In Hilltop Needmore Town Park in Fuquay-Varina, mature pecan and live oak trees, tulip poplars, and Eastern red cedars flank the walking trails that meander through rolling hills.
White-tailed deer graze near the treelines while rabbits and squirrels dart across footpaths.
Barred owls, woodpeckers, and songbirds populate the tree branches. Frogs, turtles, blue heron, and wood ducks make their homes in and around the ponds that dot the 147-acre property.
The park is one of the most beautiful natural spaces in Wake County, beloved by thousands of residents. But last month, Fuquay-Varina’s Board of Commissioners adopted a budget that includes $10 million to build two baseball fields and two multipurpose fields on about five acres. Tonight, town commissioners are slated to select a design-build firm for the project.
Dozens of residents filled the town’s municipal building on the evening of the budget vote to register their objections to the plan. More than 6,000 people also belong to a Facebook group called Hilltop Needmore Town Park and Preserve Advocacy Group where they organize in favor of preservation and against development of the property.
The budget vote comes a little under three years after Fuquay-Varina voters rejected a $60 million municipal parks bond that included money for two ball fields in the park. Residents thought the park was in the clear from development following the bond’s defeat, but the town says it needs more athletics fields to accommodate a 154% growth in youth sports over the past decade; the bond referendum was a vote on how athletics fields at the park would be funded, not whether they would be built at all, the town says. Ball fields were planned for the park since commissioners adopted a master plan for Hilltop Needmore in 2022, town communications state, and, although alternative sites for the ball fields have been considered, every version of a master plan for the park, including one dating to 2017, included a mix of active and passive recreation.
“We evaluated several models—including purchasing new land and partnering with schools—but ultimately determined that developing facilities on existing town-owned land is the most responsible path,” said Susan Weis, the town’s communications director, in an email to the INDY. “This plan allows us to provide much-needed space for our children quickly while avoiding a property tax increase.”
Residents opposed to the plan say they feel betrayed and are suspicious of the town’s motives. They are outraged that the construction process will destroy the park’s popular Blue Trail (the town says “a small section will be realigned.”) They say they can’t believe the town couldn’t find another property to build the fields on instead of the hilly green oasis that many have envisioned as a regional park and preserve for generations to come.
“It’s become a landmark for not just preservation, but public advocacy,” said Ashley Manstedt, a resident, park user, and administrator of the Facebook group, in an interview with the INDY. “You’ve got a group of this many people that have been saying this is a safe space for them to get out in nature and decompress from the noise and chaos of their lives. It’s just a blatant disregard for citizen advocacy.”
Built in the 1980s and early ‘90s, the defunct Crooked Creek Golf Club, surrounded by subdivisions with hundreds of homes, was, by 2014, in need of a lifeline.
Five years would go by before the property was gifted to the Town of Fuquay-Varina, and in June 2019, town commissioners voted unanimously to rename it Hilltop Needmore Town Park and Preserve.
Last month’s budget vote that is sharply dividing Fuquay-Varina’s town leaders and residents comes eight years after the same “failed golf course” divided the same residents and the leaders of Wake County. And it seems poised to remain a headache for Fuquay-Varina officials for at least a few years more.
In 2015, after learning Crooked Creek was coming up for sale, a group of residents and preservationists developed a strategy to conserve the land and approached the golf course’s owners, who agreed to work with them. The group approached then-Wake County Commissioners Sig Hutchinson and Matt Calabria, whose district covered Fuquay-Varina, to propose that the county buy the property and use it as a county park for passive recreation—activites that have a low environmental impact—such as trail hiking, bicycling, and birdwatching—without the need for built facilities.
“This was not something that we had really done before, but it was an interesting idea,” Hutchinson said in an interview with the INDY. “And the value is, it’s green space, it’s 147 acres, and the greenways are right there. … So there was really not much to do to get it done.”
On the evening of the county commissioners’ November 2017 vote to buy Crooked Creek, park supporters packed the meeting wearing matching green T-shirts. Commissioners voted 4-3 to approve a lease-purchase agreement with the nonprofit Conservation Fund, following four hours of discussion.
But by the spring of 2018, the park—which the county commissioners ultimately negotiated to buy for $4 million—had become a political football among Democrats in blue Wake County. Residents and activists who were upset with the board over public schools funding blamed the four commissioners who voted to purchase the park for what they characterized as misplaced priorities.
All four drew opponents in the Democratic primary, and two commissioners who supported buying the park—John Burns and Erv Portman—lost their seats. After the board officially turned over in December, the county listed the park as surplus and announced its intention to sell the property—just months after buying it.
“It was a horrible Christmas for us all,” recalled Hutchinson, “because we spent all this time and effort getting this park functional and done, and now … we were about to lose it.”
At the new board’s first official meeting in January 2019, hundreds of people showed up to oppose the sale. The county commissioners who pushed to sell the park quickly realized they had made a mistake.
David Carter is the retired director of Wake County’s Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Department. He was also one of the advocates who pushed for Wake County to buy the Crooked Creek golf course over a decade ago.
