Shotted may be the only coffee shop in Fairfax County with a midnight rush.
Where most coffeehouses see business peak in the morning or late afternoon as patrons drop in before and after work, the Tysons Corner Center kiosk comes to life at night — particularly during Ramadan, which began this year on March 22 and will end with the holiday Eid al-Fitr on Thursday (April 20).
Shotted is always night-owl-friendly, typically operating until 11 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. But it extends those hours to 1 a.m. during the Muslim holy month, accommodating community members looking to break their daytime fast with caffeine and desserts.
The move has paid off, drawing 200 to 300 people after 8 p.m. on weekdays and as many as 1,000 customers on weekends, according to Shotted founder and CEO Bandar Alhenaki.
On TikTok, videos showing late-night crowds assembled at the shop and lines stretching down the hall past Coastal Flats have gone viral.
“There’s not many ‘Islamic’ or Muslim coffee shops, and when this one came out…it went pretty viral,” one customer, Rabia Khalid, told FFXnow. “And if you come here around 10, it’s packed, like there’s a line to the back. It’s like Black Friday over here.”
Rabia and her sister, Remsha, say Shotted is usually a “midnight move” with friends since prayers during Ramadan can last until 11 p.m., but when they visited around 8:30 p.m. this past Tuesday (April 11), a consistent line was already forming.
Some patrons were first-timers, like one group who said they’d learned about Shotted on TikTok, while others are regulars — all of them drawn as much by the buzz of community as the coffee.
“It’s about getting the community together, like I get to see people I haven’t seen in years at Shotted,” Rabia said. “So, it’s become a little tradition.”
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the drinks are “high quality,” in the words of one patron.
“I don’t think it has to do with anything about being a religious thing,” another man said when asked about Shotted’s appeal. “I think they just offer good coffee, nice pastries. I feel like it’s comparable or even better than Starbucks.” Read More
The clock is ticking on Fairfax County’s goal of achieving net-zero new carbon emissions by 2050.
With local government and school operations accounting for just 5% of all emissions, the county is developing a plan to help residents and organizations take action to reduce their carbon footprint and combat climate change.
Presented to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors at an environmental committee meeting on Dec. 13, the proposal suggests starting to implement the Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan (CECAP) adopted in 2021 by partnering with businesses, nonprofits and others that will serve as “climate champions.”
“Every single person and organization can have negative or positive impacts for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in time to prevent serious harm to our children, nature and communities,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck, chair of the environmental committee, said in a statement. “Each segment of our community…must have simple, easy, adoptable actions to get started and get done the changes we need.”
Expected to roll out early this year, the Climate Champions initiative will take a three-pronged approach, Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination (OEEC) staff told the board:
- A faith-based and nonprofit community pilot, led by the Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions (FACS)
- A business/industry pilot, focused initially on the hospitality sector and led by Visit Fairfax
- An outreach campaign aimed at getting individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
Having pilot projects focused on specific sectors will help the county tailor its resources, policies and messaging to their needs, Storck said.
A hotel owner, for instance, could provide insight into how their building could be more sustainable — and what incentives would make those changes feasible. Homeowners’ associations could raise awareness of programs like Solarize Fairfax County, which aims to reduce the cost of solar panel installations.
“We can sit in this room all we want, but we need messengers out there in the community, taking ownership of elements in CECAP to make sure we’re successful,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said at the committee meeting.
Convincing churches and other places of worship to take action on climate change isn’t a challenge for FACS, a nonprofit with over 190 religious groups in Northern Virginia that has been a vocal advocate for CECAP and other environmental measures.
Many faith communities are already tackling climate projects, from solar sanctuaries that would turn them into refuges during power outages to staff at Reston’s St. John Neumann Catholic Church volunteering to clean up for events if they utilize reusable dishes and silverware to reduce waste.
The county’s pilot will help better coordinate those efforts and share ideas, while hopefully encouraging more congregations to get involved, FACS Executive Director Andrea McGimsey told FFXnow. Read More
A Hindu temple in Chantilly is seeking the county’s permission to build a community center across the street from its main religious temple.
The team behind the Rajdhani Mandir has filed an application with the county to construct a community building on a 10-acre site across the road from the existing temple building at 4525 Pleasant Valley Road.
The 13,600-square-foot building will include a hall for 300 occupants, a kitchen, two guest suites, an outdoor terrace and a caretaker apartment.
“Once constructed, the community center site will retain significant open space left in its natural state,” attorney William Lawson, Jr. wrote in the Aug. 14 application.
Intended to serve Hindu residents of Fairfax, Prince William, and western Loudoun counties, the center is expected to host weddings, funeral, celebrations and other gatherings, with only one to two events per month, according to preliminary application materials submitted to the county.
