Editor’s note: This report has been updated to add comment from Cumberland County commissioners’ chair Kirk deViere.
Eight days after the Cumberland County commissioners canceled plans to build a 3,000-seat downtown Fayetteville performing arts and events center, the board voted on June 12 to cancel construction of a parking deck nearby.
The parking deck, budgeted at $33 million in March 2024, was to be six stories tall with 1,100 spaces. It was to be built on top of a portion of the county parking lot behind the Cumberland County Courthouse and next to the Law Enforcement Center. The commissioners in March 2024 voted to hire the Samet Corp. construction company along with the Creech & Associates architecture firm to build it.
In September, the board approved a contract for $2 million for Samet to do pre-construction and design work, with a goal of the parking deck being finished in April 2026.
The plan was for the parking deck to serve the courthouse and a county office building that has been proposed to be built on top of the remainder of the county’s parking lot behind the courthouse.
At the same time, the parking deck’s proximity to the now-canceled Crown Event Center in front of the courthouse meant the deck likely would have provided parking to patrons attending concerts, stage shows and other activities in the venue.
County Manager Clarence Grier told the commissioners on June 4, shortly before they canceled the Crown Event Center, that the parking deck’s estimated cost had risen to $46 million. He had a caveat: “I’m concerned that that $46 million may be overstated,” he said.
On June 12, with no public discussion of the merits, the commissioners voted 5-1 to cancel the parking deck contract with Samet.
The parking deck was not listed on the meeting agenda. The vote came after the commissioners met behind closed doors for about 47 minutes to have a private discussion with the county attorney.
DeViere and Commissioners Veronica Jones, Pavan Patel, Henry Tyson and Marshall Faircloth voted to cancel the parking deck contract. Commissioner Jeannette Council was absent when the vote was held.
Commissioner Glenn Adams voted in favor of the parking deck. Adams was the board chair in 2024 when the commissioners approved the contract with Samet.
A want or a need?
The decision to cancel the parking deck, as well as cancel the Crown Event Center, reflects a significant policy and spending priorities split between the Board of Commissioners that served from 2022 to 2024, vs. the current Board of Commissioners that took office in December.
Following the November elections, the seven-person board has three new members, including Chair deViere.
The previous board approved the contracts for the parking deck and for the performing arts venue. DeViere said he and the other newly elected commissioners, Henry Tyson and Pavan Patel, were not briefed in their early days in office of the parking deck contract and had been unaware of its cost.
DeViere told CityView on Monday that the proposed office building was estimated to cost $80 million, and for a combined total of $113 million with the $33 million parking deck.
He questioned whether the parking garage was truly for the proposed office building, or instead was really for the Crown Event Center. He said he asked but could never get a definitive answer as to its purpose.
“So the previous board, Glenn Adams as the chair, prioritized $113 million of General Fund dollars … and allocated nothing to water and nothing to schools,” deViere said. “But we could have a government services building that we don’t really need right now?”
Since deViere took office and became the board chairman, the county commissioners have approved a plan to filter contaminated water at two schools in Cumberland County’s PFAS chemical contamination zone. The commissioners are looking at expansion of public water throughout the rural areas that rely on wells, and they have increased spending for the county’s public schools.
While the Crown Event Center would have been paid for from a special 1% tax sales tax levied on restaurant food and beverages in Cumberland County, money in the county’s General Fund, which would have paid for the office building and parking deck, comes from property taxes.
Spending for the office building and the parking deck has been stripped from the county budget, deViere said.
Is this permadeath for parking deck, office building?
Adams said the county needs to build an office building so that county services can all be in one location instead of spread among the courthouse and other offices around town.
“The parking deck was for the government services building that we’re going to build, right? And so I believe that you still need the parking deck,” he said.
But now that the board has canceled the parking deck, Adams wondered whether a majority of the board wants to build a new office building behind the courthouse.
According to several commissioners, that is undecided.
Faircloth has voted against the parking deck since 2024.
“Well, I think the office building’s on hold, and probably will suffer the same fate as the parking deck, is my guess,” Faircloth said. “The office building has been a kind of a pipe dream, you know, for 30 years.”
The state court system would like the county staff to move out of the courthouse, he said, so the court system operations can get more room.
Instead of building a new government services center, Faircloth said, the county could add two more floors to the courthouse, as it was engineered for that.
Jones said that although she voted to cancel the parking deck for now, she could vote in favor of one in the future. She had questions about parking spaces for handicapped people, how those spaces would be to the building, whether the parking at the county campus would be in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
As for the government services office building, “Let’s just say that that’s not been taken off the table for us to have a government service building,” she said. It could be built someplace other than behind the courthouse, she said.
Patel said he would like to have more information before making a firm decision on whether the county needs a new office building and how quickly. He thought it unlikely to advance in the near future.
“If it makes sense, and the community needs it, staff needs it, the courts need it … let’s plan for it and do it right. I don’t know what the final outcome of that would be,” he said.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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