Government isn’t always good at making the best use of the land it owns. A case in point comes from Charlotte, and involves Central Piedmont Community College. CPCC just keeps on growing and its latest land acquisition targets are the Double Door Inn, a much-loved music club that’s operated in an old house across the street from the community college since since 1973 and a strip shopping center featuring CP Text Books, Shiraz Grill, Fortune Cookie Chinese, Red Sea Ethiopian and Ereatrien Cuisine and Bar, Cuisine Malaya, City Deli & Bagel and Crown Station Coffee House & Pub.
What’s rather near the Double Door and wedged in on a tight space that’s surrounded by CPCC’s main campus? American Legion Memorial Stadium, which is owned by Mecklenburg County. Memorial Stadium is 80-years-old and seats about 16,000 these days. It use to seat more, but the capacity was reduced after a section of seats collapsed in 2009. The stadium is used for the seven home games a year of the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse — yes, there is such a thing — and by the occasional high school football game plus some local sports championships. In a rational world, CPCC wouldn’t be displacing local businesses but would rather being putting new buildings on the site of that old football stadium. Good luck though ever getting the county to give up the land or get rid of the stadium.
