A new mobile coffee shop held a soft launch this past weekend in the parking lot of Streetcar 82 Brewing Co.

Located in a trailer at 4824 Rhode Island Ave. in Hyattsville, Lost River Coffee will hold a grand opening from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Saturday, Nov. 25.

After that, its usual hours will be 8 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and Sundays.

Along with the usual assortment of coffee and espresso drinks, it serves chocolate milk, strawberry milk, apple cider and stroopwafels, a Dutch sweet. Dogs can also get a free “puppucino.”

Along with a regular spot on weekend mornings at Streetcar 82, the trailer is also available for rent anywhere in the greater D.C. area and brings its own water and power.

The coffee company is owned by two of the West Virginia operators of a deaf-friendly vacation rental company, Lost River Vacations: Jane Jonas and Shawn Harrington, who are friends with the owners of Streetcar 82.

“Coffee builds community,” Jonas told the Hyattsville Wire. “We want to bring the community together while marketing our vacation rental business and giving jobs to other Deaf people. One of our staff will sell her own products at our business soon and we hope to create more micro-entrepreneurial opportunities for our community going forward.”

The vacation property is near a state park in Lost River, W.V., with two tiny homes for rent, hiking trails, an electric-vehicle charger, a disc golf course and a game and book library.

A mobile coffee spot would be welcome on the Route 1 corridor for commuters who don’t have the time to park and go in a coffee shop.

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The H Street Washington eatery hailed for its late-night chicken and waffles has opened a new location in West Hyattsville.

Located at 5401 Ager Rd. in the Queens Chapel Town Center., H & Chicken serves Southern comfort food, including home-baked macaroni and cheese, fried chicken and waffles and collard greens.

Other menu options include whiting fish, chicken quesadillas and lamb gyros, but it’s the chicken and waffles that you’re coming here for.

And it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. H & Chicken, which also has at 716 H St. NE in D.C., serves the same menu from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, and you can order for delivery on DoorDash or on their website.

The Washington Post named H & Chicken as one of D.C.’s top late-night delivery options, calling the mac and cheese “thick, cheesy and ultrich” and saying the chicken and waffles “tiptoed the line of being too decadent.”

“When our chicken and waffles order arrived, what first stood out were the waffles. Light and pillowy, they would have been good enough to eat on their own with a splash of syrup,” it wrote.

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Popular Maryland restaurant chain Iron Rooster announced it will open in College Park in the next few months.

In a post on Instagram, the Southern cooking chain called itself the “proud breakfast partner of UMD athletics” and  said it will open its newest location at the Hotel at the University of Maryland this winter.

“Having the opportunity to serve College Park is a dream come true,” said owner and founder Kyle Algaze in a statement. “This city deserves a taste of Maryland’s best with some of the finest hospitality and that’s exactly what we’re going to deliver.”

The 6,000-square-foot space will be the fifth for Iron Rooster, joining locations in Annapolis and Baltimore.

Iron Rooster serves family-style Southern cooking, featuring breakfast all day, with specialties such as house-made pop tarts, chicken and waffles and a crab hash. You can get also order lunch and dinner items like fried chicken, a BLT&E or a turkey wrap.

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Developers are planning an affordable housing project on the site of three aging hotels in College Park.

Located at 9113 Baltimore Ave., the new five-story 317-unit apartment building would replace a Days Inn, Howard Johnson and Red Roof Inn that have been on the four-acre site for decades.

Rockville-based RST Development is behind the project, which will be called the Flats at College Park.

The project would be made affordable using a combination of low-income housing tax credits and the fact the site is in an opportunity zone, an area designated by the 2017 tax cuts to encourage investment in low-income communities.

An overview of the project said that it would have an average rent of $1,733 for mostly two- and three-bedroom units with an average size of 1,121 square feet. The building would have amenities such as an outdoor pool, courtyards, a fitness center and a dog park.

The area is about a mile north of the main entrance to the University of Maryland, an area that has seen rising prices as upscale new student housing has moved in, recently causing the closure of several longtime local businesses.

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Federal officials have reportedly chosen Greenbelt for the new FBI headquarters.

According to the Washington Post, officials decided to move ahead with the multi-billion dollar project on a 60-acre piece of land near the Greenbelt Metro station after years of debate that included alternative sites in Landover and Springfield, Va.

The project will bring thousands of white-collar government workers to Greenbelt everyday, boosting the local economy and providing a stable base of employment. It could lift the local real estate market as well as workers seek to move close to the office building.

The FBI is currently located in the J. Edgar Hoover building near the White House in downtown D.C., an aging, Brutalist building that they have long sought to leave behind.

But the process of choosing a new location got caught up in politics as elected officials from D.C., Maryland and Virginia fought over which would be best.

The political fighting may not be over, either, as Congress will still have to approve funding, finalize designs and hire a developer.

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A series of road closures in Hyattsville’s Arts District begin on Monday.

In order to allow construction crews working on the new Canvas Apartments to install utilities, certain roads will be closed to traffic.

Starting this week, there will be a lane closed on southbound Route 1 between Jefferson and Hamilton streets during construction hours. There will be an alternate route available along 43rd Avenue to Farragut Street.

The work is expected to take about six weeks.

That is a slight change from the previously announced schedule. Other road closures will happen through May on a rolling basis.

When completed, the building will have 30,000 square feet of retail space and 285 apartments next to the historic Armory building.

You can see the complete list of road closures and a map here.

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Lidl is already hiring for its new location in an unincorporated part of Prince George’s County as the buildout is moving quickly.

Over the summer, the rapidly expanding German discount grocery chain signed a lease for a new location at 3104 Queens Chapel Rd. in the Avondale community of Chillum, on the border of Hyattsville and Mount Rainier.

The exterior of the store, previously a Price Rite and a Giant that was famously visited by Queen Elizabeth II, has already changed dramatically to match Lidl’s distinctive architecture, and Lidl is already hiring store associate positions.

The 33,000-square-foot store takes up about half of the strip mall, which is also home to Mid Atlantic Seafood.

The new store replaces an underperforming location in Oxon Hill that closed earlier this year.

A popular location in College Park opened in 2019 and there are now several other Lidl locations around D.C. including in Columbia Heights, Takoma Park and Wheaton.

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