CIRS Mold Toxicity Treatment in Oakton, VA

VIENNA, Va. — Drum roll, please...Oakton High School is one of the winners of Metallica's First Marching Band Contest!

The Marching Cougrs will be awarded $15,000 and musical equipment for their school program, furnished by Metallica and other sponsors. The Vienna school was chosen as a national finalist in the band's inaugural "For Whom the Band Tolls" as one of the top five bands in the small high school category by a panel of professional marching band judges.

Robert Trujillo, bass player for Metallica, announced the winners on the band's Facebook page Sunday.

"The response blew us away and made for a heated competition," Metallica said. "Marching bands at high school and collegiate levels cranked their repertoires up to 11 to compete for nearly $200,000 in equipment by creating the most exciting, unique, and impressive performances incorporating our music."

Other winners include:

Here's the video that won the judges over:

RELATED: Northern Virginia marching band announced as finalist in Metallica competition

RELATED: Virginia State University marching band performs at the White House

RELATED: DC Marching band plans to purchase new instruments, uniforms and cover travel cost with donations

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The Oakton office campus that has hosted AT&T for decades is poised for a transformation.

An affiliate of developer EYA, CB Oakton Associates LLC submitted a plan to Fairfax County in late November that would replace the aging, 440,000-square-foot office building with up to 1.4 million square feet of mixed-use development, including townhomes, multi-family residential buildings and retail.

Closely resembling a concept shared with the community in the fall, the application calls for up to 1,000 residential units: 625 multi-family units and 375 traditional and stacked townhomes. The amount of housing was reduced from the developer’s initial vision after area residents raised concerns about traffic and incompatibility with the neighborhood’s park-like character.

While not indicated in the plan, EYA has previously stated that the multi-family housing will be rental apartments. The developer will include affordable dwelling units “in accordance with County requirements…in each of the housing types proposed,” according to the application.

The approximately 33-acre site will also be redeveloped with 120,000 square feet of retail space and retain 80,000 square feet of office space.

“The Applicant proposes to rezone the Property…to permit a mixed-use community that maximizes the Property’s size and central location and will serve as a central core to the broader Oakton community,” Cooley LLP lawyer Mark C. Looney wrote in a statement of justification. “…This mix will provide the Applicant with the optionality required to redevelop as appropriate to meet future market demands.”

Built in 1981, the office building at 3033 Chain Bridge Road has been occupied by AT&T ever since, but the presence of workers at the campus has “dwindled,” particularly after the pandemic led to more flexible work-from-home policies, according to the application.

The building’s “deteriorated” condition also convinced the property owner that change is needed. AT&T’s lease is set to expire at the end of 2025, the Washington Business Journal reported.

In addition to adding housing and retail, which will range from 60 feet tall for the townhomes along Flagpole Lane to 120 feet tall at the corner of Chain Bridge Road and Jermantown Road, the proposed redevelopment will reconfigure the site with a new grid of streets and 16.1 acres of open spaces, including:

The plan also include a nearly 1-mile-long shared-use path around the property. The emphasis on open and green spaces was a priority for many residents, including the neighborhood advocacy group Options for Oakton.

Looney notes that EYA met convened over 25 community meetings before filing its application, which hasn’t been formally accepted for review by county planners yet.

“The Application is the product of incorporating the feedback received in those meetings with the Applicant’s vision to revitalize the Property with a mixture of uses in a vibrant community,” Looney wrote.

The county is already conducting a planning study that would amend its comprehensive plan to allow mixed-use development on the AT&T campus. An estimated timeline suggests the draft amendment could be released this coming spring, setting the stage for public hearings in summer and fall 2024.

This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Home & Garden

Plant native this fall

Community Contributor

|Updated Sat, Sep 16, 2023 at 10:54 pm ET

Fall is for planting. When choosing what to plant, why not factor in the ecosystem while you are at it? Preserving biodiversity may sound like a job for scientists, but in fact the implementation is up to all of us. It is the decisions we make on a daily basis that determine how well our local ecosystem will weather the numerous stressors that come with climate change. We get to see this in action as we choose which plants to install on our properties.

Why should we care about biodiversity, a term that seems so remote to our own lives? Perhaps a better word would be “bio-resilience” or even “bio-survival,” to highlight the importance of genetic diversity in a changing world. In our yards, for example, planting a whole range of species means that whether they are hit by drought, deluge, or the next plague, at least some of them will make it. Better still is to use plants that themselves have genetic diversity, as opposed to ones that are produced by cloning, which is the case for most cultivars.

None of this has much meaning to the planet unless those plants are also native to the area and thus support the myriad critters that depend on them for food. Losing an entire hedge to boxwood blight or a row of crape myrtles to crape myrtle bark scale may be sad for us but makes no difference to the ecosystem. Replacing them with a mixed hedge of native trees and shrubs would provide insurance against stressors while supporting our birds and butterflies. Those critters very much need our support, because they are under threat from the non-native plants that have escaped from our gardens into the natural areas and are turning our parks into monocultures of tree-killing invasives. Finding appropriate substitutes for invasive plants is not a problem - the Native Plants for Northern Virginia###/a### guide lists 263 garden-worthy species

Professional landscapers all know that autumn is a great time to plant, even if home gardeners make the mistake of waiting until April to flock to the garden centers. Planting can even continue until the ground is frozen. Many plants including trees and shrubs continue to grow their roots after their leaves fall off, and even those that go dormant have a major head start in the spring before they have to face summer heat and drought. The wise gardeners who take advantage of the fall discounts are rewarded by lighter watering chores and healthier plants. In Northern Virginia, you can find native plants either by looking for the red stickers in participating conventional garden centers or by shopping at the native plant nurseries or at the local fall native plant sales.

