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Construction on the CVS at 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue will begin before the end of August but the store is not scheduled to open for business until February, said the company’s director of public relations, Mike DeAngelis.

After filing for building permits in March, the retailer finally received the go ahead from the city this week.

The new CVS, which will move into the former Tower Records space, will be the fifth CVS within a three block radius of campus.

Despite some student and neighborhood displeasure, DeAngelis said he expects the new CVS will be a positive addition to the campus.

“We look forward to serving the GWU community at our new store and will make every effort to minimize inconvenience to the surrounding campus during construction,” DeAngelis said.

Like other nearby locations, when the pharmacy and convenience store opens its doors in early 2009, GWorld will be accepted.

The body of a 62-year-old lecturer was found in a parking lot near the Mount Vernon Campus on Tuesday evening, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

Robert Paul Murphy, a Congressional Budget Office employee who taught at the Elliott School of International Affairs, was discovered by police in a parked vehicle near Fletcher’s Boathouse. The 62-year-old was last seen leaving for work on Monday morning at his home in Potomac, Md.

Montgomery County Police Department Spokesman Paul Starks said they do not suspect foul play.

“It’s not really looking like a homicide,” Starks said.

The D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office is scheduled to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

Murphy’s family reported him missing on Monday evening, and he was found about a day later by MPD officers.

“His family said it was very unlike him not to be in contact,” Starks said. “They were concerned.”

The 62-year-old general counsel for the CBO was teaching an Elliott School class called “Understanding the Fed Budget” until late June, according to an online class schedule.

Photo courtesy of the Montgomery County Police Department.

Metropolitan Police Department officers arrested a Marine Corps sergeant last Wednesday after University employees discovered a semi-automatic pistol and ammunition in his Crawford Hall room during a maintenance inspection.

Frank Anello was arrested for possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition, according to police documents. Anello, who was staying in the residence hall temporarily, walked in during the inspection and told officers that he owned the pistol. University Police Department Chief Dolores Stafford said he is not affiliated with GW.

Anello declined to comment when reached by phone at his home in Pennsylvania. Former Washington Times editor Robert Stacy McCain wrote in his blog that he met Anello at the 30th National Conservative Student Conference, which was held on campus this week.

If you felt a little closer to your fellow Metro riders last Friday, you certainly weren’t alone. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority reported that more people rode the Metro on July 11 than any other day in the system’s 32-year history.

The Metro system had 854,638 riders, including 25,952 who entered through the Foggy Bottom/GWU Metro Station, said Taryn McNeil, a WMATA public affairs coordinator.

In a news release, the WMATA attributed the surge in riders to a Washington Nationals baseball game, the Women of Faith Conference and a high number of summer tourists. But this summer has already been a record-breaking season for the Metro, with 20 of their top 25 highest weekday ridership days occurring since April—including several days with no major events listed. Commuters and tourists alike seem to be hopping on the Metro to save on rising gas prices.

The previous single-day record took place on June 9, 2004, during former President Ronald Reagan’s State Funeral Service, when 850,636 riders took the Metro. On an average weekday, the Metro and Metrobus combined provide more than 1.2 million trips, according to their Web site.

In loosely related news, two Metro station employees who allegedly ran a prostitution ring out of their Dupont Circle Station were offered anger management, sex addiction and entrepreneurship classes last week in lieu of criminal charges. The charges were pressed when the station’s manager, Sharon Waters, arranged a sexual encounter for an undercover cop—who was posing as a businessman—with Pamela Goins, a Metro custodian. Waters used the Metro’s intercom to page Goins for the arrangement, police said.

This post was written by Hatchet staff writer Reed Cooley.

Camera crews from the Discovery Channel’s new eco-lifestyle network, Planet Green, filmed on campus Wednesday for an episode of celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse’s new television series.

Junior Billy Wolfe prepares lunch in front of the camera. Andrew Nacin/Hatchet photographer

The show, Emeril Green, will feature junior Billy Wolfe dealing with severe food allergies while eating and living on campus. Camera crews filmed Wolfe cooking in his kitchen in the Dakota residence hall and studying in Gelman.

Wolfe nabbed a spot on the show after his mother, who stumbled upon an Emeril Green taping near their hometown in Virginia, applied on the channel’s website.

The one requirement was that the applicant be in some way “food challenged” or have a “food oddity,” said Wolfe, who is allergic to wheat, among other things. Wolfe said he was invited to and attended a casting call in April but never expected to hear back. Two weeks ago, however, he received a call from an Emeril Green representative asking when he could begin filming.

Although he admits he’s not on the same level as Lagasse, Wolfe describes himself as something of an amateur chef.

