Amber is doing better after cancer surgery.
The brown and white 8-year-old boxer-lab-mix had two cysts removed from her stomach late last year. Her owner, Stephanie Dobranski, brings Amber to their favorite place: Chinn Park.
The park is a series of trails behind Chinn Regional Library, and Chinn Aquatics and Fitness Center, just off Prince William Parkway. The trails are nestled in the woods between the library, housing developments, and three popular soccer fields. The trails are used by foxes, deer, squirrels, dogs, and their humans.
"I really think this park has helped Amber in her recovery," said Dobranski. "She's doing great."
Streams run through the park, and so do teens and adults looking to get to the library, to the gym, or to the next neighborhood over. The closer you get to the library, the terrain becomes steeper.
Pink and orange plastic tape hangs along the streams marking their meandering paths. The colors signal potential change in this calm suburban escape.
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Prince William County wants to build a new elementary school here. The new school, dubbed "Prince William Parkway Elementary," is slated to open in 2018. Schools in eastern Prince William are increasingly crowded, and plots of required 20-acres of land to build them on are becoming ever scarce.
Rob Carswell is head of the Sycamore Ridge Home Owners Association. It's a neighborhood of 44 homes built next to the park in the early 1990s, It's developer donated some of the land on which Chinn Park sits to the county as part of a proffer, he said.
The Prince William County Government owns the land on which the school would be built. Ownership of the land would have to change hands between the county government and the school division for the school to be built on the land.
"It's a slam dunk for them," said Carswell, who uses the trails daily. "They don't have to pay for the land, so I'm sure that's why they want to build the school here."
If he had his way, the Prince William Parkway school would be built further east on the Parkway, next to Gar-Field Senior High School. It's a better, central location, he added.
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