Most of the events will be on off-peak hours, with an estimated 100 daily trips generated on weekdays and 373 trips on Sundays, according to the application.
The temple was founded on its current 8 acres of lane in March 2000.
So far, the design is intended to minimize impacts to the neighboring area. The back of the building will remain largely undisturbed to act as a buffer from the adjacent properties, according to the application.
Most of the surrounding area is developed with residential neighborhoods and houses of worship, including a Catholic Church that is currently in the approval process.
Photo via Rajdghani Mandor/Facebook
The Fairfax County School Board is looking at adding more holidays, including Diwali and Yom Kippur, to a proposed calendar for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year.
The board reviewed a proposed calendar from Fairfax County Public Schools staff during a work session yesterday (Tuesday), with a vote on the matter scheduled for their next regular meeting on Jan. 27.
The proposed 14-holiday schedule would begin July 1 and have a two-week winter break, one-week spring break, and days off for students through professional work days. It would mirror neighboring school districts’ holidays, a staff presentation showed.
FCPS staff recommended adding Diwali and Yom Kippur as full holidays with Rosh Hashanah as a day off for students. Staff would have the option to use it for professional development or also take the day off at their own discretion.
The proposed calendar includes an observance of Eid al-Fitr in 2023, even though it falls outside of school hours. The Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan will begin at sundown on Friday, April 21 to sundown on Saturday, April 22 next year.
FCPS is officially observing those four holidays for the first time this academic year, but the school board stopped short of granting students days off.
Last year’s calendar development proved unusually tense, with numerous residents voicing concerns about the process and local religious leaders expressing disappointment from a diversity standpoint.
Superintendent Scott Brabrand said yesterday that he accepted responsibility for a calendar process last year that was divisive and hurtful but added that he thought the calendar process this year was enhanced.
“It is complex. There’s no perfect calendar process. I think this process was better than the process we had before,” Brabrand said.
This time around, FCPS enlisted a calendar committee, consisting of school staff, students, parents and associations, to weigh in on the changes. FCPS Chief Operating Officer Marty Smith said several faith-based groups were invited, but not all chose to participate.
School board members wondered whether staff assigned different weights for priorities identified through a community input process that included surveying staff, students, and families. Brabrand said the proposal wasn’t a formula, but the staff’s best solution.
Despite a nearly two-hour long work session, school board members called for clearer justification from staff regarding which holidays will be recognized and adding Veterans Day as a day off for students.
“We want for this to not come across as arbitrary to our community, that people can take a look at the same data and kind of come close to the same conclusion,” Mason District Representative Ricardy Anderson said.
School board members suggested that the survey feedback wasn’t incorporated as well as it could have been.
Guided by U.S. Supreme Court rulings throughout the last century, public school holidays for religious occasions must be justified with a secular reason, such as high absence rates.
Mount Vernon District Representative Karen Corbett-Sanders said the proposed calendar was driven by FCPS’ operational needs, not one that reflects community feedback.
“We need to work on this calendar more to ensure that that has that mutual respect and inclusivity of all in it,” she said.
A retired priest who headed the Catholic Diocese of Arlington’s Office of Child Protection and Safety for seven years has been indicted for allegedly sexually abusing a boy in Fairfax County two decades ago.
Virginia’s Office of the Attorney General announced this morning (Tuesday) that a grand jury handed down two felony charges against Terry Specht, 69, of Donegal, Pennsylvania on Dec. 20.
The Fairfax County Circuit Court grand jury charged Specht with aggravated sexual battery of a child under the age of 13 and sexual abuse of a child under the age of 18 with whom he had a custodial or supervisory relationship.
According to the indictments, the abuse occurred between March 1 and Sept. 30, 2000 and involved Specht “intentionally touching…intimate parts or material covering such intimate parts” of a victim identified as G.H., who was a minor at the time.
Specht served as a priest in the Diocese of Arlington from 1996 to 2012, including as director of its Office of Child Protection from 2004 to 2011.
The Diocese of Arlington says it first received an allegation of sexual abuse against Specht in 2012. The allegation was reported to law enforcement, and Specht was placed on administrative leave while the diocese’s review board conducted an investigation.
According to a report by The Washington Post at the time, the investigation concerned abuse of a teen boy that occurred in the late 1990s while Specht was parochial vicar at the Saint Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church in Fairfax.
“The Review Board found the allegation to be inconclusive, and law enforcement never brought charges related to the 2012 allegation,” Diocese media relations director Amber Rosebloom told FFXnow in a statement, noting that Specht was granted a request for medical retirement in 2012 and has not served in priestly ministry since.
