and one day, while waiting for a pot of water for pasta to boil, I thought about how much energy is wasted through heat loss above the lid. I investigated and prototyped some ‘pot-toppers,'” Pilon said. “But even though there was some time/energy savings, I didn’t think it would interest many people. However, it led me to the idea of the Iron Dome Pizza Oven.”
The device is compatible with gas stoves, electric burners and outdoor cooking set ups.
So far, Pilon has been selling pizzas using the Iron Dome Pizza Oven on Wednesday afternoons at the FreshFarm Market in the St. John Neumann Catholic Church parking lot (11900 Lawyers Road). They’ve been selling out each week.
The patent for the pizza-making oven is pending, Pilon said. It’s available for purchase via Etsy for around $120.
Two longtime family-owned restaurants in the Chantilly Park Shopping Center have closed their doors for good.
Located side-by-side to one another, Bravo Peruvian Chicken (14513 Lee Jackson Memorial Highway) and Picante! (14511-B Lee Jackson Memorial Highway) have both recently announced permanent closures.
Mexican restaurant Picante has serviced the area for the last 29 years, according to a statement released by owner Guillermo Manoatl on Instagram last Monday, July 31. The statement was also posted in the former storefront’s windows.
Dear Picante Loyal Customers,
Picante has closed its doors permanently as of today! We would like to thank you for letting us serve you for the past 29 years! It has been an honor to have been able to share my grandmother’s recipes with all of you!
Unlike Picante, Bravo Peruvian Chicken has yet to publicly confirm its closure or remove its signage from the shopping center, but it has been marked permanently closed on Google, and its phone number has been disconnected.
“We are a group of Peruvians who came to the United States to conquer the ‘American Dream’ while maintaining our roots and love for our culture!” Bravo Peruvian Chicken’s website reads. “Bravo Chicken is a proud example of it.”
A family entertainment center in Chantilly is officially under new ownership.
Creepy Greens Entertainment, LLC has taken over Mini Monster Golf and is now fully operational.
An application submitted to Fairfax County seeks permission for a special permit so the new owner can provide laser tag, arcade expansion, and a kitchen and cafe area that is currently unused.
“The previous owners of the store were granted this special permit and the new owner, Creepy Greens Entertainment Inc., hopes to retain it,” the application says. “No additions, expansions, or use case changes are planned.”
A company representative told FFXnow that the application before the county was necessary in order to “reflect the new ownership.”
The special permit plan aims to maintain the existing character of the area, according to the application.
The facility is open in the fall and winter Monday through Thursday from 2-9 p.m., Fridays from 2-10 p.m., Saturdays from noon to 10 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 8 p.m.
In the spring and summer, the hours will be Monday through Saturday from noon to 10 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m., according to the permit application.
A union representing Maximus call center workers filed unfair labor practices charges against the Tysons-headquartered contractor this week.
In charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Tuesday and Wednesday (May 23 and 24), the Communications Workers of America alleges that the government services company, which operates call centers for Medicaid and Medicare, has retaliated against employees and illegally tried to discourage them from unionizing.
The CWA says it filed the complaints because Maximus is laying off more than 700 call center workers this month who handle customer service for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
At a protest organized by Call Center Workers United, which is part of the CWA, a worker who handled calls for the CDC for three years said yesterday (Thursday) that he was laid off two days before Mother’s Day despite having a “great performance record with no discipline.”
“I believe the real reason I was laid off was in retaliation for speaking out about Maximus’ working conditions, and to scare my co-workers from supporting a union. But we have a right to speak out and tell the truth, and to organize to improve our working conditions,” Daija Arrington said at the rally in D.C. outside the Department of Health and Human Services, which operates both CMS and the CDC.
The layoffs are happening less than 2 months before Maximus usually starts its annual recruitment blitz
in July🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/ZtUCGQGQmd— Call Center Workers United (@CCWUnited) May 23, 2023
According to the charge sheet, Maximus violated federal labor laws in April and May by retaliating against employees involved in union activities by laying them off, threatening them with layoffs or worksite closures and offering severance agreements with conditions limiting their ability to talk about their experiences with the company.
The CWA also alleges that Maximus made “implied promises of benefits” to employees and forced them to attend a meeting to discourage them from unionizing.
Though the charge is tied to a call center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which has served as an organizing base for the union, the recent layoffs have affected employees across the company’s 10 centers, most of which are in the South, according to the CWA.
Another 143 workers at the Hattiesburg call center were reportedly laid off in January.
When contacted for comment by FFXnow, Maximus said that “the allegations were just made available to us,” but it is “confident that the company complied with all applicable labor requirements.”
