Founders Park Finally Opened in Leland, and Thursday Nights Aren't What They Used to Be
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Founders Park has technically been "almost done" in Leland for so long that a lot of residents stopped checking. The playground reopened in December. The splash pad turned on in May. Each time, the town made an announcement, people showed up, and the amphitheater sat behind orange fencing, still not finished. So when the actual grand opening happened on July 31, it would have been easy to mistake it for one more incremental update in a renovation that had already missed its own deadline by a year and a half.
It wasn't. This was the piece that changes how people spend a weeknight in Leland, and it's already happening.
Town Council adopted the master plan for what was then called Leland Municipal Park back in March 2020. Construction on the renovation began in 2023 and was originally expected to wrap by late 2024. It didn't. An alignment problem with the amphitheater, combined with concerns about the original contractor's work, pushed the project back roughly a year. Town Manager David Hollis told WECT in November 2025 that the town was still working through its legal process to get the contractor removed, with a new target of finishing the amphitheater by early spring 2026.
Here's the abbreviated version of how a six-year project actually unfolded:
| Milestone | When |
|---|---|
| Town Council adopts park master plan | March 2020 |
| Renovation construction begins | 2023 |
| Original completion target | December 2024 |
| Park partially reopens, amphitheater still closed | December 2025 (Leland in Lights) |
| Splash pad opens for the season | May 1, 2026 |
| Amphitheater finished, full grand opening | July 31, 2026 |
Every prior reopening was a partial one. The splash pad opening in May was genuinely useful for anyone with kids trying to survive a Cape Fear summer, but it wasn't the thing that changes a Thursday. The amphitheater is.
The grand opening drew a crowd large enough that the town had to run a shuttle from North Brunswick High School, with overflow parking at Woodburn Presbyterian Church and First Baptist Church. Mayor Brenda Bozeman cut the ribbon at 5:30, and The Embers featuring Craig Woolard, a beach music act with decades of history in this region, headlined the amphitheater's first show. Bozeman described the space as a place where our community can come together to make memories, and for the first time since the project started, that wasn't aspirational language attached to a fence and a construction schedule.
Five food trucks worked the crowd that night: Glizzies on the Go, Hanna's Hawaiian Ice, Taste N Seize, Seaview Crab Company, and Old South Pretzel Company. The park's first beer garden poured from Leland Brewing Company and Brunswick Beer and Cider. Local organizations, including Animal House of Wilmington, the Chick-fil-A at Leland Town Center, Lifepoint Church, American Legion Post 68, GLOW Academy, and Leland VFW Post 12196, staffed booths along the way. None of that is unusual for a ribbon cutting. What's unusual is that it wasn't a one-time event. It was the first night of a season.
The town launched its first-ever "Live in Leland" series the same night as the grand opening, and the lineup announced so far runs through early September:
Every show runs 6 to 8 p.m., every show is free, and every show pairs the amphitheater lawn with the same beer garden setup that debuted at the grand opening. Three of the four dates announced so far fall on a Thursday. That's not a scheduling accident so much as a pattern worth knowing if you live nearby: for years, a Thursday evening in Leland meant driving to Mayfaire or downtown Wilmington if you wanted live music with a drink in hand. As of this August, it doesn't have to.
The splash pad has been running daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. since May 1 and closes for the season at the end of September, so if you haven't gotten out there yet, the window is closing. The town also quietly added two dual-port Level 2 EV charging stations at the park this year, a small addition but a genuinely practical one for anyone driving an electric vehicle to a concert.
Founders Park isn't the only piece of Leland's outdoor infrastructure worth knowing about, either. The Leland Disc Golf Park on Village Road runs a 12-hole course across just over 13 acres next to Sturgeon Creek. Cypress Cove Park, built on wetlands donated in 2005 by Kirby Sullivan with additional acreage added through a 2007 coastal access grant, remains the town's launch point for kayaks and canoes. That matters for the calendar below, because one of the fall's featured events happens there, not at Founders Park.
If you've been meaning to get back into the rotation of things Leland actually does, here's what's ahead:
That last one is worth double-checking before you circle a date. The town's dedicated festival page still describes the event on a Saturday, October 25, at Northwest District Park on Andrew Jackson Highway, which matches how the festival has been run in past years. But the town's own calendar update posted in late August moves it to Saturday, Oct. 24, and moves the location to Founders Park. Given how much of this year's programming has already shifted onto that amphitheater lawn, the newer post looks like the accurate one, though a call to the Leland Cultural Arts Center before you commit to an address isn't a bad idea.
Founders Park's own turn comes back around in December, when Leland in Lights transforms the same amphitheater lawn that hosted The Embers in July into a walking light display, complete with the Leland Express train and a Grand Illumination kickoff. It's worth remembering that this same stretch of grass has now hosted a beach music legend, a British Invasion tribute act, a children's theater production, and eventually Santa, all within about five months of finally being finished.
The headline isn't that Leland got a nicer park. Plenty of towns renovate a park and call it a win. The headline is that after six years, at least two missed deadlines, and a contractor the town had to legally push out, Leland now has something it didn't have before: a recurring, walkable reason to be out on a weeknight without leaving town. That's a different kind of place to live than the one that existed in 2024, when the amphitheater was still a stalled construction site and "going out" meant getting in the car.
If you've lived in Leland through the entire renovation saga, the park probably still reads as unfinished in your head, because for years it genuinely was. It isn't anymore. The best way to find out what that means is to show up on a Thursday.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own home's value in a town that's clearly investing in itself, the team at Jennifer Bullock - Main Site puts together a free, no-pressure home valuation whenever you're curious, no obligation attached.
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