A Space for the Centuries

Steps will lead gracefully down to pathways flanked by flowers and red maple trees. A sloped lawn will unfold around an amphitheater built for summer concerts. There will be benches and bike racks, flowers and lights set into planting beds. White clapboard restrooms are intended to look like the historic library.

There will be no signs. "A traditional town green didn't have signs," Salgado said as a pair of bikers pedaled by on the W&OD trail.

Construction is estimated to cost $1.5 million, of which $200,000 came from a federal neighborhood initiatives grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"It's very powerful to create public space right in the heart of the town," said Elizabeth Lardner, the landscape architect who designed the concept.

Unlike the plazas where shoppers rest at malls, she said, the Vienna green will be a "true public space owned by the public."

Lardner said the green would be laid out to allow different groups to relax in different spaces -- "a place where you could have a reviewing stand for the Halloween parade and throw a Frisbee on a Thursday afternoon."

And in December, Vienna's holiday tree will have a new and very public home, moving from a small triangle in the middle of traffic a block away. "It was looking kind of ragged, that spot," Seeman said.

Salgado said the construction should take six months. Officials have picked a dedication date: Mother's Day, May 13, 2007.

Virginia will hold major celebrations that month of the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement.

Jamestown celebration organizers have asked each community in the state to mark the event with its own contribution to history, a perfect time to unveil Vienna's "historic" town green.