Manassas Agrees to Renovate Its History; Transformed Candy Factory, Granary Seen as New Anchors for Old Town
For years, the Hopkins Candy Factory in Old Town Manassas was little more than a crumbling property and a dream. The same could be said of a parking lot a block away where a granary once stood, a lot considered to be one of the city's most enduring eyesores.</br></br>On Wednesday, Mayor Marvin L. Gillum (R) ceremoniously presented these two pockmarked properties as the new anchors of Old Town: the Candy Factory, soon to be a center for the arts, and the abandoned corner at Center and West Streets, soon to be the City Square Pavilion and ice skating rink. City officials and project boosters streamed out of their offices, slapping each other on the back, shaking hands and talking merrily about the future.</br></br>But getting to this point has been a long and arduous process for city officials and community leaders, who formally began discussing these projects more than five years ago. In that time, they have debated prices, purposes and architecture. They have watched both projects' costs increase and looked for federal, state and private funding. Progress slowed to a point where supporters of both projects were worried.</br></br>And at times some of the city's most influential personalities have clashed over the Candy Factory's future, the design of the City Square and how the high-visibility projects would get funding from a sometimes skeptical City Council.</br></br>"These were huge, complicated projects that were being considered," said David Flach, president of Historic Manassas Inc. (HMI), the group that has been mainly responsible for the pavilion. "The council was very deliberative, and I think at times some of us wondered what the outcome was going to be."