3 final designs unveiled for $7 million revamp of uptown Charlotte’s McColl Park.

There are now just three designs on the table for the future McColl Park, each combining different parts of Charlotte’s iconography with new ideas.

The park, built in 1991, was formerly known as Polk Park and sits on less than an acre at the historic intersection of Trade and Tryon streets. The Charlotte City Council approved in March a plan to revamp it and rename it after former Bank of America Chairman and CEO Hugh McColl Jr.

The plan calls for Charlotte Center City Partners to oversee fundraising efforts for the project through a committee of local leaders with connections to McColl.

Some historical preservation groups expressed dismay when the park was torn down in May, saying that move erased part of the city’s history. The city said at the time the old park was dangerous, not compatible with nearby properties and lacked activity space.

At an open house Thursday, landscape architect Walter Hood, a Charlotte native, said his team is working to create a new design for the park that will revamp it while evoking memories for longtime residents.

“I left here to go to college and never came back, so Charlotte does not look like my Charlotte that I grew up in. But that’s fine, because places change. And there’s a quote that says ‘you can’t come home again.’ This is the best way to come home again, by making a space in a space that I used to actually hang out in,” said Hood, whose design firm is based in California.

Final ideas for McColl Park

Hood presented three different concepts for the park at Thursday’s event.

“These pieces that we’ve been thinking about constructing really try to take a hold of some of these things from my memory and also things from the imagination,” he said of the designs, adding that his team also incorporated feedback from a past community open house.

All three designs include seating and a reflecting pool. Hood explained the pool would be an infinity fountain and have less than an eighth of an inch of water flowing over dark, reflective paving. The water could be turned off to make more room for events, he added.

“It’s a really beautiful thing because kids love it. You can just tramp around it when it gets hot in the summertime, you can do amazing things. But you can cut it off and then reuse the space,” he said.

The first concept also includes a vertical sculpture called a datum that Hood envisions standing 200 feet tall and 3 feet wide. He said the piece would encourage people to look up and take in the uptown skyline. It will also turn toward true north as it rises, he added, helping give people a sense of direction and place.

That design also includes a crown-like canopy, meant to invoke Charlotte’s “Queen City” nickname.

The second design also embraces a crown, this time in the form of a large plant-covered structure constructed from aluminum foam.

“You will see a soaring piece of green going up,” Hood said.

The third design references two other notable Charlotte things, a hornets nest and the city’s tree canopy.

It includes a nest-like canopy that would be constructed from bronze pieces meant to look like the trunks of trees native to the area, such as Magnolia and Dogwoods.

“And so if you were to lie down in the fountain and look up, what you will see is an amazing kaleidoscope of floating trees with scraps that are made from textiles that are Carolina blue,” Hood said.

Both the “floating nest” and plant-covered crown designs also include a water wall, a reference to the fountain that previously stood at the park.

What’s next for McColl Park?

In addition to hearing from Hood and his team and seeing mock-ups of the final concepts for the park, attendees at Thursday’s open house also had the chance to provide feedback on the plans.

Members of the Hugh McColl Park Coalition, the group leading the fundraising for the project, will also meet with the design team to give their thoughts, co-chair Cyndee Patterson said.

Patterson added that fundraising is ongoing, with a goal of raising $10 million. Of that money, $7 million will go toward construction, and the remaining $3 million would serve as an endowment for the park’s upkeep.

Hood’s team said they’ll work to finalize a design and execute it alongside Charlotte-based Bolton & Menk to “see this through to completion and construction in about the next year and a half.”