Placemaking

When Arlington County passed Temporary Outdoor Seating Areas (TOSA), a process that allows businesses to expand their outdoor seating capacity during COVID-19, Lee Highway legacy business Cowboy Cafe decided they wanted to do more with their new outdoor space (formerly known as their parking lot). In addition to creating a communal and visually intriguing outdoor space, Jim Barnes, one of the Cafe's co-owners, wanted to create a mural for the back of the business - he had been inspired by Miami's famous Wynwood Walls years before. After being approached with this idea, LHA formed a team of other Lee Highway businesses - Dominion Electric, Potomac Paint, and Esoarc Architects - that worked with Jim to find an artist, Arlington native MasPaz, and create a design for a new, communal, outdoor space.

Follow along as the team transforms Cowboy Cafe's parking lot and watch as MasPaz turns the Cafe's empty brick wall into a beautiful mural. LHA will be capturing the whole process (see below) as a part of the Placemaking Salon series.

The Project

©CindyKanePhotography

"Places like Miami and Panama take walls and spaces that you’d think couldn’t be converted from something plain and turn it into something beautiful. I want to do the same for Cowboy Cafe and Arlington"
-Jim Barnes, Cowboy Cafe

read the Full Story

The Artist

©CindyKanePhotography

"Most of my imagery has to do with mother earth and being conscious of the earth we're living in. The land we’re walking on, the sun, the earth, our communities, they're all sacred. I try to put that in my artwork."
-MasPaz

The inspiration

The Artist

Designing Cowboy Cafe

"The goal is to create something that reflects the best of European and South American street cafe culture, with the funkiness and distinct character that makes Cowboy Cafe such a great part of the Lee Highway neighborhood experience."
-Matthew Rowan, Dominion Lighting

The Design Process

Placemaking in Action

"With just a few essentials - grass sod, flower pots at the perimeter, twinkle lights above, and a couple of tables - a parking lot can become a street café and a place for the community to gather."
-Pamela Gillen, Esoarc Architects

©CindyKanePhotography

Follow The Process

Coming Soon: The Big Reveal! Follow along as the site work continues and the project comes to completion. (or something like that).

The week of June 29, LHA revealed the finished mural and continued to explore the design process with Pamela Gillen, A.I.A., Retail Architect & Founding Principal of Esoarc Architecture; Matt Rowan, A.S.I.D., Architect & VP of Residential Lighting for Dominion Lighting; and Beth Boggs, A.S.I.D., Design Manager from Potomac Paint and Design Centers!