Last Thursday’s ribbon cutting celebration at L.C. Coleman Park was a moment of pride for new Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design Jennifer Brooks. Brooks came to UNC Charlotte in August from Mecklenburg County, where she was a design and construction project manager, directing capital improvement projects that represented a $50 million investment in the county’s park and greenway system.
Among her most significant projects was L.C. Coleman Park in the Washington Heights neighborhood of West Charlotte.
“In 2021, when Mecklenburg County Park and Rec identified L.C. Coleman Park as one of a long list of parks needing a reinvestment, I saw the potential to deliver equity to the Beatties Ford community beyond replacing playground equipment,” Brooks said.
She became a driving force behind a renovation that would not only provide amenities to the neighborhood, but would also tell the extraordinary history of the 19.6-acre park and honor the man whose name it bears.
“I led an interdisciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, playground designers, historians, archeologists and cultural anthropologists to bring this project to life,” Brooks said. Their work revealed layer upon layer of a past that had become overgrown by time and nearly lost to contemporary and future generations.
“During the renovation project, I discovered the ruins of a swimming pool that turned out to be all that’s left of the Sunset Park and Recreation Center, which was the only public swimming pool for Charlotte’s Black community in the 1940s and 50s, as well as a Black social club, restaurant, bathhouse, etc.,” she said. “In digging into the history I also learned that 20 years before Sunset Park opened, the site was known as Clinton Beach and had a lake and a bathhouse and was the site of the first convocation of the United House of Prayer – a 3,000-person mass baptism that happened in 1926.”
Now, in addition to the new playground, tennis court, basketball courts, shelter and plaza, the park features custom panels that recall Clinton Beach and Sunset Park and the social life nurtured there.
Brooks and urban design students from the David R. Ravin School of Architecture attended the ribbon cutting event on Oct. 22, along with notable guests such as architect and former mayor Harvey B. Gantt, County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Lynn Coleman Hudson, who is the daughter of Lewis Cardinal Coleman Jr., after whom the park is named.
“For Thursday’s ribbon-cutting and community celebration, I produced custom viewfinders featuring image reels from each era of this landscape’s layered history: the 1920’s, the 1940s, and the 1970’s,” Brooks said. “The viewfinders captivated guests’ attention and provided an immediate and tangible connection to the site’s powerful community stories.”
While Brooks is now full-time with the University and no longer a county project manager, her hopes and plans for L.C. Coleman Park continue.
“I’ve proposed to Meck County that we build a (weather-resistant) ‘community jukebox’ in the location of the former social club, which was next to the pool.” Her designs for “Stereophonic City,” an interactive installation based on the Wurlitzer 2300S jukebox that was in the social club, are in progress.
Written by Meg Whalen. Photos courtesy of Mecklenburg County.