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Sun Gazette VOLUME 37
GREAT FALLS McLEAN OAKTON TYSONS VIENNA
NO. 50
AUGUST 18-24, 2016
Illegal Dumping Leading to Closure of Recycling Center
GETTING A FOOT IN THE DOOR OF THE ART WORLD
BRIAN TROMPETER Staff Writer
Leah Peterson, 16, of Tysons (foreground) and Ani Kalousdian, 16, of Vienna practice drawing copies of a human foot Aug. 11 during a summer class in the McLean Project for the Arts’ Emerson Gallery. See story, Page 3. PHOTO BY BRIAN TROMPETER
Vexed by persistent illegal dumping problems at the Blake Lane Park recycling drop-off center, Fairfax County officials have decided to shutter the facility permanently effective Sept. 15. “Illegal dumping creates a health hazard, is unsightly, pollutes our waterways and requires extra collection services,” officials said in a media statement. “Despite signage and monitoring, illegal dumping at the site has become a chronic problem, resulting in a high number of resident complaints.” The county established the drop-off site, located at 10033 Blake Lane in Oakton,
in the 1980s before curbside recycling became available to residents. That latter service greatly reduced the need for the Blake Lane site, officials said. The Sun Gazette reported on the problems in July 2015. Supervisor Linda Smyth (DProvidence) said county officials had set up cameras to monitor illegal dumping, but the equipment was stolen. “It’s very hard to catch the culprits who are doing these things,” she said at the time. County officials had tried to combat the problems by dispatching a dump truck from a facility in Newington once or twice per week to clean up the messes at the Blake Lane Park Continued on Page 17
Mid-Summer Real-Estate Market Slightly Down in Fairfax
Both home sales and average sales prices were down slightly across Fairfax in July from a year ago, with total sales volume dipping just over 7 percent, according to new figures. A total of 1,617 properties went to closing last month, down 4.7 percent from the 1,697 transactions reported a year before, according to figures reported Aug. 10 by RealEstate Business Intelligence, an arm of the local multiple-listing service.
FHA-backed loans (172) and cash (167). Inventory, which has been running below mid-2015 figures across Northern Virginia, was down 15.5 percent to 3,749 available properties at the end of the month. Figures represent most, but not all, homes on the market. All figures are preliminary, and are subject to revision. – Scott McCaffrey
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Add up the sales and prices, and total sales volume for July stood at $882.3 million, down 7.3 percent from $951.4 million a year before. Homes that sold in July spent an average of 41 days between listing and ratified sales contract, up from 40 a year before, and garnered 97.4 percent of listing price, unchanged. Of homes that sold, conventional mortgages were the means of transacting the sale in 937 cases, followed by
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The average sales price also dipped slightly, declining 2.7 percent to $545,668. All three segments of the market posted declines, dropping 2 percent to $706,414 in the single-family sector, 0.6 percent to $378,637 among townhouses and down 2.7 percent to $280,590 in the condo market. In the upper brackets, a total of 203 of the homes countywide sold for more than $1 million.