August 1 - 7, 2024
Fa lls Chur c h, V i r g i ni a • ww w. fc np. c om • Fr ee
Fou n d e d 1991 • Vol. X X XIV No. 25
The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia
In F.C. Event Spanberger Hails Harris Campaign
NEW MURAL AWAKENING
While Running in Next Year’s Governor Race by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
A former undercover CIA expert and now Congressman from Virginia’s 7th District on serving various House intelligence committees, who also seeking to run for Governor of Virginia next year, an articulate Abigail Spanberger told a rousing audience at Falls Church’s popular Clare and Don’s restaurant Tuesday night that despite her own unavoidable trepidations, she thinks that enough agencies and resources are mobilizing on high alert to prevent a major disruption or perversion of the results of this November’s U.S. presidential election. “I am very, very confident,” she said. If anything, she said, the main factors that could corrupt this election are not foreign sourced this time, but domestic, and she said one of her main residual concerns has to do with the effectiveness of the U.S. Postal Service in efficiently processing mail-
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FINALIST NEWS-PRESS
2024 BESTOFFC.COM See Inside
THE IMPRESSIVE NEW mural that the City of F.C. requested to fill an ugly blank wall in the massive Hoffman and Associates’ West End project facing the City has been completed. Designed by artist Juan Pineda with guidance from Pipkin Creative, the giant outline of the boundaries defining the Commonwealth of Virginia includes elements of both Falls Church and the state within. (News-Press Photo)
F.C.’s Creative Cauldron Readying Big Move by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
Falls Church’s homegrown theater troupe and educational enterprise, Creative Cauldron, is aiming to move into brand new digs at the big (new Whole Foods) Broad and Washington project by the end of this year. With continuing great support from the project’s Insight Property Group and Maury Stern, its handson leader for the long-awaited Falls Church project that now rises boldly and elegantly above the City’s central intersection with new Whole Foods signage and creating a new sense
of its considerable mass, the 5,000 square feet provided to Creative Cauldron right on Broad Street is about to get its special signage, too. Whether it will include a brightlylit marquee, however (as it should to match, if not in size but with a more vibrant look, the one around the corner at the State Theater), remains as yet undetermined. Yes, downtown Falls Church is beginning its transformation into a live music and theater district, with a lot of great restaurants and artsy clubs tucked in, as well, and a lot of new “locals” moving in to live right upstairs in the classy new apartments.
Meanwhile, as Cauldron founder and director Laura Connors Hull told the News-Press this week, the fundraising for the cost of moving the operation and providing everything needed to make the new space sing is about two-thirds of the way there, but still in need of some hefty financial support. The group’s hyper-locally based board of directors, the angels and heavy lifters like president Gina Caceci and vice president Marty Meserve, have spearheaded a relentless fundraising drive that is bringing the vision of the new location for the effort into view. In fact, the plan to
open for business by December is still on the calendar. This week, Hull announced that the original production the Cauldron will produce early next spring as part of its “Bold New Voices” program that develops world or regional premieres written by women will be “Women on Fire,” a play by Marisela Trevino Orta. And while the summer weekend cabaret series remains in full force at the Cauldron’s current location on S. Maple, the full upcoming season was also announced to include what will
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