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Town Council ReportFollow the Sewers
In his State of the Town address on October 20, Mayor Bridge Littleton reported a surplus five times bigger than projected, a reserve worth more than a year of spending, and three lawsuits, all filed…
FeatureIf They Didn't Have It, You Didn't Need It: The Fun Shop, 1956–2023
On July 8, 2023, The Fun Shop closed its doors on West Washington Street after 66 years, and Middleburg lost the place where it bought birthday presents, christening gifts, toys, tea towels,…
FeaturePop Gordon Field Plays Ball Again: How Middleburg Saved Mickie Gordon Park
On a Saturday in June 2025, American Legion Post 295 took the field at Mickie Gordon Memorial Park for its season opener against Leesburg's Post 34. It was the first baseball game on Pop Gordon Field…
Town Council ReportReal Risk of Ending
Christmas in Middleburg came to Council in September without a presenting sponsor and $20,000 short. Its organizers warned that the 46-year-old event could end. The same month the Town lost its bid…
Town Council ReportJust Say No
A month after moving toward rooftop dining by permit, the Planning Commission reversed itself on August 24 after residents and a shop owner asked it to ban new ones. The Fun Shop's rooftop will still…
Town Council ReportThe Answer Is Rain
On July 23 Council made water conservation mandatory, starting the next day, until it votes to lift it. The wells kept dropping under voluntary limits, and the Town now has to find more water.…
Town Council ReportWay Too Much
Neighbors of the old Middleburg Barn on Route 50 came to Council in June about plans for a 40-room inn with a restaurant and an events barn on the site, outside town but drawing on the same…
Town Council ReportUniform in Perpetuity
After more than a year of study, Council adopted tiered water and sewer rates on May 28, over the objection of Salamander, the town's largest water user. Its lawyer argued that a 2005 agreement…
Town Council ReportSeven and a Half Years
At the end of the April 23 meeting, Town Manager Danny Davis said he was leaving. He has taken a job with Loudoun County, and his last day is June 9. Council hired a search firm the same night. April…
Town Council ReportSign Up for the Alerts
March brought the budget proposal. It includes another police officer and $1 million to help Windy Hill build affordable housing, a new water rate structure that charges heavy users more, and a…
Town Council ReportTears of Joy
On February 11, 160 people filled Town Hall to watch the Asbury Church oral histories, the stories of the church and of Middleburg's Black community, told by the people who lived them. The next night…
Town Council ReportTwo Point Four Million
The new Council was sworn in on January 8. Two weeks later it saw the bill for the Asbury Church: $1.86 million to build, about $2.4 million all in, against the $1 million the Town set aside three…
Town Council ReportWe All Deserve Each Other
Council's last meeting of 2025 was mostly goodbyes. Peter Leonard-Morgan and Bud Jacobs left after nearly a decade apiece, along with three committee members. The new delegate came to say he wants a…
Town Council ReportEighteen Thousand Straws
November brought an election, a second State of the Town, and some hard numbers about Western Loudoun's water. In 1990 there were about a thousand private wells west of Leesburg. Now there are about…
Town Council ReportThe First Time We've Seen This
Middleburg is now 16.5 inches of rain behind since the start of 2024, and in October Council argued about how worried to sound. The Town Manager said the system was holding. A Councilmember said that…
Town Council ReportWell 4 Drops Again
Six weeks after Council passed its new water law, it had to use it. Well 4, freshly rebuilt and deepened, was suddenly losing up to 220 feet of water while it pumped, and on September 11 the Town…
Town Council ReportGreat to Have, Not Got to Have
Council's only August meeting hired the architect and the construction manager for the Asbury Church. Before the vote, the Mayor said plainly that the church is a "great to have" and not a "got to…
Town Council ReportWe Don't Have a Checklist
July brought a would-be successor to the Mille Miglia. It also brought a goodbye to the woman who scooped Middleburg's ice cream for 37 years, and, after three months of work, a water rationing law.…
Town Council ReportRain at Last
The rain came in June, and with it the news that Loudoun County was officially out of drought. Council adopted next year's budget without a dissent, paid off the water system's short-term debt by…
Town Council ReportOne Glass, Many Straws
May was about water. The first four months of 2025 were the driest start to a year in Loudoun County in 131 years of records. Last summer two of the Town's main wells came within ten feet of their…
Town Council ReportOption Two
In April the budget shrank. With meals and lodging receipts slipping, the Town Manager withdrew his own request for two more police officers and offered a leaner budget he called Option 2. Council…
Town Council ReportNinety-Nine Point Nine Eight
In March the Town's police department reached full strength. Council then spent an evening deciding whether it needs two more officers. The numbers cut both ways. Across two years, Middleburg had no…
Town Council ReportOne More Season
At its January retreat Council had leaned toward ending the farmers market. On February 13 it voted 4-3 to give the market another year and $40,000, and then told the four who voted yes to come back…
Town Council ReportSpare the Willow Oak
Council opened 2025 by deciding what the Asbury Church will be: a place to tell its own story, with room for small groups and no kitchen. It sent two South Madison Street trees to the chipper and…
Town Council ReportWhat Is Success?