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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Oakton

Oakton High School’s marching band could win $15,000 from playing “Enter Sandman” and other Metallica tunes.

The Marching Cougars, as the band is called, was selected as a national finalist in the inaugural “For Whom the Band Tolls” competition, which invited high school and college marching bands to submit videos showcasing their performances of Metallica’s work.

Oakton is the high school finalist from Virginia and one of only two selected from the East Coast, according to the Oakton High School Band Boosters.

The finalists were determined by a judging panel made up of music educators, but the winners — two collegiate bands and small, medium and large high school bands — will be chosen by singer and guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich and the other members of the heavy metal band.

“It is surreal to me that one of my all-time favorite bands is going to watch my band,” said Oakton Band Director Dr. Jamie vanValkenburg, who designed the Cougars’ showcase to engage “both performers and the audience through thrilling visuals and dynamic sound.”

The Cougars submitted a performance from an October varsity football game where Oakton played Westfield High School. Titled “Parade to Black,” the show features “The Unforgiven,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” the regular Metallica cover song “Turn the Page,” “The Memory Remains,” and “Enter Sandman” as the finale.

In addition to the categories judged by Metallica, there are two fan favorite categories — one for colleges and one for high schools — that will be decided by public vote. All of the submissions can be viewed online, where community members can cast their vote.

Votes can also be submitted by text to 1-833-609-0330. To back the Marching Cougars, voters would need to send text “VOTE #HSOAKTON.” The voting window will close on Dec. 31.

All of the winners will be announced the week of Jan. 1. Prizes range from $10,000 for the fan favorite choices to $75,000 for the Division I collegiate category.

Members of the Marching Cougars were thrilled by their selection as finalists. Trumpet player Jayden said the honor “means a lot” to him and everyone else in the band and color guard, while bass clarinet player Jennifer said it was rewarding to contribute “to something cool and potentially beneficial to our music community and school.”

“The video turned out amazing and really showcased all the work that our band put in this season,” Deniz, a drum major, said. “Watching it back makes me so proud of us, as it really demonstrates our great improvement over the past few months.”

Oakton, VA (PRWEB) May 21, 2014 -- The combined brainpower of Ursinus College and the innovation of Oakton-based ideaventions are coming together to produce an exceptional BRAiN program that will enrich Northern Virginia and surrounding communities as highly motivated middle school students produce valuable new research.

BRAiN—or Biomedical Research Academy in Neuroscience—is led by resident scientist Catherine Swanwick, Ph.D., in conjunction with the laboratory of Carlita Favero, Ph.D., of Ursinus College. Favero will provide biological tissue and advise curriculum design for the program, which aims to teach rising 6th-8th graders key concepts of cellular and molecular biology while introducing them to laboratory techniques common for biomedical research. The students will investigate the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on brain development using the brains of mice.

“Science should not be presented to students as a set of facts,” said Swanwick. “The fun aspect of science is the unknown. In our BRAiN program at ideaventions, our students will be given the opportunity to make new discoveries using an entirely different set of scientific criteria.”

The students, only eight of whom will be selected from a competitive pool of gifted youngsters, will write an abstract to be considered for the Society for Neuroscience Conference in 2015.

Two phases of the BRAiN program will be offered: a two-week summer course and a 2014-2015 school-year program. The summer course will be held Aug. 4-15 at Sunset Hills Montessori School in Reston, Va. The school-year program will be conducted from mid-October until May at the ideaventions science center in Oakton, Va. For those students interested in the school-year program that were unable to attend the summer course, ideaventions will offer a short six-week BRAiN Blast course in early Fall to cover material taught during the summer session.

Highlights of BRAiN include: ● expert research mentor ● access to modern biomedical research ● application of scientific method ● small class size ● practice with research presentation skills ● visit to the 2014 Society for Neuroscience Conference

Eligible students should apply by May 30 (summer program) or July 15 (school-year program).

For more information, please contact Ryan or Juliana Heitz (Co-Founders, ideaventions, rheitz(at)ideaventions(dot)com, jheitz(at)ideaventions(dot)com, 703-255-7202) or Catherine Swanwick, Ph.D. (Director of Life Sciences Programs, ideaventions, cswanwick(at)ideaventions(dot)com), 703-255-7202.

Ideaventions™ is a science and technology enrichment center geared to children ages 3 to 13. They teach a range of science, technology, engineering and mathematics classes throughout the year at their Science Center located at the Hunter Mill Plaza in Oakton, Virginia. They also run science camps, do after-school programs at local schools, develop new STEM curriculum and lots more. ideaventions is a place where no idea is too crazy and where children, the adults of tomorrow, learn that anything is possible with a little creativity. Their hands-on labs are led by experienced teachers who emphasize divergent thinking and seek to harness a child’s natural curiosity about the world. Programs are designed to share and nurture children’s love for the sciences.

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Sharon Wright, Loudoun Clear Marketing, http://www.loudounclearmarketing.com, +1 5713184146, sharwright@gmail.com