CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Families in Charlotte’s Washington Heights neighborhood have their park back. Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation cut the ribbon Thursday, Oct. 22, on a rebuilt and enlarged L.C. Coleman Park, which had been shut since March 2025.
The county put $2.9 million into the work, drawing in part on federal American Rescue Plan Act money. The 19.6-acre site now has a new playground with swings, slides and climbing pieces, a multiuse field, one tennis court, two full basketball courts, a covered shelter, a seating plaza, trails and parking.
Coleman is one of four county parks rebuilt with that pandemic relief money. Monroe Road, Druid Hills and Archdale parks got the same treatment after all four were flagged in 2021 as among the parks in the worst shape.
New signs walk visitors through the land’s long past. Back in the 1920s the grounds were called Clinton Park and featured a small lake, a dance hall and a bathhouse with 100 rooms. After World War II the property housed a private social club, the Sunset Park and Recreation Center, whose pool was the only one in the area open to Black residents during segregation. Even the playground nods to that story, recalling a West Side youth baseball league and a 1963 Malcolm X speech at nearby Sunset Park.
The park carries the name of Lewis Cardinal Coleman Jr., a west Charlotte advocate who pushed for more and fairer recreation space and helped open the park in 1976, when it was called Northwest Park. It took his name in 1979.
County Commission Chairman Mark Jerrell tied the project to the county’s equity goals and quality of life on the west side, and park director Nick Walker said the turnout showed how much neighbors had missed the space.
Filed under: Charlotte NC Neighborhood News