A coffeehouse or a restaurant at the Workhouse Arts Center?
The artisan destination in Lorton says construction work to add these amenities has begun with two campus buildings, W13 and W15. Once completed, the Fairfax County Government will lease these buildings to commercial entities. Workhouse officials also say a brewery could be located in one of the new buildings.
Over the years, the Workhouse became a community center for residents in southern Fairfax and eastern Prince William counties. In addition to the visual and performing arts, the Workhouse will host the final weekend of its Haunt: Nightmare Harvest Halloween trail this weekend, Friday, November 4, and Saturday, November 5, from 7 to 11 p.m.
The Workhouse Arts Foundation, Inc. is working with Fairfax County on a Master Campus Planning process to ensure that the initial vision of the entire Arts Center is still viable. That initial plan was envisioned in addition to the currently occupied visual and performing art components. This arts complex would include an amphitheater, professional theatre, event, and education center.
The Workhouse sits on the land that used to house a prison operated by Washington, D.C. In 2004, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors rezoned the Campus, allowing the Lorton Arts Foundation to repurpose the area through the adaptive reuse of the existing historic structures and the construction of new buildings with a mix of uses including theaters, artist studios, an events center, museums, a music barn, other similar facilities, restaurants, commercial recreation, and housing for resident artists/performers to establish the Campus as a unique arts, cultural and recreational resource for the community.
Eleven historic buildings sitting on the Workhouse Arts Campus have been restored. The Campus was originally envisioned to include: artists’ studios, a prison museum, and community heritage center, an art gallery, and an events center for weddings, receptions, and conferences.
With up to 600 seats, a 300-seat performing arts center consisting of black box or flexible space that may also be used for events center uses a theater with 450 seats, a music hall with 300 indoor seats and up to 500 outdoor lawn seats, an outdoor horticultural display area with a 2,424 square feet of indoor display area/greenhouse, and the adaptive reuse of other historic structures to support the arts center such as office space and storage.
Also located on the Campus is an 82,500-square-foot green space known as the Quad and nearly 1,000 parking spaces. The Workhouse Arts Center sits at 9518 Workhouse Way in Lorton.
