For twenty-five summers, the shape of a warm week in Hope Mills was simple. You walked the loop around the lake, you let the kids run at Municipal Park, and if you wanted a snoball or a corn dog you stopped at Big T's on the water. That was the routine. It was small, it was tight, and it was almost entirely inside the same acre of shoreline.
That routine still exists. What changed this spring is that a second anchor opened one parking lot away, and the same family running the snoball stand is now running a year-round kitchen inside it. The result is a summer week that finally has an evening half. If you have lived here a while, this is the first year the calendar reads differently without you having to leave town.
The Bullard Street Anchor
The new center of gravity is The Hive of Hope Mills at 3414 Bullard Street, directly adjacent to Hope Mills Municipal Park. It opened with a ribbon cutting on Friday, April 10, 2026, and it is a $1.1 million build with seven food truck bays, a 3,500 square foot event center, a commissary kitchen, a covered stage, and a market area set aside for local artisans and farmers. The project has been described in the local business press as a five-year vision from developer and executive director Kevin Grant, who first sketched the idea during the isolation of 2020.
The scale matters. Seven trucks may sound modest until you learn that more than 80 vendors have signed up for the rotation, which means the lineup on a Thursday looks nothing like the lineup on a Sunday. Hours are wide by small-town standards: Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. Coverage that continuous is unusual for a food truck concept anywhere in Cumberland County, and it is the reason the space functions as an actual gathering point rather than a weekend pop-up.
The programming is already thickening. A Mercantile Market runs on Saturdays. The Hive has partnered with the Fayetteville nonprofit Kwirks, founded by Ryan Cretens, on inclusive events for the special-needs community that will run both on site and around town. Bike rentals and wine service are on the near-term roadmap, according to management remarks at the opening.
"It's something that's actually directly rooted for something you can bring your kids to," Hope Mills Town Manager Chancer McLaughlin said at the ribbon cutting.
That framing is worth paying attention to. This is not a nightlife project, and it is not aimed at Fayetteville commuters looking for a destination. It is aimed at the people who already drive past Municipal Park twice a day.
Why Big T's Moving Is the Real Signal
If you want to read the shift correctly, watch Big T's. Timmy and Donna Gray opened the original stand on the lake in 2000, and for a quarter century Big T's has been a seasonal operation. Snoballs, fair food, warm months only, closed when the weather turned. That was the deal.
As of this spring, Big T's is the anchor tenant at The Hive with a permanent location, open year-round, seven days a week. The original site beside Hope Mills Lake is staying open. So the same operator now runs a lake stand for the traditional summer trade and a permanent kitchen fifty yards inland for the rest of the calendar. When the family that has read this town's summer weather for twenty-five years bets on a second location that runs through January, that is a real vote on where the traffic is going.
The Lake Still Runs the Clock
None of this replaces the lake. Hope Mills Lake refilled behind a rebuilt concrete dam in early 2018, after fifteen years of drained lakebed and two failed dams, and the return of the water is still the reason most of this town's summer rhythm exists at all. The compact perimeter path, the small beach near the boat launch, the picnic areas and the playground, the amphitheater at Municipal Park that has hosted concerts and community events for years, the fish stocked in the water and the herons standing over them at dawn, all of it comes back to the lake. The Hive works because it sits next door to that.
What the lake asks in return is a small amount of paperwork most casual visitors never think about. If you plan to put a boat on the water this summer, a few things are worth knowing before you drive over:
- All boats, motorized and non-motorized, need a permit from the Town of Hope Mills Parks and Recreation Department.
- Permits are handled in person at the Hope Mills Recreation Center at 5770 Rockfish Road during normal business hours. There is no online registration.
- If your boat has a motor, bring a copy of your state watercraft registration and proof of liability insurance.
- Only Class A and Class 1 boats up to 26 feet are allowed. Personal watercraft are prohibited.
- The lake is open Monday through Saturday from sunrise until 30 minutes before sunset. Boats have to stay at least 50 feet off the dam.
Full text of the rules is on the Town of Hope Mills lake page. Kayak rentals are available on site if you would rather not deal with paperwork at all.
A Weekly Rhythm That Didn't Exist Last Summer
Put the two anchors together and the shape of the week starts to look different. Last July, if you finished dinner at home and wanted something to do at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, the honest answer was a walk around the lake and then back to the couch. This July, the same evening has a second option that stays open until 10, with a different truck lineup than it had on Saturday morning, and a covered stage that will fill in the programming as summer wears on.
| Slot | Old Hope Mills summer week | 2026 shape |
|---|---|---|
| Weekday mornings | Lake loop, playground | Lake loop, playground |
| Weekday lunch | Home or drive to Fayetteville | The Hive, 11 a.m. onward |
| Weekday evenings | Quiet after sunset at the lake | The Hive open until 10 p.m. |
| Saturday morning | Lake, Big T's stand | Lake, plus Mercantile Market at The Hive from 7 a.m. |
| Saturday evening | Fayetteville for dinner | Rotating trucks and event center programming |
| Sunday afternoon | Lake picnic, Big T's | Lake picnic, Big T's on the water or year-round at The Hive |
| November through March | Big T's closed, lake quiet | Big T's open at The Hive, event center programming |
The important cell is the bottom row. A snoball stand that closes in October has trained this town to think of the Municipal Park corner as a summer-only address. A year-round kitchen with an event center trains it in the other direction.
What This Actually Adds Up To
Two things follow, and they are worth stating plainly.
First, the summer routine has an evening half now, and you do not have to drive to Fayetteville to find it. That is a genuine change from twelve months ago. If you are the parent who used to run out of ideas by 7 p.m. on a weeknight in July, the answer for this stretch of summer is a short drive to Bullard Street, whatever truck is parked there tonight, and a walk back over toward the water while it is still light.
Second, the corner of Hope Mills Municipal Park is going to matter for the rest of the calendar in a way it never has before. Kevin Grant has said publicly he sees the Hive model as something that could be franchised across the greater Fayetteville area. Whether or not that happens, the local effect is already visible. Every event booked into the 3,500 square foot center between now and Christmas is one more reason for someone to end up at that intersection who would not have been there in 2025. Sidewalk traffic that runs twelve months a year is how a small downtown builds a second life for itself, and this is the first time Hope Mills has had that on offer at the scale of an actual anchor.
The lake is still the reason the town exists. It just is not the only reason to leave the house anymore.
If you have been watching this stretch of Hope Mills wondering whether the Municipal Park corner is going to hold its momentum through fall and into next year, and whether that answers a question about where you want to buy your next home, the team at Carla Ollison and Jai & Company Realty knows this market street by street. Schedule your free consultation and we will walk through what the shift means for the block you are looking at.
