Manassas Park inks $3.1M deal for new library, leaves Prince William system

Where people once used to go hit the links, they’ll now be hitting the books.

Manassas Park agreed to $3.1 million deal with Maryland-based Library Systems & Services to create and manage a new library at the site of the old Generals Ridge Golf Course, now called Bloom’s Park, over the course of 10 years.

With that, the city will leave the Prince William County Public Library System, of which it’s been a member since 1979.

“We were supposed to be in negotiations with Prince William, and I guess we weren’t,” Manassas Park City Council member Donald Shuemaker told members of the Prince William Library Trustees board at their February meeting.

The new transitional neighborhood library at Blooms Park will open by July 1, when the city’s current contract with the Prince William library system expires. The library will be located in the 2,000 square foot section of the building, will be open 48 hours per week, and will provide city residents with access to up to 1,000 printed books, digital books, and audiobooks, as well as magazines.

Library Systems & Services will furnish the materials, and the city will pay a $30,000 handling fee for those materials staring in the second year of the contract.

City leaders said the transitional library is a temporary fix while a more long-term solution is considered. A permanent facility is envisioned near Manassas Park’s City Center development on Manassas Drive, near the city’s Virginia Railway Express station.

It has been dubbed the “downtown” library, and it could open as early as 2023 and would be 8,000 square feet, according to Shuemaker, 300% larger than the transitional facility.

City leaders say the move to leave the county’s library system is a cost-saving measure. During the discussion process, they wasted no time reminding residents the city is, essentially, broke.

“We are struggling financially – we need to reduce expenditures over the next two years after this current fiscal year. We have controlled or reduced spending across the board to deal with our high annual debt payments from debt incurred in the 2000s. The city is living lean until these annual debt payments fall in Fiscal Year [2023]. Debt will still be at relatively high levels after FY [2023], but much more manageable,” city documents state.

Much of the city’s incurred debt came from the construction of the city’s community center at 99 Adams Street. Despite the debt, a library is something government officials say they want.

“We want our own library in our jurisdiction and eventually in our downtown. We believe that our [eventual] downtown library will be heavily used by our own residents and residents of Prince William County as well due to it being part of a new and exciting commercial town center with other commercial elements that will draw people beyond just our City borders. Thus this library will be an amenity for county residents and our own residents,” city documents state.

Central Libary, located at 8601 Mathis Avenue in Manassas has been the closest library for residents of both the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park to use. While upgrades for that library are underway now, Manassas Park leaders it’s too little, too late.

“We do not believe that Central Library has seen the same type of investment as other libraries in the system (it is the oldest library in the system),” city documents state.

Manassas City is also a current member of the Prince William County Public Library System and has been since 1976. But it too is exploring its options of leaving the system in favor of its own library.

That city has yet to decide what it will do, however, it has explored a similar option of working with a contracted firm that would operate a library at the Wellington Station shopping center at the intersection of Grant Avenue and Wellington Road. It has until the end of June to make a decision.