Wake County puts Crooked Creek golf course up for sale

Despite dozens of residents’ pleas, Wake County leaders voted late Monday night to put the former Crooked Creek Golf Course property up for sale.

The decision came after hours of debate and comments from more than 50 people, almost all of them asking the Wake County Board of Commissioners to follow through with its previous vote to make the land a future park.

Shortly after 11 p.m. Commissioners Vickie Adamson, Greg Ford, Jessica Holmes and James West voted to put the property up for sale. Commissioners Matt Calabria, Susan Evans and Sig Hutchinson voted against the motion.

“My decision, in the end, is how we spend precious taxpayer dollars fairly for all residents of Wake County,” Adamson said.

Hutchinson apologized to the supporters of the park plan.

“I feel angry, and frustrated, and saddened,” he said, “and I know so many in this room are feeling the same way.”

The county bought the former Crooked Creek Golf Course outside Fuquay-Varina last summer to become the future South Wake Park.

The proposal to reverse course came from Ford, the board’s vice chair. Before the public-comments portion of the meeting, he outlined why he wanted to sell the land and why he wanted to do it so quickly.

“For me, this is about character and integrity,” he said.

Before he could continue, audience members began to laugh and boo, drawing a rebuke from Holmes.

Character questioned

The meeting was tense at points with some audience members asking if Ford had integrity and character while others brought up the value of his home. One speaker called him Judas.

“I teach my own kids, as I did with thousands of the students I served over the years, that you have to stand up for what you believe in, and for what you think is right,” Ford said. “I believe everyone here today is doing the same thing, although we may be on different sides of the issue. For me, this issue, Crooked Creek, is such bad precedent for Wake County that I feel compelled to do something about it.”

The park supporters had a long list of why they wanted the 143 acres to be turned into a park including the health benefits. Anthony LoGiudice, who has cancer, said he moved to the Fuquay-Varina area because he wanted to spend his last years in fresh air.

“I’ll be dead soon,” he said. “I won’t benefit from [the park]. But future children will.”

Another speaker, Loraine Hayes, said she also had cancer and that she’s been excited about a park giving her an “opportunity to get out in nature and exercise.”

“What would good government be?” she said. “Would it be having citizens to debate an issue and find out their words and time didn’t matter? Would it be reassuring citizens you be doing one thing and doing another?”

Carey Kidd bought his home in the Crooked Creek Subdivision in December and said the future park was a big selling point for his family. It breaks his heart, he said, that the board doesn’t seem interested in keeping its word.

“Prove to us you are not bought,” he said. “Prove to us this is a park. Go with your word.”

Competing needs

Ford has said selling the property would correct “an unprecedented and controversial action.” Critics of the purchase have said the county should have spent the money on affordable housing or education.

Calabria and Hutchinson have said buying the property for $4 million — $45,000 below market value — was an excellent deal to help bring a park into an area that doesn’t currently have one.

Brian Edlin, an attorney for the Crooked Creek Community Association, has threatened “widespread litigation” if the county sells the property. He noted during Monday’s meeting that residents removed restrictive covenants on the land because the county voted to make it a park.

Restoring the covenants was not discussed during the motion to put the property up for sale, despite some calling out for the crowd for them to be addressed.

If the county does sell the property, any offers will have to come back for the commissioners’ approval. Holmes said the property wouldn’t necessarily go to the highest bidder. It could, she said, go to an affordable housing partner or to another group interested in keeping it a park or open space.

Political football

Several park supporters and some commissioners blamed politics as the culprits behind the vote.

“(This park) has been reduced to political pay back for rich donors who put tens of thousands of dollars into campaigns to get people elected, and unelected,” Hutchinson said.

Some school supporters — including big-time Democratic donors Ann Campbell and Dean Debnam — felt slighted the county would spend $4 million to buy a park when the school system didn’t get its full budget request. Commissioners voted to increase school funding by $21 million over the previous year, but the amount fell short of the school system’s request of $45.2 million in additional money.

Campbell and Debnam, along with their respective spouses and political action committees, poured thousands into the campaigns of the four Democratic candidates challenging the pro-park commissioners. Debnam’s PAC went as far as sending out an election mailer saying the four incumbents wanted to “bail out a failing golf course.” The golf course closed in 2015.

Adamson and Evans unseated pro-park commissioners John Burns and Erv Portman. Both Burns and Portman have been vocal in their frustration with the commissioners possibly selling the property.

Monday night, Evans said she wanted to address the “elephant in the room” and that she found it insulting to insinuate she wouldn’t be on the board without the Crooked Creek issue.

“I care about good governance and I care about the process here,” she said. “I don’t feel like asking me as a brand new board member, before I’ve sit in on a briefing about Crooked Creek and expecting me to vote just like this to put it up for surplus is good governance or fair.”

Adamson, on the other hand, acknowledges she campaigned on the Crooked Creek issue.

“This purchase was for the benefit of one neighborhood that does not want additional houses built in their backyard,” she said.

After the vote, park supporters filed out of the meeting room with some shouting “it’s not over” and “we’ll see you in court.”