County to Support Baseball Stadium in Smithfield

 

 

Johnston County will help Smithfield build a home for the Wilson Tobs.

The County Board of Commissioners on Oct. 6 agreed to contribute $2 million toward construction of a baseball stadium in Smithfield Community Park. The board will appropriate half of the money this fiscal year and half the next.

“I do think it’s important to clarify that this allocation is to the Town of Smithfield; it is not to the Tobs,” said Commissioner Patrick Harris. “This is to build a facility that would serve the citizens of the county and Smithfield.”

It will take time, but the county will eventually recoup its $2 million through higher sales tax and motel tax receipts, Harris said. “The generation of tax revenue coming from this will more than pay back what the county is going to invest in this,” he said.

Harris was one of five commissioners to support the $2 million outlay. Commissioners Bill Stovall and Butch Lawter, the board’s chairman, opposed it. The two noted that the county had other, established building priorities.

Still, both Stovall and Lawter said they believed the Tobs would be an asset to Johnston County.

So did Commissioner Ted Godwin, who said a ballpark and baseball team would enhance quality of life in the county. “I’m going to vote for this,” he said. “I think it’s the right thing to do at this point.”

The 5-2 vote came at the end of the board’s evening meeting. Earlier in the day, commissioners had heard from Wilson Tobs President Greg Suire, who said the ballpark would be a venue for amateur sports, not simply a home for the baseball team.

“We start our events in February,” he said. “We host 10 to 12 colleges from throughout the Northeast … for over 11 days because it’s just a little bit too chilly up north to play baseball.”

On Saturdays in the spring, the Tobs invite high school teams to play on their field. “This past year alone, we had 31 different high schools from seven eastern North Carolina counties that participated,” Suire noted.

After high school ball, the Tobs, a summer collegiate team, play their schedule, including 26 to 28 home games. Then events continue in the fall, when the Tobs host a baseball league for high school players.

“We’ve done that for the last 12 years,” Suire said. “We have 10 high schools. Three of the high schools, by the way, are from Johnston County.”

Suire said the ballpark in Smithfield would seldom be idle. “One of the things about our calendar of events is that it keeps the vitality of the ballpark going,” he said.

The $2 million from the County will bolster the $3 million that the Town of Smithfield will appropriate for the ballpark.

Town Manager Michael Scott said Smithfield would own and maintain the stadium, which will go on land across from Smithfield Middle School.

“The primary goal of this is to bring baseball and bring this venue and this economic engine … to Johnston County,” he told commissioners at their morning meeting.

Using figures from Wilson, the Tobs longtime home, Scott put the economic impact of the ballpark at what he called a conservative $7 million annually. “That equates to about 60 full-time jobs,” he said. “I think that’s a very reasonable, very conservative number for this operation.”

Scott said he and his staff had chosen a design firm for a ballpark with 1,500 to 1,800 seats. He estimated construction at four to six months.

“But we may build it in phases depending on how the finances come in,” Scott said.

 

Page last updated on:  October 16, 2025