“Given the lack of specific detail, including dates of alleged occurrence and names of workers, we are unable to respond directly to the allegations,” Maximus said in a statement. “We pride ourselves in complying with applicable labor laws across all our operations and will cooperate fully with any request from the National Labor Relations Board.” Read More
The American tax system may finally get dragged into the modern world, with an assist from a federal contractor based in Tysons.
Maximus has signed an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to participate in a $2.6 billion push to modernize the agency’s computer systems and databases, the government services company announced yesterday.
Under the seven-year contract, Maximus will compete with other awarded companies to upgrade technology dating back to the 1960s, consolidating over 400 different systems into “a new, cloud-based architecture,” according to a public relations representative for the company.
Other awardees include Booz Allen Hamilton, which is also headquartered in Tysons.
“The IRS laid out an ambitious plan to transform how the agency provides services and capabilities to improve the taxpayer experience as well as IRS internal operations,” Maximus Federal General Manager Teresa Weipert said in the press release. “Maximus, through our excellent IRS team and modernization expertise, will deliver on that plan and taxpayer experience.”
The announcement came a day after the IRS filed a report in Congress outlining plans to test its own free electronic filing system as an alternative to paid services like TurboTax and H&R Block, which have lobbied against taxpayers submitting their returns directly to the federal government.
The IRS currently has a list of private companies that offer free tax preparation and filing services to people under certain income thresholds, but less than 3% of taxpayers utilize the “Free File” providers, even though about 70% of people are eligible, according to the Government Accountability Office.
A pilot program is expected to launch by the beginning of the 2024 tax season in January, making the IRS system available to “a small group of taxpayers,” the Washington Post reported earlier this week.
Maximus won’t be directly involved in developing the e-filing system, but its work to modernize the IRS’ technology will help “enable offerings like that,” the company spokesperson said.
Headquartered at 1600 Tysons Blvd, Maximus has worked with the IRS for more than three decades, per the press release. Its other government clients include the Social Security Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The company has faced protests and strikes by workers in its Medicare and Medicaid call centers over their wages, benefits and working conditions. A coalition of labor and civil rights groups sent a letter to the Labor Department in March calling for an investigation into allegations of racism and sexism.
Low pay, unaffordable health care costs, inadequate break and paid leave policies, and other issues persist in Maximus call centers, according to the Communications Workers of America, the union that has been organizing some employees.
“Workers have raised serious questions about racial disparities at Maximus, particularly for Black and Latina women who feel that they have no clear paths to career advancement,” CWA organizer Victoria Miller said. “The IRS itself is a model of equity in comparison to the vast racial and gender disparities that exist at Maximus.”
An IT contractor headquartered in Reston’s South Lakes area has agreed to pay over $435,000 to settle a federal investigation that found racial discrimination in its hiring practices.
Intelligent Waves LLC allegedly engaged in “systemic hiring discrimination” against 14 Black applicants who sought work in Arizona and Nevada as test instrumentation technicians, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) announced Friday (April 21).
The allegations were raised by a “routine” compliance investigation that took place between Nov. 5, 2019 and Aug. 31, 2021, according to a news release.
Investigators found violations of Executive Order 11246, which prohibits discrimination by federal contractors, by personnel at the company’s Reston headquarters (1801 Robert Fulton Drive, Suite 440) who were responsible for filling the technician positions.
“OFCCP identified a statistically significant disparity (equivalent to a shortfall of five (5)), not otherwise explained, in the hiring of Black Test Instrumentation Technician applicants on the basis of their race,” the office says in the compliance agreement.
The OFCCP also found that Intelligent Waves failed to preserve accurate employment records and implement an audit system to monitor the effectiveness of its affirmative action program during the investigation period, according to the agreement.
“Our settlement with Intelligent Waves reflects our commitment to preventing hiring discrimination and holding federal contractors accountable when they fail to ensure equal employment opportunity,” Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Mid-Atlantic Regional Director Sam Maiden said.
Launched in 2006, Intelligent Waves provides cybersecurity, data science, network & systems engineering and software development services. Its clients include the Air Force, NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the General Services Administration, according to the labor department.
Per the compliance agreement, the company “neither admits nor denies” any violations of the federal government’s nondiscrimination rules.
According to Intelligent Waves, the discrimination allegations stem from “a single position and an incident that transpired almost three years ago, resulting from a record-keeping error when Intelligent Waves was a small business.”
The company says it hasn’t employed the people involved since 2022 and started “implementing measures” to ensure compliance with federal rules as soon as it became aware of the error.
