Prince William approves $10 million Doves Landing plan; few will use the area, says parks director

Prince William County leaders approved a master plan for Doves Landing Park, with conditions.

At 500 acres, the park outside Manassas will be the county’s most extensive and will cater to passive users like hikers, kayakers, and birdwatchers.

The county’s parks and recreation department says the park build-out will cost about $10 million and will be completed in phases. It will pay $2.4 million to design the newly-expanded park. Plans include a $4 million pedestrian bridge over the Occoquan River, new picnic shelters, bathrooms, dual kayak launches, and a second parking lot.

The planning process will take about two years.

When the Board of County Supervisors approved the master plan on Tuesday, October 11, it also voted to add about 200 acres of new land to increase the park’s size by about 65%, with property proffered to the county by developer Classic Homes, which is building 99 new homes near the park boundary in a neighborhood called The Preserve at Long Branch.

Supervisors ordered the parks department first to develop one of the newly-added plots of land, Sinclair Mill, which will include the pedestrian bridge over the Occoquan River, kayak launch, picnic shelter, fishing areas, restrooms, and a new parking lot.

The Board of County Supervisors also placed the land into a conservation easement with the Northern Virginia Land Trust, meaning it will always remain rural and undeveloped.

Doves Landing Park, at 9115 Doves Lane, opened to hikers in 2015. Park rangers see about three to five cars weekly, with only a few visitors, mostly hikers. As part of a new master plan, the county will build a new road along an existing utility easement in the park to make it easier to get to the river.

Those living in the Bradley Forest neighborhood near the park are concerned about the additional traffic it will attract to its community and the prospect of late-night crime and vandalism.

“We don’t know how many people will come to the park,” said Seth Handler Voss, the county’s parks and recreation department director.

“That’s the problem. There are a lot of ‘we don’t know.’ We have so many unanswered questions, and I take issue with that,” said Coles District Supervisor Yesli Vega.

“When the Board of County Supervisors endorses a road project, engineers will give us an estimate of road traffic. We realize it’s going to be an estimate, but we need something more than ‘we don’t know,” said Brentsville District Supervisor Jenine Lawson.

Handler Voss told Supervisors that planners would estimate attendance numbers, and other specifics, during the design process. Placing additional rangers in the park, adding gates to keep out after-hours visitors, and security lighting was offered as potential solutions to deter crime, which is not a problem now, said Handler Voss.

Despite the $10 million the county will spend to expand access to the park and $1.2 million in operating costs during the first year, Handler Voss told Supervisors he expects only a handful will use the expanded county facility.

“It’s a very underutilized park, and we expect it to stay that way,” Handler Voss told the Board of County Supervisors.

When the design is complete, the county’s Planning Commission will need to hold a public hearing to approve the development. The hearing will provide an additional opportunity for residents to comment on the park plan. So far, there have been three opportunities — The October 11 Board of County Supervisors meeting and two community input meetings held earlier this year in April and July.

The park sits in the Coles Magisterial District. Supervisor Vega’s predecessor, Marty Nohe, whose 15-year run on the board of Supervisors ended in 2019, was the advocate for developing the park in 2013.

“Parks in Prince William County need to have a champion, and you know this,” Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland told Handler Voss. “We can take that $2.4 million [cost to design the park] and put it in a bunch of other places. No one has made a case for me that this is something poeple want.”

“We have this great property, and we’ve never invested any money into it,” countered Ann Wheeler, Board of Supervisors Chair At-large. “We have an opportunity to have a fantastic park that’s never been invested in. I’m going to tell my husband about the hiking trails.”

Doves Landing Park dates back to the mid-1990s when Prince William County purchased 230 acres from a housing developer to preserve the land. In the early part of the last decade, Nohe pushed for a series of hiking trails and a small parking lot so the county could open the land to the public.

In 2019, the county expanded the park when it purchased 75 more acres. With the addition of the latest two tracts of land from Classic Homes, the park encompasses 500 acres, now the most extensive park maintained by the county government.

Six months ago, the parks and recreation department began revising a master plan for the park first developed in 2013. Handler Voss said about 200 people participated in the process.

The park fronts about three-quarters of a mile of the Occoquan River and includes remnants of an old farm and mill. The county aims to increase access to the water, allowing non-motorized boats to launch at the park, and provide a place for people to fish, and have picnics with friends and family.