By Eliza Tebo
March 3, 2026
Connecting a three-block stretch of a leafy Arlington neighborhood near a couple of parks lies an unassuming sidewalk. Other than the young trees alongside it and the caution-yellow curb ramps, there’s nothing remarkable about this patch of pavement—except for the fact it was eight years in the making.
Pete Erickson’s vision for it began in 2012 when he moved to Tara-Leeway Heights with his wife, Sabrina, and their two young kids. Though they liked their new home, they were concerned about the lack of sidewalks along their street. In the years that followed, the county opened the new Cardinal Elementary School nearby and more children walked past their house. Erickson asked the county if there were any plans for a sidewalk on his block—a question that sent him down a years-long path lined with red tape.
“I had no idea about this process when I started,” he says.
Erickson was referred to his local civic association, which then connected him to the Arlington Neighborhoods Program (ANP) to facilitate his sidewalk proposal. As a newly minted “block captain,” he set out to gather buy-in, going door-to-door in 2017 with a clipboard, a petition and the hope he could garner support for a sidewalk from at least 60% of his immediate neighbors.
“We were so naïve,” he recalls. “We’re thinking, ‘Hey, wouldn’t that be great? Doesn’t everybody want to have a sidewalk on our street?’ No. We started to get a little hint that there was going to be some resistance.”
A couple of years later, the project was ready for round-two approval. “That’s when things kind of got ugly,” he says.
Neighbors who opposed the sidewalk had concerns about the potential loss of trees or the possibility it would shrink their driveway footprint. A few accused Erickson of falsifying petition signatures and threatened to submit a FOIA request to the county for the records. Opponents distributed flyers urging fellow residents to thwart the effort.
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