“Intelligent Waves has a long history of providing an equitable and inclusive workplace for all employees, exceeding industry averages for diversity and veteran employment, and has maintained a strong anti-discrimination policy since its founding,” Intelligent Waves said in a statement, noting that it was listed among the D.C. area’s top corporate diversity employers last year by the Washington Business Journal.
However, as part of the settlement, Intelligent Waves has agreed to not only provide $435,368 in back pay and interest to the 14 affected individuals, but also give them priority for a job offer if there are future test instrumentation technician vacancies.
The contractor is also required to evaluate its hiring policies and procedures for the position and train employees involved in hiring on any changes.
All of the settlement funds must be distributed by Feb. 20, 2024, and the company must give the OFCCP a progress report on its hiring practices by April 1, 2024, per a timeline in the agreement. The office has a Class Member Locator with information for anyone who thinks they’re eligible for relief.
Photo via Cytonn Photography/Unsplash
Person Hospitalized After Vienna Shooting — “Officers are in the 8400 blk of Wesleyan St in Vienna for a shooting. Prelim info, a man shot a roommate inside the home. Victim taken to hospital w/non-life-threatening inj. Suspect is in custody.” [FCPD/Twitter]
Report: Police Declare Personnel Emergency — “Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis and senior staff declared a personnel emergency Thursday, according to a police source, which means mandatory overtime for police officers as FCPD grapples with an ongoing police officer shortage.” [ABC7]
Affordable Housing Projects Get State Funds — Virginia has awarded more than $27 million in state loans for affordable and special needs housing projects, including two in Fairfax County, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office announced last week. The county’s recipients were the Autumn Willow project near Centreville and the One University project by George Mason University’s Fairfax campus. [Patch]
Argument Leads to Stabbing in Centreville — A 32-year-old woman from Falls Church stabbed another woman in the 5700 block of Ottawa Road last Tuesday (July 26) after they got into a dispute, Fairfax County police say. The woman was arrested and charged with malicious wounding. The victim received treatment for injuries not considered life threatening. [FCPD]
Herndon Education Company Plans Reston Move — “Stride Inc. will start the school year in drastically smaller space in a new building. The Herndon educational-technology company is slashing its local office space by more than 80% — moving out of approximately 129,000 feet of office space in Herndon and into 22,000 square feet in a new office it will officially open this fall in Reston’s Plaza America.” [Washington Business Journal]
Instagram Account Shows Maintenance Issues at McLean HS — “The bio for the account @mclean.rot on Instagram reads, ‘The best single word to define this school is ‘gross.” With 71 posts, the anonymous student owner of @mclean.rot has been posting an unvarnished look at McLean High School since February, detailing for all a need for serious maintenance.” [Fairfax County Times]
Chantilly Park Gets Grant to Monitor Water — “Fairfax Water recently awarded Ellanor C. Lawrence Park Friends a Water Supply and Protection Grant in the amount of $1,437 in support of ECLP’s water quality monitoring program…This grant will provide funding for on-site water quality monitoring to address potential pollution threats from nearby construction projects.” [FCPA]
Kings Park Neighborhood Gets Spotlight — “Aside from the people and neighborhood celebrations, the amenities and surrounding businesses have also compelled residents to stay in the area. Charlotte Hannagan, a resident since 2014 and Kings Park Civic Association vice president of social outreach, noted that there’s so much within walking distance of the neighborhood.” [The Washington Post]
It’s Monday — Partly cloudy throughout the day. High of 84 and low of 71. Sunrise at 6:11 am and sunset at 8:22 pm. [Weather.gov]
A new 19,000-square-foot satellite manufacturing facility has opened in the Town of Herndon.
The facility, known as the Advanced Technology and Development Center, is run by HawkEye 360, a commercial provider of space-based radio frequency data and analytics.
The company celebrated the grand opening of the facility at 196 Van Buren Street on Friday (July 22). It will bring 70 jobs to the area.
HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini said the facility allows his company to centralize its data engineering and satellite manufacturing in-house.
“This gives us more flexibility to adapt and innovate our commercial RF GEOINT technology,” Serafini said. “Our customers will benefit through our discoveries, as we place more sophisticated RF-sensing satellites into orbit and build algorithms that extract value from this important data. We are proud to be investing in the local economy with these high-paying, mission focused jobs that make a global impact.”
The facility also includes a customized clean room and electronics lab for advanced technologies.
The company also plans to launch a sixth cluster of satellites before the end of the year, adding to an existing fleet of 15 satellites.
