Manassas City Council deadlocked 3-3 twice Monday on the first reading of a rezoning that would put 162 apartments and a public parking garage on the former Manassas Ice and Fuel site at 9007 Center Street, then left the outcome unclear when the clerk’s language on the tape said the item both “is passed” and “is deferred.”
A motion to defer the item failed 3-3. Theresa Coates Ellis, Sonia R. Vásquez Luna, and Ashley Hutson voted yes. Mark D. Wolfe, Ralph J. Smith, and Tom Osina voted no. A motion to approve produced the same split: Osina, Smith, and Wolfe yes; Ellis, Vásquez Luna, and Hutson no. Under ordinary council rules a 3-3 vote fails. Official minutes or a later clarification will be needed to confirm what, if anything, advanced.
Ordinance 2026-128O would rezone the site from heavy industrial and city-center commercial zoning to downtown zoning. The garage would hold about 530 to 560 spaces total, including roughly 360 public spaces.
The Planning Commission had already recommended approval. The Architectural Review Board had signed off on principal materials after earlier work sessions.
City staff, including Planning and Community Development Director Matthew Arcieri, presented the case as part of a larger downtown vision that also includes a separate hotel on the former Olde Towne Inn property, a City Hall annex, and better Mathis Avenue connections.
The city owns the MIFCO site, which it acquired in 2025. The garage’s public portion is estimated at about $12 million in the capital improvement plan; the city would pay for it while the developer builds it. A hotel is not part of this rezoning and would need the parking first.
Cash-proffer calculations used an estimated 490 residents based on 3.03 persons per unit. That figure is for proffer math only; the city has no official downtown population census.
Public comment ran heavily against the project. Speakers raised density—some claimed it would increase Old Town population by about 50 percent—along with traffic, the building’s scale relative to the historic Meredith House next door, school impacts, the pace of the process, and aesthetics. A smaller number of speakers supported the project for return on investment and for replacing an industrial site.
No development agreement or final garage funding action accompanied the first reading. Council has not set a date for a second reading.
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