Cane Creek Park Soccer Fields Reopen After Serving as Helene Debris Site

For nearly a year, Cane Creek Park's soccer fields existed as a staging ground for Hurricane Helene's wreckage. On Saturday, they became a park again.

Buncombe County Parks and Recreation held a ribbon cutting at the Cane Creek soccer fields on April 4, celebrating the restoration of a facility that had served as one of five county-wide debris processing sites since the storm struck in September 2024. The ceremony included the unveiling of "Soccer Cub," a chainsaw sculpture of a bear cub mid-kick, carved by Mountain Mike Ayers of Whetstone Woodworks from trees that Helene itself knocked down.

The sculpture was commissioned in partnership with Echoes of the Forest, a nonprofit that salvages storm-felled timber for public art. Its presence at Cane Creek is a deliberate choice: the same trees the storm destroyed now mark the site's return to use.

The five staging sites across Buncombe County collectively processed 3,333,900 cubic yards of debris hauled from neighborhoods, waterways and roadsides. At Cane Creek, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operated the drop-off point; Corps subcontractors later regraded the fields and laid new sod before Parks and Recreation cleared them for public use.

With the fields reopened, youth soccer leagues, adult recreational teams and pickup players can again book time at Cane Creek through the county Parks reservation system. Parks Director Allison Dains has described the department's recovery approach as working through each site as it becomes safe, taking early wins where possible while keeping the larger, costlier projects at the forefront.

That harder work is visible elsewhere in the county. Charles D. Owen Park in Swannanoa, one of the most heavily damaged facilities in the storm's path, remains closed; Dains has estimated restoration there will require between $14 million and $16 million for that park alone. Karpen Field is still shuttered while engineers assess flood damage. Alexander River Park lost an estimated six to eight feet of riverbank and is expected to remain closed for at least another year as officials work to secure FEMA funding and finalize a restoration design.

Six of the county's seven river parks have reopened, and the Buncombe County Sports Park in Enka is operating on its standard schedule.

Cane Creek's ribbon cutting marks the first full restoration of a park placed into emergency debris service after the storm. The chainsaw bear cub standing watch over freshly sodded fields is both celebration and measure of how far recovery still has to go.