Manassas Park EDA moves to reclaim downtown parking, expands events support after large-night market turnout

The Manassas Park Economic Development Authority on June 2 approved its agenda and heard updates from City Manager Cole and Events Coordinator Grace Marangino about downtown parking, business outreach and the city’s expanding events program.

Cole said the EDA will notify nearby residents and ‘‘retake’’ a public parking lot west of the theater site so those spaces become available for downtown customers rather than long-term residential use. He described the move as a permanent reallocation for commercial and retail parking and said staff will install clearer signage on Manassas Drive and consider two-hour limits and employee-designated spaces to improve access for patrons. ‘‘We’re going to retake these spaces and make them the public parking spaces that they are supposed to be,’’ Cole said.

Cole also said he had spoken with City Attorney Brian Lubkerman and that Lubkerman ‘‘can represent the EDA on routine, ongoing matters’’ but that the EDA would solicit outside counsel for major transactions such as bond issuances. He noted there are no pending claims that require outside counsel and that any outside-counsel costs would come from the EDA budget.

Marangino, who introduced herself as the city’s events coordinator, described this year’s downtown programming and its role in supporting small businesses. She said the Saturday farmer’s market draws about 30 vendors and roughly 800 attendees on a typical morning, and staff will extend the market by 30 minutes to 9 a.m.–1:30 p.m. to capture later peak traffic. ‘‘We’re seeing about 800 attendees throughout the entire morning of any given market,’’ she said.

Marangino reported Last Friday plaza events typically draw about 230 attendees and that the city is inviting and promoting small businesses to participate. She said plaza rentals and the City Hall parking lot are now available for rent and that the DMV Asian Night Market on May 9 drew more than 7,000 attendees overall, with a peak of about 3,500 around 6 p.m. The city provided multi-department support for that event, including public works, police and fire marshal staffing. ‘‘It had over 7,000 attendees for that event, and then a max of 3,500 at the peak time about 6PM,’’ Marangino said.

Board members raised concerns about event parking spilling into nearby residential areas and possible conflicts with voting days. Marangino and Cole said organizers are asked to direct attendees to the nearby VRE lot and the parking garage, that the city will add variable message-board signage to direct traffic, and that staff will avoid scheduling major events on known voting days. Cole said the theater project will eventually add about 78 parking spaces, which will help, and confirmed the EDA will maintain ADA-compliant spaces as required.

Marangino described the city’s use of a commercial analytics service, Placer AI, to measure foot traffic and event attendance and to help businesses understand patterns (for example, visit counts by day of week and origin points for customers). When asked how the data is captured, Marangino said it is derived from aggregated cell-phone location datasets and noted the platform typically counts a visit after a device is present at a location for roughly 10 minutes. ‘‘It’s by cell phone data,’’ she said. City staff and a board member discussed privacy and aggregate-only reporting; Cole explained these datasets are purchased in aggregated form from vendors.

As next steps, Cole said staff will run a notification campaign and develop signage to clarify public parking status; Marangino said the city will host quarterly business meetings (proposed: September, December, March, June) to share data and outreach, and that Commissioner of Revenue Lucy Pullen proposed including a signup option on business tax mailings to build a city business directory (Pullen cannot directly share business emails with the city). Cole said the planned new variable-message signage will go to the governing body for approval on July 21.

The meeting closed with a short directors’ report encouraging elected members and staff to patronize downtown businesses. The board adjourned by voice vote.