(The Blue Goose in better days. I have been used to seeing it like this for the nearly thirty years I have been knocking around Arlington. Image CoStar).
I probably should ride my bike over to Willow in the afternoon, and perhaps I will start doing that once it gets warm and stays that way. The County has installed one of those rent-a-bike kiosks across George Mason Drive, and that might be convenient, if I could find one over in Ballston. But what the hell, it was a nice day and I had a mission I needed to get to.
I found a place for the Panzer at the curb, purchased the slip of paper to display on my dash and walked into the cool darkness of the late afternoon quiet bar-room. I placed a plastic bag with a dozen of Kate Jansen’s mini-Kemmelwick rolls. “These were left-overs from the pot-luck last Saturday, and you said you liked them.”
Jasper the bartender (he won the prize for best pot-luck offering with a Guamanian themed combination of lumpia, red sticky rice and grilled thin steak on skewers) approached with a vodka and diet tonic. “Thanks, Jasper, but I have a thing I need to do. I will be right back.”
I walked back out into the sunlight, glorying in the beauty of the day. I walked west on Fairfax Drive, happy I did not have to cross any busy streets. I got to the hurtling traffic at North Glebe and took a few snapshots on my smart phone. When I got back to Arlington that morning from the farm, I had one of those “This isn’t right” moments as I drove past one of the buildings where I used to work. I almost crashed the car trying to get my phone deployed to get a picture and failed.
The lighting was crappy, but the demolition was well along and probably would be complete in another day.
I walked back to Willow and slid onto my stool and smiled at the cocktail in front of me. I punched up the pictures on my phone and showed them to Jim.
“Marymount University has been planning to tear down the Blue Goose, and now they are just about done with it. I got some pictures for the book.”
“You have been claiming that project for years,” said Jim. “You ought to do something about it.”
“Maybe I will,” I said defensively, taking that first marvelous sip of the day. “This is part of a multimillion-dollar redevelopment with all kinds of bells and whistles. The college wants to improve its image and boost enrollment at the Ballston campus.”
Our conversation ceased abruptly as the very embodiment of Spring came around the corner: It was Heather in a tie-dye t-shirt, ball cap, black yoga pants and carrying a softball glove. “That time of the year?” asked Jon-without, straightening his bow tie.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Co-ed team, we play on the Mall, and if the beer is in a red Solo cup, no one seems to care.”
We talked about softball for a while as Long-Haired Mike bellied up, and Sean from a former partner company slid in next to me. “Let me guess,” growled Jim. “What is going to replace the Goose is going to be mixed use and sustainable.”
“You got it, Jim. Let’s see: dry cleaner on the first floor and a couple restaurants. Apartments above the college classrooms. A percentage of 8a rental units, of course.”
“That is how they do things here,” said Long Hair Mike. “But the site has a built-in problem. I hate crossing Glebe Road. It is literally worth your life after dark and not much better during the day. The drivers getting on and off I-66 are are insane. That is why those restaurants in the new buildings are having such trouble.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Said Sean. “I live up Vermont Street and go to the Green Turtle and Buffalo Wild Wings and it is scary. All this emphasis on making things more pedestrian-friendly is causing them to stop looking around. I see people just walking into traffic staring at their devices assuming that drivers will stop for them. I do, but I know the nature of the lunacy. People who are not used to driving in the County might not be so charitable.”
“Well, as taxpayers,” commented Long-Hair Mike authoritatively, “you should be pleased that they are going to construct a new entrance to the Metro over there so no one will have to do that. It is a bargain at only $72 million.”
“I heard it was going to be east of Glebe,” said Jon. “It is still going to be a nightmare. But the developer is going to do something about that pond in back of the CACI headquarters and improve the bike trail along I-66.”
“It is the usual Arlington shake-down,” said Jim with a glower. “In order to get the county to approve it, the developer has to make a hefty donation to the Affordable Housing Investment Fund; more to pay for the underground utilities, even more to the public art fund, and more than a half million to reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicle trips.”
“Well sure, that promotes a car-free lifestyle and discourages the use of cars people have to get anywhere outside the high-density corridor. The college will only be able to use the first six floors, but this is part of their plan to expand here in Ballston. I just drive,” I said.
“Marymount University says the Goose is a building that has outlived its time and usefulness.”
“I don’t know. I thought a building that ugly was too cool to die. It has been a landmark of ugliness and got worse every year and the blue panels bleached out in the sun.”
“I thought the color was the best part. They built it in 1963 for the Christians in Action.”
.“Yeah, they are going to replace the Goose with two new buildings with a public walkway will run east-west through the site and an interior courtyard. That is what we used to do with the college- we would cut through the Goose by walking through the front door and out the back to save time when we had to walk from the old office across the street over to the Headquarters,” I said. “That is when I had a job.”
“They are going to dig deep,” said Jon, a known Engineeer. “Both the new buildings will have a combined three-story parking garage underneath and the whole thing is going to be green and sustainable.”
“Of course. That is the way Arlington rolls with the County Master Plan. Pity to see the Goose go. You know it started as a covert CIA training facility before they expanded the Agency Headquarters in the early 90s,” said Sean.
“Yeah, it was going to be on my Spook tour,” I said, “This area was a nest of spies back in the day. Strayer University across the street was the Naval Investigative Service- now NCIS. There was a bunch of Spooky stuff in Rosslyn, and DARPA is still just up the road though they tried to relocate it to Maryland.”
“Is that where Al Gore invented the Internet?” asked Jon with his trademark ironic grin.
“The very same,” I said. “And that doesn’t include the Big Defense Intelligence Agency building up Clarendon they just closed. If I needed to read a classified message I could just drive over there and log onto JWICS and take care of business. With it closed, I had to drive all the way over to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling or out to the old National Geospatial Intelligence Agency campus all the way out in Reston.”
“They really inconvenienced you fat-cat contractors, didn’t they?” said Mike.
“You know we don’t get no respect. I am glad I am done with that crap. But I would love to be able to show people how vast the system has grown, and how it sprawls all over. And of course that includes the original Arlington Hall where they broke Japanese and Russian codes. It was the epicenter of Spookery: first the Army I World War Two and then later the first NSA headquarters and then DIA when they formed it before the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“I stopped by there last week while they were gutting it. The guy at the demolition site said they would retain some blue themes in the new building. The public plaza will have blue seating and blue lighting,” said Long-hair Mike.
Jim waggled at Jasper for another Bud. “Home of the Blue Light Special? Are you sure there won’t be any Spooks in the new building?”
“Pretty sure, but of course you can’t tell in this town. And yeah, they will tell the history of the building- the part they can talk about will be made from the panels on the Blue Goose.”
“Will the fixtures be as ugly as the old ones?”
“We can only hope,” said Jim, and he took a pull on his Budweiser. Then we talked about a lot of other stuff, which included a tussle over who wrote the novel “The Invisible Man.”
Naturally, there are two, just like the new buildings that will replace the Blue Goose.
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303