Parking garage at Manassas Park City Center will house VRE riders, movie fans

A new parking garage will be built in the center of Manassas Park.

The Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission, on Thursday, April 7, signed off on a plan to construct a structured parking garage with three above-ground levels and one below ground level.

Virginia Railway Express will build the garage at Park Center Court next to city hall on two and a half acres of land formerly owned by the city, now owned by its Economic Development Authority. VRE will design a garage with 540 parking spaces above ground for VRE riders and 196 below parking spaces for city visitors.

The garage will sit across the railroad tracks from the Manassas Park Station. VRE will lease the land, valued at $2.2 million, for $1 a year for the life of the transit agency.

Initially, VRE had planned to build the garage on land on the other side of the tracks next to the Manassas Park VRE station, off Manassas Drive. In 2019, the city convinced the transit agency to change the location of the future garage to double as parking for its new City Center commercial development.

Pre-pandemic VRE ridership forecasts estimated boardings at the Manassas Park Station would continue to grow. Rider counts taken before the pandemic show 670 morning boardings at the station. By 2040, the number of morning boardings could be as high as 1,300, according to pre-pandemic numbers.

However, VRE has struggled to regain its riders since the regular restoring service nearly a year ago. In February 2022, Virginia’s only commuter rail system attracted about 53,000 riders compared to almost 300,000 three years ago.

According to a report from VRE CEO Rich Dalton, at the Manassas Park station in February 2022, less than 50 of the 600 existing parking spaces were in use.

The Manassas Park station opened in 1992 with 300 parking spaces. The size of the parking lot doubled in 2001, and riders still found it challenging to find a hole at the station before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the city is moving ahead with its plan to remake the area around city hall into a new destination city center. In January, the city’s Governing Body sold about three acres of city-owned land to the company for $100 to Cafe Cinema. This Hampton Roads-based theater chain serves food and drinks similarly to Alamo Cinema and Drafthouse in Woodbridge.

As part of the public-private deal, the current Manassas Park City Hall will be demolished to make way for the new 49,000 square-foot building to sit at the corner of Manassas Drive and Park Center Court, the heart of the city’s downtown project. A combination city hall and library will also be built across from the new movie house.

The Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation and Northern Virginia Transportation commissions are the parent agencies of VRE.