You are correct. I have spent hours and hours riding my road bike up and down the Walnut Creek St. park road - it's a long hill and I use it for climbing repeat exercises. The entrance to the park is two lanes split by a large median - in some of the photos two awning tents are set up on this median. There is a "guard house" but no gate that I recall. During the summer time when the beach is open there is an attendant collecting a fee to enter the park during working hours. When the beach is closed, access to the park is unfettered. A sign notes that the park is closed after sunset. Shortly after passing the median, the road becomes two-lane. A drive leads to a building set back in the woods off to the right. This is the drive officers can be seen walking on in one of the circulating pictures. I had thought that the structure was a maintenance complex and, perhaps, inhabited by a ranger or park manager. It might not be inhabited - in that case it would be a very secluded place to carry out a crime - but as the maintenance building for the park I wouldn't call it abandoned. A mountain bike trail - The Bike Factory Trail - crosses the road just next to the driveway for the building. That trail loops around the building and runs between the building and the road. Several of the bike trails cross that creek, and if I recall correctly it does sometimes have water in it - but I might be confusing that creek with another within the park. My point is, the building and that driveway are solidly within the park.
I don't know much about command centers in search operations, but I can say this about the beach pavilion: There is a large parking lot right in front of it. It is covered. There are restrooms.
If this has been posted already, my apologies:
http://www.albemarle.org/upload/ima...ation/forms/WalnutCreekPark_TOPO_PageSize.pdf