A new park in southern Wake County gets an early OK – but there are still hurdles

An old golf course in southern Wake County is one step closer to becoming a park.

In a 4-3 vote Monday evening in front of an overflow crowd of park supporters, Wake commissioners said they intend to buy the Crooked Creek Golf Course site near Fuquay-Varina for $3.95 million.

Most of the site – 143 acres – could become a county park with trails and other amenities. The remaining 21 acres could be home to a future elementary school.

Supporters say dedicated green space is badly needed in fast-growing southern Wake. Opponents say the county should spend the money instead to combat homelessness and improve access to mental health care.

Commissioner Matt Calabria, who voted in favor of moving forward with the project, said the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“No one’s going to wake up 10 years from now and realize we have too many parks all over the place,” Calabria said.

But Commissioner Jessica Holmes, who voted against the project, said the timing wasn’t right.

“Our role as county commissioners is to assess the needs of the county as a whole, and at this moment, there are much more pressing priorities than committing between $15 (million) and $23 million for another park,” she said. “It requires a certain level of privilege for an elected leader to put parks in the same category as basic human needs such as shelter, health care.”

County staff had recommended that Wake not pursue the project, estimated to cost about $23.4 million. Staff will now identify and propose a way to pay for it. Commissioners have talked about putting a bond referendum on the ballot next year.

The discussion at Monday’s four-and-a-half-hour meeting echoed the back-and-forth in the Raleigh mayoral race about spending priorities. In that race, challenger Charles Francis has accused three-term incumbent Mayor Nancy McFarlane of prioritizing the Dix Park project and other quality-of-life improvements at the expense of affordable housing and anti-poverty efforts.

Holmes said Monday it would be a “slap in the face” to the county’s affordable housing efforts to not pursue the site as a potential site for housing for low-income residents.

When the golf course closed in July 2015, some residents filed a lawsuit saying the owners were obligated under a neighborhood covenant to continue operating the land as a golf course. A judge ruled against the residents, and the owners, C.C. Partners, offered to sell the land as a park as long as residents dropped their lawsuit. The final appeal in that suit was resolved last week in favor of C.C. Partners.

Meanwhile, another group of residents who call themselves the South Wake Park Project rallied to urge county leaders to commit to buying the site, which the nonprofit Conservation Fund has had under contract since early this year. Monday’s vote paves the way for the Conservation Fund to put the land under contract while the county figures out a way to pay for it.

The motion approved Monday lists about 10 purchase conditions, among them rezoning, an environmental assessment and the resolution of ambiguous language in the neighborhood covenant that could prevent the land from being turned into a park. If any of those conditions can’t be met, the project will have to go back to the drawing board.

“I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Commissioner John Burns said. “That being said, this gift horse ain’t a cheap gift horse. This gift horse is coming with dental problems, foot problems. But it is a horse.”

If all the legal hurdles are cleared – by late February at the soonest, according to a county attorney – it would take another nine months to gather public input in a master planning process and then two and a half years to design and build the park.

“Staff believes the project has merit,” said Frank Cope, Wake’s director of community services. “However, there are many unfunded initiatives in the parks division (that) staff believes are a higher priority.”

Ron Nowacyzk, a Crooked Creek resident leading the park push, said it was clear there was public demand for the park.

“It’s a lot easier and safer to decide not to do something than to actually take action to do something to make a difference,” he said. “It takes courage and passion to make something happen, and we have thousands of people who think that this property would make a wonderful park for south Wake County.”

This story was originally published November 6, 2017 at 9:41 PM with the headline "A new park in southern Wake County gets an early OK – but there are still hurdles."