“I’ve been cooking since I was eight,” he said. “I never went to culinary school, but I do good home-cooking.”

Wolfe works in the intensive care unit at GW Hospital and as a pharmacy technician at CVS. He also volunteers at EMeRG, GW’s emergency medical response team.

“I think they liked that I’m really active,” he said of the people that selected him for the show.

Wolfe will also be filmed cooking with Lagasse at a Whole Foods in Fairfax, Va. on Wednesday, July 16.

University Police Department officers found a 61-year-old man wandering naked at the intersection of 21st Street and Virginia Avenue just after midnight on June 24.

The man, who was promptly supplied with a blanket, was disoriented and possibly sleepwalking, UPD Inspector Mark Balazik said.

The Metropolitan Police Department, D.C. Fire Department, and Emergency Medical Service officials arrived on scene, but the man refused medical attention. He identified himself as a guest of the State Plaza Hotel and was not affiliated with the University.

The incident was referred to MPD and no arrest was made.

The Hatchet publishes a weekly crime log on Tuesdays during the academic year. A “Best of the Crime Log” appeared in the CI Guide.

Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine attended Colonial Inauguration this weekend for his son Nat, an incoming freshman.

Christine Cruzvergara, director of CI, said Kaine attended several events and was accompanied by a security escort dressed in street clothes.

“The governor wanted to keep a low profile this weekend,” Cruzvergara said. “He wanted to be a regular parent.”

Kaine, a Democrat, was the first statewide elected official outside Illinois to endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president. He has been mentioned as a possible running mate for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Nat, a graduate of Maggie Walker High School in Richmond, Va., campaigned for Obama, headlining a “Students for Barack Obama” tour with actor Kal Penn.

Nat is the eldest of the three Kaine children. Kaine and his wife Anne Holton also have a daughter, Annella, and a son, Woody.

All student e-mail addresses will have different domain names when GW switches to Gmail this fall, the University announced today.

Beginning in August, the student e-mail suffix will change from “@gwu.edu” to “@gwmail.gwu.edu.” Students will have six months to transfer their messages from their Colonial Mail (@gwu.edu) accounts, as well as redirect any incoming mail. Faculty and staff will continue to use Colonial Mail.

University officials said in April they were about to sign a contract with Google, but months later Information Services and Security spokesperson Rachel Blevins said they were still in legal negotiations.

The new e-mail service will have more than six gigabytes of storage, nearly 300 times the amount available in Colonial Mail, as well as Google applications such as Calendar and Chat. Executive Vice President and Treasurer Lou Katz said in April that switching to Google will save the University money — data is currently stored on University servers in Foggy Bottom and Loudoun County, Va.

Students will also be able to keep their GW accounts after they graduate, whereas they were deactivated in the past. Current alumni can activate the “e-mail for life” option by visiting GW’s Alumni Online community at http://alumni.gwu.edu. Alumni accounts are also under the @gwmail.gwu.edu domain name.

Colonial Mail, a system purchased and run in-house, was introduced in 2003 to replace the primitive “Webmail.” The University had hinted at the move to Google since 2006, but said for years that they were still exploring the security risks and complexities of several systems. The new “GWMail” will be run by Google at an off-site location.

The University has not signed its contract with Google despite announcing the switch from Colonial Mail to Google Mail two months ago.

After three years of considering a switch to a third-party client, the University said in April that it expected to sign a contract with Google that month. Rachel Blevins, a media relations specialist for GW’s information systems and services communications, refused to answer questions about the stalled negotiations.

“As we said before, the contract has not been signed yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as it is,” Blevins wrote in an e-mail. “We don’t have any other information to share at this point.”

The University also declined to say whether the new mail system would be available for students in the fall, as administrators had originally announced.

The switch would expand memory quotas by about 300 times more than the current capacity—from 20 megabytes to six gigabytes. Gmail features such as chat and calendar would also be available.

Update, June 15: Leslie Korn, director of investment real estate, confirmed that Wasabi has signed the lease to the space formerly occupied by La Prima.

Original Post, June 12: Wasabi, a Japanese sushi shop, will soon start business in the 2000 Penn space, said a University official on Thursday.

The property, located next to Au Bon Pain, is owned by the University. Alicia O’Neil, managing director of GW’s office of real estate, said the University was still in lease negotiations with Wasabi, but expected the deal to be closed soon.

Hatchet File Photo of Wasabi’s Dupont restaurant

Students will likely be able to use their GWorld cards at the new Wasabi, she said.

“No business relationships are in place for this location,” O’Neil wrote in an e-mail. “However, Wasabi is currently a partner of the GWorld program at its Dupont location, so in my opinion it is likely they would participate if they were to be at this location as well.”