Manassas Park will celebrate the grand opening of its newly-constructed city hall.
The ceremony will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 16, at 100 Park Central Plaza. The new building will replace the existing city hall building and house the city’s library and a Jirani Coffeehouse.
Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony, an event called “Shop the Park” will be held to encourage residents to come out and support local restaurants that have been negatively affected due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Residents will receive vouchers to use at participating businesses. Funding for the vouchers is provided through the American Rescue Plan Act — coronavirus relief passed by President Joe Biden.
City residents must show identification care to prove residency to receive their vouchers.
In addition to the coupons, children can enjoy meeting characters from Disney and Marvel, games, and free snacks.
On April 15, 2021, Manassas Park held a ceremonial groundbreaking for its new downtown development, the Village at Manassas Park, at Park Center Court.
The event marked the first phase of project construction.
The development is a private-public partnership between the city and Norton Scott, LLC, a privately held real estate developer and investment firm in McLean. In October 2019, it submitted a proposal to the city to redevelop the area around City Hall.
At the groundbreaking, Mayor Jeanette Rishell said that the new development would “correct the shortcomings that the downtown has had for some time. Specifically, it improves the parking situation; it brings in a commercial anchor that will attract other businesses; it moves our new VRE parking garage to the original recommended location, which will help to support commercial development.”
The project has two phases: the new City Hall building and the library.
The second: Stanley Martin Homes will create a public plaza, retail spaces, and 164 homes. The Village will have a 36,000-square-foot public plaza with public programming on weekends and evenings, a splash pad for warm days, restaurants and dining in the plaza, and 300 townhome condominiums.
A movie theater will be the anchor tenant of the new plaza. On May 17, the city’s Governing Body unanimously approved changes to the agreement allowing Cafe Cinema to build a standalone movie house and a three-story office annex next door.
When the plan was approved in January, the offices were originally going to be built over the movie theater.
