Pathway Vineyard Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, to Swap Property With Prince William Schools

Prince William County Public Schools is moving ahead with a plan to swap land with Pathway Vineyard Church of Woodbridge to build a new elementary school in Woodbridge. A nonprofit that serves the area’s homeless population is still searching for new space.

On Wednesday, the School Board is scheduled to vote on two land transactions with the church. One would sell the former Ann Ludwig School property near Dale City to the church. The other would buy the church’s current property at 1550 Prince William Parkway. The school division would pay $3.65 million for the 4.7 acres owned by the church, while Pathway Vineyard would pay $1.1 million for the roughly 4.8 acres at 14575 Potomac Branch Drive. The division has budgeted about $40.6 million for the new school in its capital improvement program, with an opening year of 2024.

School Board Chair Babur Lateef said the school was needed to address long-running overcrowding. Marumsco Hills Elementary in Woodbridge has at times used as many as six portable classrooms, and the 2019 opening of John Jenkins Elementary in Occoquan helped ease some of the crowding, but the division’s Eastern District still needs more capacity. Lateef said, “That’s one school we desperately needed to build.”

The division had considered making the new school its first net-zero emission school construction, a commitment in its most recent four-year strategic plan. Lateef said the property does not lend itself to that goal. He said the division will most likely make the planned replacement of Occoquan Elementary School, slated to open in 2025, its first net-zero construction project.

Pathway Vineyard Administrator Chioma Ezekwe told InsideNoVa that the church’s new property, where Anne Ludwig Elementary once stood, will suffice for the congregation, but it will not offer enough office space for StreetLight Community Outreach Ministries, a charity that provides meals, shelter and other services to the area’s homeless. Ezekwe said the county first approached the church in 2021, saying it was considering eminent domain to secure the land, and later pointed to the Anne Ludwig property as an option. She said the congregation was attached to its Prince William Parkway building but was trying to make the best of the situation. “It’s change. So not a lot of people are happy with change. But … we are people of faith and we look to God to help us with change,” Ezekwe said.

StreetLight operates a 24-hour homeless shelter for the county in Dale City and owns 27 permanent supportive housing units for people who are medically fragile or disabled. Executive Director Rose Powers said those properties will remain in place. The nonprofit is still seeking office space for its 10 employees, as well as space for a weekly outreach dinner held Wednesday nights and a food pantry that operates twice a week. Powers said other area nonprofits are helping the search, and the county has provided an allowance to help with buildout costs and other expenses, but no site has been secured. Powers said commercial property owners were often unwilling to talk with the organization because it is a ministry serving people who are homeless, many of them unsheltered (Matthew 25:35).

Powers said the church had long offered StreetLight low rent, well below market rate, and that the charity will likely have to make significant budget adjustments even if it finds a new space. StreetLight hopes eventually to build a complex of efficiency units with wraparound services for some of the people it serves. For now, however, the organization still needs a place to operate.

Source: Read the original report