Cumberland County agreed to pay $650,000 to the EwingCole architectural firm to settle a billing dispute over the defunct Crown Event Center project in downtown Fayetteville.
EwingCole’s federal lawsuit said the county owed $1.32 million plus accruing interest for services rendered.
The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners voted 7-0 on Monday to approve the settlement. There was no public discussion. The item was one of 26 items on the meeting’s consent agenda, which is a group of items passed together without debate or separate review.
Citing growing costs, concerns about limited parking, and other factors, the commissioners voted 5-2 in June 2025 to cancel the $144.5 million Crown Event Center. The 3,000-seat, 134,000-square-foot facility was under construction from October 2024 to March 2025 on Gillespie Street in front of the Cumberland County Courthouse.
The settlement agreement prohibits both the county and EwingCole from making disparaging comments about each other.
Growing Project Created Growing Bills
The county hired Philadelphia-based EwingCole in November 2022 for $6.4 million plus $135,500 in reimbursable expenses to design the Crown Event Center. The venue was supposed to replace two 1960s-era facilities—the Crown Theatre and Crown Arena—at the county’s entertainment and events campus several miles away on U.S. 301 South.
Over the next two years, the scope of the project grew. Originally budgeted at $82.5 million and to be between 69,000 and 89,000 square feet, later plans had it at 131,000 square feet and construction estimates rose to $131.7 million and later $163.5 million. In early 2024, the county capped the budget at $145 million and EwingCole updated the design under that constraint, its lawsuit said.
EwingCole said the design changes the county requested lead to increased fees, and the total eventually reached $10.5 million.
Cumberland County in a counter-claim asserted that EwingCole initiated some of its additional work without authorization from county commissioners, that EwingCole was required by its contract to do some of the additional work at no cost to the county, and that the county had paid $1.32 million by mistake for unapproved development fees.
The county stopped paying its invoices in July 2024, EwingCole said.
Despite the unpaid invoices, the Crown Event Center project advanced with its groundbreaking in October 2024.
The county had halted construction in March 2025 amid questions about a $1.92 million bill from EwingCole. The commissioners hired an attorney to investigate the matter and that report was not made public..
The firm’s complaint said that by September 2025, the unpaid bills totaled $2.3 million, not including interest. It said the county paid $977,615 on September 11, leaving a disputed balance of $1.32 million plus interest.
EwingCole sued in October to try to get the rest of the money, leading to the $650,000 settlement the commissioners approved on Monday.
In May, the county picked a contractor to renovate the Crown Theatre and Crown Arena—the venues that the Crown Event Center was intended to replace.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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