News

County eyes major renovation of historic ballpark

By Bill Moss, Published: August 19, 2026

When the Berkeley Park Sports Complex opens this fall, athletes of all ages will no doubt marvel at the four regulation-size soccer fields on a huge expanse of top-quality turf, the six tennis courts, softball diamond and other amenities.

But what was once the centerpiece of the recreational land — the original Berkeley Mills Ballpark — will stand atop a slope, idle and unusable.

That could change in the next couple of years if Henderson County commissioners and other supporters of the historic stadium find the money for a major renovation. The process is expected to get under way this week, when commissioners take up a recommendation from the county’s capital projects director, Bryan Rhodes, to hire an architect to draft renovation plans. On the docket for the county commission’s regular meeting on Wednesday was a contract for $118,590 to begin the Berkeley Ballpark project.

Ken McDaniel, principal with Walter Robbs Architects of Winston-Salem, estimates the cost of renovation at $2-3 million, although a firmer figure won’t be known until engineers evaluate the structure.

While the county does not currently have the funding to cover construction “we’re working on it,” Commissioner Rebecca McCall said. “We’ve got some private contributors who will remain anonymous until they want to be identified. I don’t know the full amount we need but it will take a design in order to get to that point.”

Most grantors want to see a set of plans for construction before they make a donation, she said.

“I’m not saying it won’t be ready for next spring but it’s gonna be very difficult to make that happen mainly because a lot of infrastructure and because that field is not level,” she said. “The field itself needed a lot of work. Some grading had to be done. There was sewer over there but that goes back to the 1940s so you can imagine. When we release it for play, we want it to be pristine and something to be proud of.”

Noting that her uncle played for the Berkeley Spinners, McCall said many longtime residents have a family connection to the ballpark and fond memories of watching baseball there.

“What we don’t know yet is how much of the existing structure can be used,” McCall said. “I hope a lot of it can still be used. My desire and all of our desire is to put it back to the appearance it had in the ’40s and ’50s.”

Home of the Berkeley Spinners

The proposal from McDaniel, the architect, includes planning, design, permitting, the bidding process and construction administration, including coordinating with the State Historic Preservation Office.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016, Berkeley Ballpark was constructed in 1949 as the home stadium of the Berkeley Spinners.

“Organized in 1948 at the height of baseball’s post-war popularity, the Spinners played as part of the Western North Carolina Industrial League composed of teams drawn from the workforces of various regional industrial plants,” researcher Dan Pezzoni wrote in his National Register nomination. The Spinners’ first game, before the season before the stadium was built, was against Ecusta Manufacturing, on April 17, 1948. “During its first season the Spinners were to play home games at the fairgrounds field when it was not in use by the Skylarks (another industrial league team) and at the Hendersonville High School field when it was,” Pezzoni wrote.

The next year, Berkeley Mills contracted with Dan Waddell and Co., a Hendersonville grading company, to build the ball field in a park-like setting north of the factory and mill village. Mill employees helped with the construction of stands and other structures. Kimberly Clark Corp., the current mill owner, donated the ballpark and surrounding area to the city of Hendersonville in 2008. The city later dealt the land to Henderson County in a swap for the county-owned Edwards Park land at Five Points.

Asheville Citizen sports writer Red Miller praised the new park in a column on July 7, 1949.

“There are steel and wood construction seats on the first base line and concrete block seats behind the home plate,” he wrote. “And already plans are going forward for the erection of more concrete block stands on the slope down third base line. There is a finely constructed screen towering some 40 feet in the air behind home plate to protect fans in the stands and catch high fly balls. There are modern dressing rooms, with lockers and showers, both for the home and visiting teams.”

The semi-pro industrial league team took its name from Berkeley Mills, founded as Balfour Mills in the early 1920s by Ellison Adger Smyth. At the time the mill property contained 75 mill houses.