The county will pay 60 percent of the center's costs, the university will pay 30 percent, and Manassas will pay 10 percent. A $15 million endowment fund will be created with private donations. Construction will begin in 2007, and the center is expected to open in fall 2009.

"We really can be a destination for those who want to hear music, see dance, go to Shakespeare," Amy Grant Wolfe, artistic director of the Manassas Dance Company, told the Post. "We're not just strip malls and Chili's and [T.G.I.] Friday's."