Residents met to discuss the Manassas public safety facility that is planned to be built on Grant Avenue.
In a presentation given by City of Manassas Police Chief Douglas Keen and Community Development Director Elizabeth Via-Gossman, Keen spoke about the need for the new police station and public safety facility.
According to Keen, the original police station on Fairview Avenue was built back in 1989.
When the City did a needs assessment in 2000, it was determined that 26,000 square feet in total space was needed – another assessment in 2013 stated that growth in the City merited a minimum of 37,000 square feet in space to house public safety personnel and equipment.
Via-Gossman stated that the City is expecting the project to cost $20 million, not including the purchase of the site. Plans show that the main police station building will be 53,000 square feet and that there will be a warehouse for storage, an impound lot, and lots of parking areas.
Keen highlighted how the current facility is inadequate for the staff and safety of the community.
“One major crime can take up our current entire evidence room. And if those crimes take up to sometimes three years to get to court, you can tell that our evidence processing storage location is tied up,” said Keen.
According to Keen, four parcels were assessed when determining the future site of the new facility.
“It was determined that Grant Avenue was going to be the final of those four selections. During the assessment process, consideration was given to customer service location, response times, a central location for our community, and the proximity to Downtown…we believe that having our public safety facility close to our Downtown footprint, where a lot of traffic is at, is important for our community because it’s kind of centralized,” said Keen.
In additional to operational space, Via-Gossman spoke about the Grant Avenue Streetscapes project, which is meant to beautify the Grant Avenue corridor, and the aesthetic features they want to incorporate into the site.
“Along with the public safety facility project, we’re looking at Grant Avenue and the four lanes of traffic and saying, ‘You know, there’s gotta…be room for some better street lights.’ Things like you see on the north of the tracks,” said Via-Gossman.
Via-Gossman stressed that the City wanted residents’ input on the look of the facility.
“We want this to be a special place for the community, a place where you can sit – maybe there’s a bench, maybe there’s a water feature…but we also want it to recognize our law enforcement, our fire and rescue, all of our public safety personnel, for the work that they do,” said Via-Gossman.
So far the City has purchased the former Safeway – and more recently the Manassas Flea Market – site, according to Via-Gossman. That building will be demolished soon.
“That building will be coming down sometime this summer – within the next 45 to 60 days,” said Via-Gossman.
During the question and answer segment of the meeting, a resident asked about what would happen to the existing Fairview Avenue police station.
Keen said that there are three options on the table for the site – using it as an office space for other City departments, giving it to the school system, or selling it off to a developer.
People were also concerned about what would be done to “clean up” the Grant Avenue Shopping Center.
Via-Gossman stated that the City is planning on repaving the lot of the shopping center, and that they will work with the businesses in the center to improve their space.
“One of the things that we noticed is that it’s laid out very inefficiently…the City has both façade and landscape grants that businesses can apply for,” said Via-Gossman.
The City is hoping to have the project completed within three years. The next public meeting on the project is expected to take place in September.
