Decades ago the first wave of sprawl overtook what had been a small railroad depot, transforming Manassas from a rural crossroads to a sleeper community. Downtown, sometimes called Old Town, fell apart as the highway strips toward Washington took over the economy. Pretty standard story, except Manassas was, at the time, still far from the large sprawling communities of Fairfax County. Separated from the mainline suburbs by miles of largely undeveloped land in what's now Chantilly and Centreville, Manassas was very much a distant satellite city.
That's all changing. Today, with Fairfax County largely built out and the pressure of development once again inching toward the Manassas area, the city is at a crossroads. There's still plenty of land to sprawl (although the boundaries of a national park surrounding the battlefield grounds limit that somewhat), and the city limits are fully developed, but with a high-potential core, good, multi-modal transportation, and a citizen base that seems committed to improving downtown, with good planning and infill Manassas could, one day, turn out to be the jewel of outer Northern Virginia.
