At Lake Crabtree County Park, a final group bike ride and a call to action
Hundreds of cyclists came out to Lake Crabtree County Park on Saturday for one final group ride on the off-road trails and to rally support for a last-ditch effort to try to save them.
Rally to Save Lake Crabtree came the day before Wake County closed miles of mountain biking trails, most likely for good. The county’s lease on the 215-acre park with Raleigh-Durham International Airport ends June 30 and has not been renewed as the airport seeks someone to develop most of the property.
RDU and Wake County are negotiating a new lease for the land along the lake, including picnic areas, boat launches, playgrounds, volleyball courts and a fishing pier. A draft is expected to be delivered to the county commissioners by mid June.
The county has leased land from RDU for the park since 1985 for $1 a year.
But RDU officials say the Federal Aviation Administration requires that the airport now receive fair-market rent for the land. Last summer, RDU began seeking interest in developing 136 acres closest to Interstate 40, including the forested area that contains most of the trails that make Lake Crabtree the most visited county park.
“They’re the most used mountain biking trails in the area, and we think it’s worth saving,” said Dave Anderson, a board member for TORC, the Triangle Off-Road Cyclists. “It’s not over.”
TORC, which organized Saturday’s rally and ride, believes there are provisions in federal law that would allow RDU to continue leasing the park to Wake County at a bargain rate, rather than seek a higher return. It’s urging people to contact elected officials in the four governments that own the airport — Raleigh, Durham and Wake and Durham counties — and let them know preserving the park is still an option.
Asked last month if that was possible, Michael Landguth, RDU’s president and CEO, said the airport is still pursuing a potential development lease for the property.
“I would never say never on anything,” Landguth said. “But I think we will go explore [a development] opportunity.”
Landguth said the airport expects to spend $2.5 billion in coming years on construction, including expanded terminals, new roadways and ground transportation areas and a new main runway. With federal and state money covering a small fraction of those costs, he said, the airport needs all the sources of revenue it can get, including market rent for its non-aeronautical property.
Anderson counters that there must be ways to come up with that money without sacrificing a popular park. He noted that a few years ago the Regional Transportation Alliance, a branch of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, came up with suggestions for airport revenue that don’t include leasing the park for development.
“The airport is the bad guy here, but they don’t have to be,” Anderson told the crowd Saturday. “This situation is artificially putting the airport at odds with the parks. We need a successful airport. We need successful parks.”
A central location with accessible trails
The cyclists gathered on a big field overlooking Lake Crabtree to hear from Anderson and Jean Spooner, head of the Umstead Coalition, which has battled the airport over use of its forested land for years. A bald eagle soared overhead just before the riders saddled up and headed into the woods.
Among them was Karen McCulloch of Hillsborough, who has been riding here for 10 years. McCulloch took up off-road cycling again after treatment for breast cancer and found a welcoming community and a convenient place to gather with friends, old and new, from around the Triangle.
“This is the most central location for people to meet and ride,” she said. “Without it, it’s going to be much harder for everyone to get together.”
Wake County closed the trails a month before its lease expires to give TORC time to remove the many bridges, jumps and other features that its members built over the years, said Chris Snow, the county’s parks director. The trails were designed for beginner to intermediate riders, helping attract new people to off-road cycling.
“There’s a lot of people passionate about green space and these trails in particular,” Snow said. “They hate to lose them.”
The county’s lease on the remaining park will include trail access along the lake to Old Reedy Creek Road and the town of Cary’s parking area for the Black Creek Greenway. From there, it’s a short ride into Umstead State Park and the 7 miles of off-road cycling trails that Wake County maintains on 151 acres it leased from RDU two years ago.
Landguth says those trails should compensate for the ones being lost at Lake Crabtree County Park. And he notes that RDU’s aim is to find a developer who will create something compatible with the remaining park and the trail system nearby.
“Whatever development we do in there, the people that are using it today are the same customers they are going to want to attract,” he said. “So it’s got to be something that that population is going to be interested in going to.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 9:41 AM.