In May, Carter wrote a letter to Fuquay-Varina Town Manager Adam Mitchell explaining why Hilltop Needmore is a poor choice for construction of athletics fields.
First, the town will have to spend millions grading the land.That process would permanently alter the soil and could ruin underground wells that serve the nearby subdivisions, Carter wrote. Additionally, lighting and its proximity to homes make the site inappropriate for active recreation, and nearby traffic raises safety concerns for children ages 9 and 10 for whom the ball fields are planned. That’s not to mention the impacts on wildlife and people who use the space to walk and bike.
Both Carter and Hutchinson maintain that the Town of Fuquay-Varina had no desire to buy the property, either when the Crooked Creek Golf Course was for sale or when, in 2018, Wake County tried to put the park on the market. Only when offered it for free did town officials say they’d take it.
It was as a last resort on the part of the county commissioners, Hutchinson recalled.
“Primarily [the commissioners] were just desperate to find a solution to this mess that they had created, so they immediately jumped on it and said, ‘Hey, yes, we will give Fuquay-Varina the park—problem over,’” Hutchinson said.
In October 2022, the town unveiled a master plan with designs for the property. It would develop “approximately 2.7% of the park’s 147 passive acres for recreational use,” a page on the town’s website states.
Manstedt, the advocacy group organizer, said residents began protesting immediately.
“I was told at that time by certain commissioners and staff, ‘Hey, Ashley, this is only a concept plan. Don’t worry about this. Those things may never happen, and if they do, it’ll be 20 years down the road,”’ Manstedt says. “Fast forward not 20 years, but one year later, and we see them on the bond.”
In addition to two baseball fields and parking lots at Hilltop Needmore, the $60 million bond proposal included money for an indoor sports complex, renovation of the Fuquay-Varina Community Center, and “a future recreational park” of more than 70 acres with baseball, softball, and soccer fields, a shelter, restrooms, and other amenities, location to be determined.
“They packaged this bond where it was going to, you know, fund so many wonderful things,” Manstedt said.
In an unprecedented move, voters rejected the bond by almost 60%. The advocacy group was, according to Manstedt, “instrumental” in stopping the bond because it would level acres of trees and rolling hills and destroy the park’s popular Blue Trail.
“Ballot measures for parks don’t fail,” said Carter, who worked on numerous parks bond proposals in towns across the country during his career, in an interview. “They don’t fail, and particularly in Wake County. Well, it did, and boy, they, the town was mad. Pardon my language, but they were pissed off.”
Three weeks after the parks bond referendum failed, then-Mayor Blake Massengill, a non-voting member of the board of commissioners, addressed the future of Hilltop Needmore Town Park & Preserve’s on his public Facebook page. He said he shared the vision for a destination park and wanted “to find a way to advance some planned improvements, without tax increases, while also addressing concerns, such as the proposed ball fields and parking lots.”
Soon after, the town surveyed Fuquay-Varina residents on what they wanted to see across the town’s parks system, including at Hilltop Needmore. Baseball fields came in dead last, and, at the board of commissioners’ annual retreat in February 2024, an assistant town manager noted that a majority of residents responded that they wanted more parks, greenways, and trails.
According to minutes from the retreat, the commissioners discussed next steps for the park. Massengill said he thought the ball fields needed to be removed from the master plan and the rest of the board agreed that “the community appears to enjoy the park in its current form.”
The commissioners then directed town managers to “identify opportunities other than [Hilltop Needmore] for baseball fields.” If they found viable alternatives, the board would consider amending the park’s master plan. Massengill “encouraged management to consider all viable options including leasing existing fields from private owners and reiterated his thoughts about removing the fields from the HNTPP Master Plan,” the minutes state.
Then, in May, when Jason Wunsch, a commissioner who supported preserving the park was out sick, Mitchell, the town manager, held a closed session meeting with the remaining commissioners where they voted to remove the word “preserve” from new signage the town was ordering for the park’s soon-to-open community center.
In a letter to the mayor and commissioners a few months later, in September, Mitchell noted that residents were beginning to notice the omission and provided talking points in the event that they “get asked why the board did not take a formal action when deciding about the signage and words on the signage or even the branding of the park.”
Mitchell suggested the commissioners respond that it was a unanimous board decision made to meet deadlines for the sign vendor, but added that “all references to park and facility names at the Hilltop Needmore Town Park location were changed on town materials and its website” two months prior.
“This too shall pass,” Mitchell’s letter concluded, “but you probably should expect some noise for a bit, as the Crooked Creek residents are just now becoming aware of the change.”
In emails to constituents a few days later, Massengill and Commissioner Charlie Adcock explained the change, according to public records reviewed by the INDY.
“…I was told by staff that they wanted a shorter name for the new community center,” Adcock wrote in an email that also broadly admonished park supporters for killing the park bond and their speaking out against the town’s leadership and management over various issues related to the park.
