Byrd Park getting a long overdue makeover

MANASSAS — Manassas is giving some long overdue TLC to some of its 18 city parks.

The newly created Department of Parks, Culture, Recreation will spend $150,000 on sprucing up playing fields, adding new coats of paint to basketball courts, and upgrading playground equipment, and installing updated signs.

The new department replaces the old Neighborhood Services office. A needs assessment study identified multiple improvements to city parks to make them more desirable to residents.

The city is now focused on improving Byrd Park, located at 8528 Calvary Lane. New playground equipment for children ages two to 12 includes a cozy cocoon, q-bits, tunnel, tube slide, turtle rocker, and swings.

A new coat of paint shines on the bank shot basketball court. There’s also a new adult fitness station next to children’s playground at Byrd, so mom and dad play, too.

A celebration is in the works for September to celebrate the new additions at Byrd Park. A date for the party has not been set.

The department is also working to improve playing conditions on soccer fields, hot commodities in the city.

“The demand is for more field space,” said Department of Parks, Culture, Recreation Director Kisha Wilson-Sugunro. “Sometimes we turn people away because we don’t have enough.”

The improvements and creation of the new department, with offices in the bowels of the Manassas Museum, mark a renewed interest in the city’s parks.

The city dissolved its parks and recreation department in 2009, after the onset of the recession. Neighborhood Services was born to keep an eye on the parks to make sure they didn’t fall apart. The old department didn’t have a budget in which to make improvements or did it
schedule events or, in local government speak, provide “programming” at the playgrounds.

Many of the city’s parks are nestled, if not hidden inside residential neighborhoods. Small brown signs attached to stop signs point the way to Bryd Park. If you blink, you’ll miss them.

“People don’t realize how many resources we have in our parks,” Wilson-Sogunro added.