The Hilltop-Needmore Town Park and Reserve will open Saturday, a year after the Wake County Board of Commissioners gave the former Crooked Creek Golf Course property to the town of Fuquay-Varina for free. The park has 143 acres of land for roaming, as well as five miles of paved walking trails.

The land became a sore spot after county commissioners bought the golf course—which hadn’t been used since 2015—for $4 million in a 4-3 decision in 2017. The plan was for it to become a community park after $23 million in renovations. But critics pushed back hard, pointing out that the county had not given Wake County schools all of the money that the school board had requested that year—especially $9.9 million for social workers.

In 2018, Commissioners John Burns and Erv Portman lost their re-election bids, with Crooked Creek the election’s most contentious issue. Commissioner Greg Ford said that their actions only helped the course’s affluent neighbors and took money from public education.

Later that year, a new board was sworn in; it listed the park as “surplus” and attempted to sell the land. Over 300 people showed up to the board’s first meeting to demand that commissioners not sell the land. They listened. In early 2019, they gave the land to Fuquay-Varina and the Wake County Public Schools in another 4-3 vote.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony is Saturday at 2:30 p.m. Parking is available at 4621 Shady Greens Drive.

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2 replies on “Two Years After Crooked Creek Became a Political Hornets’ Nest, a Park Will Open on Saturday”

  1. The 24 million dollar figure for development of a park has, I think been disproven by the fact that a park is opening this weekend for far less of an investment by the Town of Fuquay-Varina. That number was, in my opinion, concocted to contrast this purchase with the school funding decisions. It was too convenient, too on the nose, to be anything else.

    Congrats to those who worked so hard to make this happen. I look forward to the opening and to people from all over SE Wake County enjoying a nice walk in this park.

  2. The story at the link for “another 4-3 vote” at the very end says that that vote was unanimous,
    not 4-3.

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