Council's only December meeting got the Asbury Church's community report, a clean audit and two new officers first class. Then it spent half an hour asking a question it has been asking since 1996:…
Town Council ReportTwelve Million in the Bank
Council held one short business meeting in November and turned down a request for $17,000 to throw a Scottish dance in January. The bigger news came five days later, when Mayor Bridge Littleton gave…
Town Council ReportMiddleburg Shows Up
On October 10 the Mayor warned that the County's plan for Mickie Gordon Park was in trouble and asked the town to turn out one more time. Six days later the Board of Supervisors voted to put the…
Town Council ReportRidgeview Gets Its Rules
After two years of study, Council adopted the rules meant to stop the next big house in Ridgeview. In the same night it let Salamander enclose a terrace, approved a third short-term rental in the…
Town Council ReportDawn to Dusk
On the morning of Council's only August meeting, Loudoun County released its three new plans for Mickie Gordon Park. Every one of them restored baseball to Pop Gordon Field. Every one of them also…
Town Council ReportPut Down the Hose
The drought arrived in Middleburg's wells in July, and Council banned the garden hose. It also did the two things it had spent the spring talking about: it lowered the speed limit downtown to 20…
Town Council ReportTwenty on Washington Street
In January VDOT told Middleburg that slowing Washington Street to 20 miles an hour would cost drivers 16 seconds and hurt "livability." In June the town got the power to do it anyway, and the Police…
Town Council ReportJohnson v. Middleburg
A month after Council turned down her short-term rental permit, Sheila Johnson took the Town to court. The month's two Council meetings were quieter: a budget adopted, a consultant hired to ask the…
Town Council ReportHomes, Not Hotel Rooms
When Salamander won approval for its resort, it also won the right to build 49 houses beside it, and Council members remember being told those would be homes. In April the first owners asked to rent…
Town Council ReportOvercooking the Cake
How much tourism is enough? In March, Middleburg's tourism agency asked the Town to nearly triple its contribution, the Town's economic advisers said weekdays are too quiet, and the first short-term…
Town Council ReportThe Boom Levels Off
For three years Middleburg's meals and lodging taxes climbed so fast that the Town cut its real estate tax rate, built a reserve, built a Town Hall and gave $300,000 to charity. In February, the…
Town Council ReportSixteen Seconds
A new year brought a new Council member, a contested vote for Vice Mayor, and an argument with VDOT over 16 seconds. The Town still can't hire a police officer, Richmond is filing bills Middleburg…
Town Council Report$300,000 and a Promise
Council's only December meeting ran four hours. It said goodbye to a County Supervisor, a Council member and a friend; heard nine speakers ask it to fund the new Middleburg Charitable Foundation; and…
Town Council ReportA Government, Not a Charity
Council met in its new chambers for the first time on November 9, and spent the longest part of the evening on a question it has circled since summer: how much of the Town's surplus belongs to the…
Town Council ReportGoodbye to the Old Town Office
October was a month of endings. The County pulled its cricket plan for Mickie Gordon Park. Council held its last meeting in the old Town Office and moved next door. Two short meetings, both over by a…
Town Council ReportThe Stones of South Madison
South Madison Street has crumbling sidewalks, trees whose roots are lifting them, a strip of stone that may date to the stagecoach days, and, since September, a $1.6 million plan to fix all of it…
Town Council ReportThe Price of Trust
Council met only once in August, and the County's parks department heard about it anyway. Mickie Gordon Park's cricket plan is on hold, not withdrawn, and the Mayor said the neighbors feel "a little…
Town Council ReportThe Fun Shop Closes Its Doors
For 66 years, if you needed a birthday present, a christening gift, a toy, a tea towel or a hostess gift in a hurry, you went to The Fun Shop. In July it closed, and Council said thank you. The month…
Town Council ReportSave Mickie Gordon
A month after it stood up for the east end, Middleburg stood up for a ballfield. Loudoun County's parks department wanted to turn Mickie Gordon Memorial Park, just east of town, into a three-field…
Town Council ReportNo Room at the Inn
The neighbors came, and they won. In May, Council killed a change to its zoning that would have allowed inns in the C-1 district between downtown and the homes on the east end, two weeks after a room…
Town Council ReportChanging of the Guard
Middleburg said goodbye to its police chief in April, wished a happy 100th birthday to one of its longest-serving citizens, and got its first look at three ideas that could change the town's streets:…
Town Council ReportThe Tax That Could Go to Zero
Middleburg's Mayor told his Council in March that the Town could drop its real estate tax to nothing and still pay its bills. Council cut the rate anyway, just not as far as one member wanted. The…
Town Council ReportThe Prosecutor Comes to Town
Loudoun's Commonwealth's Attorney accepted Council's invitation in February and spent nearly an hour explaining, and defending, the letter that had set Middleburg on edge. The month also brought a…
Town Council ReportWho Prosecutes Now?
Council opened 2023 with a visit from a congresswoman, a farewell to the Town's auditors of nineteen years, a long and searching debate over what kind of town Middleburg wants to be, and a blunt…
Town Council ReportRentals, Windows and a Charger Standoff
Council closed out 2022 at its December 8 regular meeting with a new set of rules for short-term rentals, $50,500 for local charities, a firm no, for now, on a visitor shopping app, and a lingering…