Mecklenburg County leaders unveil new plans for $11.2M historic Latta Place
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Latta Place visitor center rendering. Perkins & Will is the architecture firm on the project. Rendering: Courtesy of Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation
Mecklenburg County leaders revealed the final design for historic Latta Place at a community meeting Thursday night in Huntersville.
Why it matters: This new iteration of Latta Place, previously Latta Plantation, will dive into the site's complicated past, placing more emphasis on the lives of the enslaved people who lived there than it previously did.
Catch up quick: Latta Place encompasses 16 acres within Latta Nature Preserve in Huntersville. The entire nature preserve covers around 1,540 acres.
- The county closed Latta Plantation in 2021 after a racist post from the nonprofit operating the site and ended its contract with Historic Latta Place Inc. The post was about a Juneteenth event that portrayed slave owners as refugees.
- County leaders have spent the subsequent years studying how leaders at other former plantations have confronted the past. Project leaders have also held community conversations and worked with historians to design the space.
By the numbers: The project will cost around $11.2 million, per Bert Lynn, director of Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation's Capital Planning Division. This figure includes everything from permitting to construction.
- Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation will manage the project.
What to expect: There will be a tribute to the enslaved, including the names of the 65 people who were known to be enslaved at Latta. The county describes it as a quiet space for reflection. This will be at the end of a self-guided interpretive trail.
- The trail will run through Latta Place and the nature preserve. It will explore the relationship inhabitants had with their surroundings, from the forest and the Catawba River to the cotton plantation. The trail, which will be ADA-accessible, will start with a space where visitors can pause to reflect and include interactive displays throughout.
- There will be a new 6,000-square-foot visitor center with a 1,200- to 1,500-square-foot meeting room for 75 to 80 people. It will also include exhibit space, a porch, lobby, exterior gallery, community space, staff offices and restrooms.
- Thursday's design presentation emphasized showing all sides of Latta Place, from the land to the history of the indigenous people, enslaved people, past landowners and where it stands today.
- Much of the visitor experience will be through "cultural memory" rather than objects, said Gina Ford, principal and co-founder of Agency Landscape + Planning, one of the agencies working on the project.
- There will also be gardens on the farmstead and an outdoor area where people can gather.
Zoom in: The goal is to make the site as authentic as possible. Latta House and the meat house, which are original to the farmstead, will remain, with some repairs planned.
- A few items will be removed: a small replica barn, a replica structure that served as a field office, a chicken coop and freestanding restrooms.
What's next: Construction is expected to start in late 2025, with an anticipated reopening in one year's time.
What they're saying: "Mecklenburg [County] had a huge number of plantations, so this is just one plantation story, and I'm interested in how it gets interpreted," said H.D. "De" Kirkpatrick, a Plaza Midwood resident whose family settled in Charlotte during the late 1700s.
- Kirkpatrick and his Myers Park High School classmate, Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, spoke about their entwined family histories. Jimmie's ancestors had been enslaved by De's ancestors.
- They're working on a book and have made a documentary together, Kirkpatrick told Axios.
- "I'm delighted the county is trying to do this in a clear, transparent way and deal honestly with the history of plantation life in Mecklenburg as well as plantation life here, because it's not a pretty story," De Kirkpatrick said.
