As the second annual Falls Church Restaurant Week approaches, running from Jan. 23 to Feb. 1 with over 60 local participating establishments, restaurant-related issues, namely, what it will take to adequately support them all, are coming front and center in the Little City.
An historic meeting of representatives of a dozen restaurants and the entire Falls Church City Council and key City Hall staffers was squeezed into The Swamp room at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack last month to share thoughts and concerns, and a follow up meeting is set for sometime next month.
One of the issues that drove the meeting was the poorly-notified fact that after two dozen years, the annual New Year’s Eve Watch Night celebration was called off, an annual event that helped fill a number of downtown restaurants to overflowing as thousands of folks from all around the region piled into the closed streets at the intersection of Routes 7 and 29 to hail the drop of the City’s old lighted star in the countdown to a new year.
The City decided in finalizing its current fiscal year budget late last spring not to fund the event for this year, but local business owners were not made aware of the decision, one which puzzled most of them, until only a few weeks before it was supposed to happen.
This year, according to accounts shared with the News-Press, downtown F.C. on New Year’s Eve was completely dead, notwithstanding some events held at nearby churches.
“In all the years we had it, no matter how cold or wet it got on New Year’s Eve, the crowds were here,” Colm Dillon, owner of the popular Ireland’s Four Provinces restaurant, told the News-Press. He said he was completely flummoxed learning only weeks before that this year the Watch Night was not doing to happen.
But there were more issues than just Watch Night that made up the issues discussed at last month’s meeting, according to Harvey’s Restaurant owner Thomas Harvey.
“The overriding issue is how can we bring outside people into Falls Church not only to dine, but to partake of all the great things this remarkable community has to offer,” he told the News-Press.
At the meeting last month were owners and representatives of Thompson’s Italian, Borek G, the Stratford Garden and Dominion Wine and Beer, Harvey’s, Clare and Don’s and Lazy Mike’s, the Ireland’s Four P’s, Cafe Kindred, The Falls and Northside Social, and Dogwood Tavern. All are locally owned and run establishments.
They’d been talking among themselves before the meeting was called, and Harvey said it was indicative of the caring Falls Church community that all members of the Falls Church City Council showed up when it was called. The meeting went on for two hours.
Indicative of the concerns that the local owners expressed was the fact that the latest tenant in the small restaurant space at S. Washington and Annandale Road, The Rice Guys, had called it quits after only a few months there. The site is notorious for its lack of easy access from the standpoint of either walking or parking, and a long succession of hopeful restaurant owners have taken turns moving in there, lured by its visibility, to find out what a killer for their business chances the lack of easy access has been.
But the most successful of the locally-based restaurants have been those, like Ireland’s Four P’s, Clare and Don’s and Harvey’s, which have given back most to the community, namely, arrangements for free meals for laid off government employees during the fall’s record-length government shutdown.
Clare and Don’s co-owner David Tax told the News-Press this week that he proposed an event like a Mardi Gras Parade, something he initiated in Arlington when he and his sister ran a restaurant there, and which grew into a major annual celebration that brought in a lot of folks and business.
He said he was unable to get a commitment from City leaders at last month’s meeting to allow such an event here, even though he stressed to the News-Press that he would take complete charge of running it.
At this Monday’s Falls Church City Council meeting, Council member Justine Underhill asked City Manager Wyatt Shields what someone had to do, and what would be involved in having a street closed off for such an event as a Mardi Gras party.
Shields said that while neighborhoods around town have residential blocks closed off on a routine basis for local gatherings, when it involves major corridor streets, it is a different story. He said he could not offer an estimate of the cost of doing such a thing since it would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
Shields had conceded to the News-Press earlier that City Hall had probably to be faulted for not notifying the community better that Watch Night would not happen in the same way this past New Year’s Eve, but he said that among the City’s concerns were the cost in overtime for City staff to work the event, and the fact that not many City staff personnel were enthusiastic about having to work on New Year’s Eve, which played into the decision by the City to not co-sponsor or fund the event this time.
No decision has yet been made about next New Year’s Eve, and it may take the ability of the restaurant owners to solidify their efforts by formation of a Restaurant Guild to get it to happen.
But Harvey stressed to the News-Press, we would not be acting solely as restaurant owners, but as business owners who want to do what we can to make the entire community prosper. Sold on Falls Church in a big way, Thomas said ways need to be found to let the wider region know about what a special place the Little City is from the standpoint of all it has to offer, from dining to shopping to entertainment and more.