Meineke car care won’t be moving next door to a Manassas retirement community

MANASSAS — A Meineke Car Care Center will not be built at Wellington Station shopping center has planned.

“It’s not happening,” Rob Lucas of Wellington Station Owner, LLC, said. He provided no further information.

Manassas Mayor Hal Parrish II said the car repair shop had rescinded its application at the March 11 city council meeting.

Meineke was originally slated to be located in the Wellington Station shopping center at 10024 Dumfries Road in Manassas. The 4,005 square-foot center was slated to have six bays, and be located on the end row of the shopping center which sits near a retirement community, The Gatherings at Wellington Village.

Meineke proposed planting 12-foot tall evergreen trees that would eventually grow to as tall as 20 feet, according to a company spokesman who spoke at a city council meeting in December. The trees, he said, would block the view of the auto shop.

According to the city, representatives from Meineke  “met with the Gatherings at Wellington Village (multi-family units) on May 9, 2018, and again with both the Gatherings and the Villages at Wellington (townhouses) on June 21, 2018.”

Despite the meetings, local residents still weren’t happy.

In a letter from residents of the Gatherings at Wellington dated December 2018, residents urged members of the city council to prevent Meineke from opening its doors. Residents cited fears of noise, increased traffic, bad smells, and an ugly view from their balconies.

The letter also noted that Meineke said they would keep their doors down while doing work to prevent noise and fumes from reaching their nearby homes. But how likely would that actually be, residents asked.

Wellington Village residents searched Google Earth and reviewed Meineke shops in 12 cities nationwide. Their letter states that out of the 41 doors they saw, only one was in the down position.

Residents said that they feared this closed-door policy would be hard for the city to police, and they also expressed sympathy for the mechanics working in stuffy auto shop conditions without the doors being open.

“Does anybody have the heart to force them to close it?” The letter asked.

“How long will Meineke’s commitment to keep their doors down at the Wellington site be valid? What will this installation look and smell and sound like four weeks after opening day or even two or three years later?” the letter states.

The residents also noted that out of all the shops they saw on Google Earth, none of them were located in residential areas.

“We also understand that the owner of the Wellington Station property, with a long-vacant store, was anxious to renew a rental stream. While their decisions may or may not be good for them, it is certainly not good for the hundreds of us who have to live with the consequences of their choices.” The letter states.

After announcing Meineke’s withdrawal, Parrish said, “…those that live in that neighborhood I’m sure are happy with that.”