Overview:
• The lot closed in October 2024 for the Crown Event Center project, taking away 204 spaces.
• The Crown Event Center was canceled last year, but the lot remained closed.
• Courthouse employees and jurors may start parking there within 30 days.
The former parking lot on Gillespie Street in front of the Cumberland County Courthouse in downtown Fayetteville will temporarily reopen for parking within 30 days, Board of Commissioners Chair Kirk deViere said on Monday.
“So as our public is coming to our courthouse for services, they’ll have additional capacity in the regular parking lot, as we’ll move some of our employees to the temporary parking lot,” deViere said.
The lot in front of the courthouse closed in October 2024 to make way for construction of the Crown Event Center entertainment venue.
The county halted construction in March 2025 and commissioners, in a 5-2 vote, canceled it in June. The county now wants to develop the property with some other project. DeViere said he hoped to announce in May what’s next for the site.
The parking lot had 204 spaces and was paved with asphalt.
The temporary gravel lot will have 100 spaces, deViere said, and will provide parking spaces for employees and people summoned to jury duty. The spaces will take stress off another parking lot behind the courthouse so that more members of the general public may park there.
The rest of the former parking lot was seeded with grass after a December decision by commissioners to create temporary green space.
An estimated cost for the green space and gravel parking was not immediately available on Tuesday.
Since the front lot closed in 2024, the public has complained about the loss of the free parking close to the courthouse. Late last year, the county started towing vehicles parked in spaces reserved for employees or ones outside of marked spaces.
To provide additional parking, the county leases another parking area for the public’s use across Person Street from the courthouse. On some days, that lot also fills up. So the county allows the public to use a gravel lot on Person Street about a 5-minute walk away.
Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Jim Ammons has said parking has been difficult for jurors. Shortly before a jury began hearing evidence during a capital murder trial in February, Ammons asked the panel whether they had trouble parking that morning.
A year ago, Ammons said, a juror parked unwittingly in a privately owned pay lot near the courthouse and did not pay. The lot operator put a bicycle chain through a wheel on the juror’s car to stop the juror from driving away, he said.
The judge contacted the county staff to pay the parking lot fees, including an extra charge to get the combination to remove the lock, he said. The parking lot operator has since added additional signs to the lot that alert drivers that they must pay to park there.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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