Fast forward to April of this year, when residents, who had assumed the town was looking for alternative spaces for the ball fields, were dismayed to see a request for qualifications to build the ball fields and multipurpose athletics fields on five acres of Hilltop Needmore Park. The resurrected plan was tucked into the budget at a cost of $10 million from the town’s operating fund.
Manstedt, Carter and other residents say they have no choice but to believe town officials are acting secretly. After the bond proposal failed, town officials, including the town’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board which had unanimously recommended the 2022 master plan for adoption, never publicly discussed the plan for athletics fields at the park again, the town confirmed. In their view, the work had been done.
Residents see things differently.
“Not only did they shift gears and go back to that same disastrous plan that lost them $60 million, they also decided to fast track it and bypass conversations about it with their own Parks and Rec Board,” Mandstedt said. “There were so many shady things about it.”
The Town of Fuquay-Varina maintains that it is experiencing significant growth in youth sports programs—particularly in soccer and baseball—and that’s why it needs space at Hilltop Needmore, as well as at four other town parks, to build these amenities.
In her email, Weis, the communications director, said the town evaluated 10 alternative options and entered serious negotiations with two landowners who were ultimately unwilling to sell or acquisition costs were “prohibitively expensive.” Falcon, Action, South, and Fleming Parks were reviewed, Weis said, but are already operating at maximum capacity. Additionally, the town discussed leasing or acquiring the former Fuquay-Varina Middle School campus, but the school system wasn’t amenable.
Hutchinson, the former county commissioner, isn’t buying it.
“I don’t believe that at all,” he said. “You can always find land.”
Residents, too, wonder if the town can’t find alternative space for a lack of trying.
Manstedt pointed to a 4-acre parcel the town owned at the corner of West Academy Street and Judd Parkway that she said would have been “perfect for the ball fields”— it’s flat, has road access, and is located directly adjacent to Fleming Loop Park, an already established athletics park.
Instead of developing the property for town amenities, the town sold it to a developer in 2022—it had been identified for commercial use in town planning documents, Weis said. (The developer, Bluff Valley Contracting, LLC, is registered to Michael Riddick, a business associate of former Mayor Massengill; the pair own Massengill Riddick Building, LLC together, which they registered in 2021).
In his May letter to Mitchell, Carter questioned why the town, which has been “booming” for more than 30 years now, didn’t start the planning process for new athletics fields over a decade ago.
It knew from Wake County Public Schools data how much the youth population was growing, Carter added in an interview, and could have bought land or partnered with the school system, the county, or other landowning groups, such as churches, for more practice fields in particular.
“Now the town is claiming that Hilltop Needmore Park is the only place available, and that is simply not true,” Carter wrote. “The warning signs were there, the data was firm …What the town has demonstrated over the past few decades is a lack of leadership, a lack of courage, a lack of proper planning, an unwillingness to invest in the future, and regretfully an utter unwillingness to listen to their residents.”
Carter suggested building the baseball fields at Kennebec Road Town Park adjacent to Willow Springs Elementary School. The town has plans in the works to lease the property from Wake County; it’s already connected to water and sewer lines, Carter noted, and has parking and restrooms available that are accessible outdoors. It could fit up to four ball fields designed for younger children on the property.
“This land was purchased over 37 years ago for this very purpose,” Carter wrote.
The town is already moving forward with construction of three multipurpose fields and parking on the 19.3-acre parcel.
“However, because the Kennebec fields are limited in size, they alone cannot accommodate the town’s youth sports growth, which is why the four additional fields at Hilltop Needmore are being built,” Weis said.
In an emailed statement, Weis told the INDY the town “did not fail to plan.” The town uses a systemwide facility master plan to project infrastructure needs continuously, Weis said, as well annual sports registration data and biennial citizen surveys.
“The Town actively pursued outside partnerships and alternative properties over the years, but faced external constraints,” Weis wrote. “Fuquay-Varina currently uses joint-use agreements at five elementary schools, but these fields lack lighting for weeknight games/practices and suffer severe wear and tear; meanwhile, middle and high school fields are fully occupied, and local churches have strict space limitations. The Town also lost three full-size fields due to construction at Herbert Akins Middle School.”
Looking back, Hutchinson says, “there’s so much [the county commissioners] could have done” to ensure the property would be preserved.
“We could have put that agreement in place, … we could have given an easement to Triangle Land Conservancy,” Hutchinson said. “All of these things were things that would have been extremely easy to do. First of all, we never thought about it, and then we never thought it was going to be necessary, because that was not the intention of the park.”
Despite the adoption of the budget last month, park preservation advocates see a fight that is far from over. Mayor Bill Harris and three commissioners will have to defend their seats in a little over a year, and there’s no timeline in place for construction, according to Weis. At the pace that municipal projects move, there’s hardly time to get excavators on the ground before the next municipal election.
“These are extremely motivated people … and they’ve already organized,” said Hutchinson. “In politics, it’s not good going up against an already organized group, it doesn’t tend to end well. These people have already lost the park twice. There’s elections coming up, and I’m convinced they’re going to be going to the polls and this is going to be a big issue.”
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