Study could lead to new Livestock Arena

The Johnston County Youth Livestock Show & Sale has long made its home in the County's Livestock Arena.

 

It’s not that the Johnston County Livestock Arena is a poor excuse for a building.

“It still has a lot of utility for a building that is approaching 50 years of age,” says Dan Wells, the Extension agent who works most closely with the arena.

This year alone, the building has 110 events on its calendar.

“That could be something as simple as a 4-H club meeting,” Wells told County Commissioners on Nov. 17. “It could be something as elaborate as our Youth Livestock Show and Sale, which can frequently draw 500 people."

“We have a lot of producer education events there as part of our mandate to bring research-based information to the communities," he added.

But increasingly, the Livestock Arena feels pinched by its two neighbors — the County’s landfill and Johnston’s new and expanding sewage-treatment plant.

The entrances to the landfill and arena are across from each other, noted Extension Director Bryant Spivey, who showed commissioners a photo of traffic on a recent Friday morning. “You can see the trucks lined up going into the landfill,” he said. “And so you get, at times, traffic problems getting in and out of the arena.”

Also, the arena has shortcomings, including a concrete floor with a polished rather than rough finish, a mistake made during the building’s construction in 1976-77. The polished floor is hazardous to livestock.

“We’ve had to deal with that all the time,” Wells said. “And one of the things that we’ve come to do is put down AstroTurf whenever we’re going to have a livestock event.”

With an OK from commissioners, the Extension Service will conduct a study on replacing the arena. “What we’re thinking is that possibly the County and the livestock industry might be better served by something with a little different surface, maybe a little different footprint,” Wells said.

He showed commissioners an aerial photo of the livestock arena in Union County. It has an open-air, covered arena, along with a smaller, enclosed space for meetings and the like.

“We’re not saying that we need something exactly like this,” Wells said. “We’re saying that probably a feasibility study would be the next step to find out exactly what it is that we need.”

Spivey said the Extension Service would pursue grant dollars to help with any construction. “We do think that we’ve got some opportunities to potentially seek grant funding that would support the development of a new structure,” he said.

Page last updated on:  December 15, 2025