According to the Diocese, Specht’s role in its Office of Child Protection was as a policy administrator and instructor, and he was not involved in the 2012 investigation or in assigning priests. A subsequent third-party review of the office’s policies, staff, and procedures did not find any issues.
“As a priest in the Diocese of Arlington, Father Specht underwent a criminal background check and completed VIRTUS safe-environment training,” the Diocese said. “He also underwent recurring background checks every five years, consistent with diocesan policy.”
The Diocese says it reported a second, separate allegation of abuse that it received in 2019 to police and has shared information and files related to both allegations with Attorney General Mark Herring’s office.
Specht is the third person to face charges as part of an ongoing, statewide investigation of clergy-related sexual abuse, according to the attorney general’s office.
“Children should always feel comfortable around religious leaders in their life, without fear that they could somehow hurt them,” Herring said in a statement. “Our joint investigation with the Virginia State Police into potential clergy abuse in Virginia remains ongoing, and I am proud of the work that we have done so far.”
Specht’s case is scheduled to go to trial in October 2022.
Herring encouraged Virginians who might have information about this case or any other instance of clergy abuse to speak up. His office launched a clergy abuse hotline in 2018 that remains available 24/7 at 1-833-454-9064 and www.VirginiaClergyHotline.com.
“No matter how long ago the incident occurred, we will take it seriously and make sure that you get the help and support you deserve,” he said.
The Diocese of Arlington similarly encouraged people with information about Specht or other incidents of misconduct or abuse to contact the Fairfax County Police Department at 703-691-2131 or its victim assistance coordinator at 703-841-2530.
“The Diocese of Arlington has a zero-tolerance policy for abuse and continues to be fully committed to training our clergy, staff and volunteers to identify and report suspected instances of abuse,” Rosebloom said. “No one with a credible accusation of abuse of minors is serving in the Diocese.”
Fairfax County housing officials want to assist religious congregations interested in using their existing buildings or land to help create affordable housing.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors talked about the idea at its housing committee meeting last Tuesday (Nov. 23). While in the preliminary stages of discussion, the proposed collaboration could help religious groups that need to sell vacant property to address struggling finances, officials suggested.
“A lot of these congregations are, especially the older ones, are facing economic and financial pressures, and they’re looking for a lifeline out of that,” Braddock District Supervisor James Walkinshaw said. “We’re in a little bit of a race against time here.”
He shared that developers are asking to buy excess land from religious groups and build million-dollar-plus homes on those parcels, thereby giving faith organizations revenue that would help them continue providing services to their congregations.
Senior Facility Could Serve as Model
Faith organizations have a model for one way to approach redeveloping their land through Chesterbrook Residences, an assisted living facility with a capacity for 109 residents that opened at 2030 Westmoreland St. in McLean in 2007.
The project used land donated by the Chesterbrook Presbyterian Church, which sought to create an assisted living facility for low-income seniors when it dissolved in 2000, according to a history provided by Chesterbrook Residences.
The $13.5 million project also involved a partnership with the Lewinsville and Immanuel Presbyterian churches and Temple Rodef Shalom. Local and federal grants provided $12 million, and the religious groups raised the remainder, Rabbi Amy Schwartzman said in a blog post.
“The National Capital Presbytery donated the land for this project. Without this gift, the cost would likely have been too burdensome,” Schwartzman wrote.
Other Options for Religious Groups
Places of worship could also pursue other strategies, such as retrofitting part of a building, while still maintaining a worship space.
They could demolish an existing structure to build a new one with both housing and worship space, according to Judith Cabelli, director of the county’s Affordable Housing Development Division.
“There might be a…parking lot on site that is much larger than the house of worship needs, and a multifamily building could be built on that parking lot, and then parking could be reconfigured,” she said.
But the complex and sometimes lengthy permitting approval process can create barriers.
Chairman Jeff McKay noted that congregations could also face development challenges, from stormwater management to zoning. Their buildings may be located in environmentally sensitive areas that limit development.
To address those concerns, county leaders are looking for ways to streamline the approval process, possibly working with an initial batch of congregations to help their projects succeed. If that route is pursued, the initial group could later be expanded to more congregations, McKay suggested.
Next Steps
County staff proposed providing a handout, a video, or another resource to help religious groups. Cabelli said the county envisions having community educational meetings and adding a “Faith in Housing” section to the Department of Housing and Community Development’s website.
An informational video could be launched in early 2022 with meetings to follow throughout the year.
Housing and Community Development Director Tom Fleetwood said he plans to continue examining possible approaches to bring back to the housing committee.
