To Be a Town or Not to Be a Town? In Gray’s Creek, That Is the Question

Efforts by a Gray’s Creek chiropractor to form a town in the southern Cumberland County community ran into doubts and hostility during a community meeting he held last week.

So Robb Twaddell is pausing his SimCity dream to incorporate the Town of Gray’s Creek in 2027. But he hasn’t given up on the idea, he’s just postponed it. He told CityView he wants to “develop a community engagement forum committee, so that we can work together and develop a plan rather than it being ‘Robb Twaddell’s plan.’”

Meanwhile, some opponents agree with Twaddell’s underlying premise: The community needs to do something to ensure residents have a say over growth and development coming their way. They just disagree with his plan to address it.

At Twaddell’s meeting on Thursday, around 300 to 350 people sat in tepid breezes under massive ceiling fans during a stifling July evening in the Paradise Acres event hall to hear details of Twaddell’s incorporation idea. Many told him they don’t need or want a town.

Some were angry.

“These damn politicians can promise you the world, but they can’t produce nothing but a damn dance party,” one man yelled, drawing applause.

Twaddell hoped to collect signatures for a petition drive for incorporation during Thursday’s meeting. Under state law, a petition drive is the first step in the process of creating a municipality.

In the face of the opposition, Twaddell didn’t get any signatures that night—he didn’t try.

“At the meeting, I was kind of discouraged about getting the additional 2,000 signatures that I would need,” he said later. He previously collected 200, he said.

Meanwhile, people who oppose Twaddell’s idea have their own petition online. As of Tuesday, 588 people had signed it, although it appears from comments on the petition that some don’t live in Gray’s Creek.

Advocates need support from a minimum of 15% of registered voters in the proposed municipal boundaries to get the state legislature’s Municipal Incorporations Subcommittee to consider the request. This subcommittee recommends to the General Assembly whether a community seeking incorporation should become a town. Towns are formed when the General Assembly passes a law to create them.

In Twaddell’s vision, the Town of Gray’s Creek would cover about 50 square miles. The  boundaries include almost the entire southwest corner of Cumberland County, from the Robeson County line to Interstate 95 on the south side of Hope Mills.

He estimated the town would have about 25,000 residents.

His figure is based on the approximately 13,500 registered voters who live within the proposed town limit plus Twaddell’s estimated total for adults in the area who are not registered to vote, as well as the number of children enrolled in the community’s public schools.

Using a mapping tool with 2020 census data, CityView found that 17,000 to 18,000 people lived within the proposed town limits.

Grays Creek Township—the township’s name is spelled without the apostrophe—is a geographic area on the county’s south end with 11,725 residents, according to Census Bureau data. Twaddell’s proposed municipal boundaries extend beyond the township’s border, into neighboring Rockfish Township and toward Hope Mills.

North Carolina townships were created in 1868 to be self-governing areas within a county, according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina. After Reconstruction ended, the legislature in the late 1800s and early 1900s canceled the local governance powers of townships, but the boundaries remain on maps and some government records still refer to them.

Twaddell: Band Together for Control, Protection

Gray’s Creek must become a town, Twaddell told his less-than-receptive audience, so its residents can take control of their destiny. Otherwise, the growing community faces a date with population density spilling south from Hope Mills and Fayetteville—and no say over how this develops, he said.

Developers are building shopping centers and neighborhoods with hundreds of homes in Gray’s Creek, Twaddell said. They will continue to come on terms set by Cumberland County or through annexation by Hope Mills or Fayetteville, instead of under terms set by Gray’s Creek residents, he said.

Meanwhile, the county government is working to expand public water to Gray’s Creek, which is expected to encourage more growth.

“I don’t mind growth, but 650 houses here on Sand Hill Road, that puts a real strain on the school systems, on the roads, and the development and the structure of Gray’s Creek,” he told CityView, citing nearby development.

Properties where developers are building 634 residences—49 townhomes and 588 single-family homes—in the area of Sand Hill Road and Corporation Drive have been annexed into Hope Mills, which controls how the neighborhoods will be built. Since Gray’s Creek residents aren’t part of Hope Mills, they don’t vote for the town’s commissioners.

Beyond the Hope Mills town limit, aerial images on Google Maps show neighborhoods of single-family homes have spread among the farm fields and wooded land of the countryside of Gray’s Creek. The Greater Fayetteville Business Journal reported in 2025 a developer’s plans for a 264-unit apartment complex by Gray’s Creek High School.

Not all development glides in over the objections of the people living in Gray’s Creek.

Residents on June 15 persuaded the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners to pump the brakes on a proposed residential neighborhood on Fire Dept Road. A county document said more than 200 signed a petition in opposition of a property owner’s request to rezone 46 acres of agricultural land for residential use so she could sell it to a developer.

Approximately 67 homes could be built under the proposed residential zoning, although the developer planned for only around 50 to 52, according to comments and a document from the commissioners meeting.

Commissioners sent the rezoning request back to the county Planning Board to consider other options “to align the goals of the community and the developer.”

Residents Question Benefits

The crowd at Paradise Acres had doubts about forming a town.

Eric Allen moved to Gray’s Creek from Hope Mills. “I get away from the crowd and the taxes,” he said. He sees no need to incorporate and start paying taxes to a town government.

“I am not in favor of being taxed for benefits…the extra benefits I’m not going to receive,” said Susan Riddle. “I don’t want anybody telling me what I can do with my property. That’s not what I want.”

Twaddell’s proposed tax rate for the Town of Gray’s Creek would be 21 cents per $100 of assessed value of property. As town residents would stop paying a 15-cent tax for fire services, this would be a net increase of 6 cents per $100.

“For a property assessed at $285,000, the estimated annual difference is approximately $171,” Twaddell’s website says.

The town would contract with a company to collect people’s trash, Twaddell said, and contract with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office to boost law enforcement presence.

Some residents said they are happy with the private trash collection services they hire themselves; some said they take their garbage to one of the county’s trash collection sites.

As for law enforcement, there was a difference of opinion between anti-incorporation residents and Twaddell as to whether his plan would bring more deputies than already patrol or respond to calls in Gray’s Creek.

A Compromise for Gray’s Creek?

Some opponents of Twaddell’s incorporation plan set up a website, Gray’s Creek Facts, to lay out their arguments and organize their effort.

While they disagree with Twaddell’s plan, they share common ground on his underlying concern: “Development in Gray’s Creek that is not being controlled by the people who live here.”

The authors of Gray’s Creek Facts see three options:

• Form a town, but “done right.” They said state laws on municipal incorporation in close proximity to other cities and towns—in this case, Hope Mills and Fayetteville—and other factors would most likely make a Town of Gray’s Creek far smaller than what Twaddell proposed. Residents would pay more taxes.

• Don’t become a town, but arrange for planning tools to guide growth. This could be “a small-area land use plan written specifically for Gray’s Creek, a citizen advisory board with a formal seat in the county planning process, and zoning overlay districts tailored to the community’s rural character.” County commissioners would receive recommendations from the community, but still have final say.

• Don’t make any changes to the government, but members of the public can stay organized to watchdog for development plans. When something arises, residents can attend planning board meetings and county commissioner meetings to make their voices heard. “The county’s existing zoning already applies to Gray’s Creek, and organized watchfulness has already proven it can change outcomes here,” the authors said.

The Gray’s Creek Facts authors are asking residents to join a new committee.

“Step up. The next chapter needs hands,” they said. “The work is moving from this website to a resident committee, formed in the open, that figures out what actually works for our small rural community.  The people who run this site step away once it exists.”

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.

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