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Here’s the latest on Virginia Hospital Center’s expansion, now underway

Virginia Hospital Center is finally breaking ground on its long-awaited expansion.

The project, which brings an outpatient pavilion and parking garage to the growing Arlington hospital, frees up space at the existing 357-bed facility now operating at capacity. The new medical building will house VHC’s outpatient services — surgery, imaging, pharmacy, lab, endoscopy, physical therapy and offices — currently running in the main hospital building.

The garage is up first, on track to be completed by the end of 2021, and the pavilion will follow, slated to deliver by the end of 2022. Initial site work started in August with the demolition of old buildings before starting construction, said Adrian Stanton, VHC’s vice president of business development and community relations. It “gets us closer to what we’re hoping to accomplish with regard to making it more accessible to our patients and, frankly, giving us the ability to continue to grow,” Stanton said, “because right now we’re…

Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.

School bus emergency? Fairfax County students have a plan to handle it

This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage. The wheels on the bus will soon be going round and round again in Fairfax County, Virginia, and some of its young riders are learning what to do if there’s an emergency on the way to school. The annual Safety Patrol Training Camp, hosted by Fairfax County Public Schools' Office of Transportation Services, combined hands-on exercises with classroom lessons to teach students how to keep calm during emergencies on buses. The training can feel remarkably realistic, with overturned school buses on their side or completely upside down in the middle of the county bus depot. Other buses, right side up, fill with smoke that is water-based but mimics the intensity of a bus overheating.
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