Johnston to christen regional park

Johnston Regional Park offers pickleball courts, basketball courts, a fishing pond and a picnic shelter.

Johnston County will celebrate the grand opening of its first park on Friday, July 24. The rain date is July 31.

Located at 444 Matthews Road in the Cleveland community, Johnston Regional Park will offer pickleball courts, basketball courts, a fishing pond, and a small picnic shelter in its first phase.

Those offerings reflect available dollars and some of the amenities Johnstonians said they wanted in their first park, explained Adrian O’Neal, head of Johnston County Parks and Open Space.

“They fit within our grant,” he said, noting that 80% of phase one funding had come from grant dollars. “Plus, the fishing pond is one thing we don’t have a lot of in Johnston County, believe it or not.”

“We have a lot of private fishing ponds, but there are not many public fishing opportunities,” O’Neal explained. “We think that will be a big hit.”

The pond won’t be stocked right away. “It has to stabilize for probably a year,” O’Neal said.

But when the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission does stock the pond, it will likely do so with largemouth bass, catfish and other freshwater species.

Pickleball courts for Johnston’s first park were an easy call, O’Neal said. “Obviously, pickleball is crazy right now,” he said. “Everybody wants to play pickleball, and trying to find a place to do it can be hard.”

Both the pickleball and basketball courts will be on a first-come, first-served basis, though Parks and Open Space will use a paddle rack system. Here’s how that works. When they arrive, players place their paddles in a rack next to the court. After a game, players leave the court, and the next paddles in the rack take the court.

“It’s a rotation system,” explained Austin Cross, grant coordinator in Parks and Open Space.

The park’s master plan calls for as many as five phases. What gets built when will depend on available funding, but still to come are a dog park, trails, a playground, restrooms, multipurpose fields, a skate park, disc golf, an amphitheater, and a splash pad. 

By the end of phase three, the park will live up to its billing as a regional destination, O’Neal said. “It really takes on that look of a regional park, where you have an event space, you have sports and athletics, you have things for small kids, you have things for walkers and bikers,” he said.

A paved corridor will run between the multipurpose fields. “That will be stout enough for food trucks to park on and have hookups,” O’Neal noted.

“The amphitheater and splash pad will most likely be the last things we build on this site,” he added. “They’re probably the highest-price individual items, and they’re going to be management intensive.”

All of it will require money.

“We’ll be going after grants again,” O’Neal said. “And we’re always open to donations for small items or large items for the park. The public could donate something as small as a park bench all the way up to the trail system or dog park.”

But first things first — the grand opening of phase one, which O’Neal hopes will make an impression. “I hope they see it as a valuable asset,” he said. “I hope they enjoy the parts that are out there, and I hope they ask for more.”

Page last updated on:  July 13, 2026