Neighbors near Madison Central Park packed a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board meeting on Tuesday night, asking officials to keep the south Charlotte green space intact rather than let it become a youth baseball complex. The park sits on land owned by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and residents say a proposal from a local sports league would fill it with athletic fields, restrooms, and concession stands.
The proposal comes from the Dilworth Youth Sports Association, which has floated converting Madison Central Park into a baseball complex, according to Queen City News. That plan traces back further than most residents realized when pushback first surfaced: CMS and DYSA signed an Extended Use Agreement on February 1, 2026, authorizing plans for up to three baseball or softball fields, batting cages, and related athletic infrastructure at the park, according to Neighborhood Link. CMS officials have said no plans for the park property have actually been approved, per Queen City News.
Residents who spoke at the school board meeting on Tuesday raised concerns about increased traffic, more noise, and the loss of green space, according to Queen City News. Those worries aren't new. Meeting notes from 2010, when Madison Central Park was established on the Pinewood Elementary campus at 901 Seneca Place, documented assurances from CMS that organized sports fields would not be built there specifically to avoid traffic impacts on the surrounding neighborhood, according to a Change.org petition tied to the opposition effort.
A League Facing a Real Field Shortage
DYSA president Chris Pineno said in late July that the league plans to resubmit a scaled-back proposal for two baseball fields instead of three, though the same Neighborhood Link report notes that no formal two-field amendment has been filed to replace the original February agreement. The compromise reflects genuine strain on youth sports capacity in the area: Dilworth Little League and Myers Park Trinity Little League added a combined 20 teams between 2021 and 2026, a surge that has outpaced available athletic facilities across south Charlotte, per the Ledger's reporting.
Meanwhile, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation surveys gathered between 2019 and 2026 have consistently shown residents asking for dog parks, pickleball courts, and mountain biking trails ahead of youth sports fields, the report notes. That gap between what county park planners are building and what youth leagues need has pushed organizations like DYSA to seek space from school districts instead. Under standard CMS joint-use arrangements, private youth sports organizations pay no rent to use school land but must fund construction themselves while giving school programs priority scheduling, per the same account.
Equity Questions and a Shrinking Lawn
Madison Central Park sits on Pinewood Elementary's campus, a Title I school, and DYSA leadership has acknowledged that student participation from Pinewood in the sports league is currently close to zero, according to the Change.org petition. That detail has sharpened questions from residents about whether public school land should prioritize an outside league's fields over the neighborhood children who actually attend the school.
Opposition has organized quickly under the banner Save Madison Park, a group that has drawn more than 80 participating households and gathered over 500 signatures on an online petition urging CMS to preserve the property as open green space, according to the Ledger. Neighborhood spatial tracking cited by Neighborhood Link shows that 68% of Pinewood Elementary's original open green space has already been reallocated or built over since 2010, leaving Madison Central Park as the last major contiguous open lawn left on the campus.
What Residents Are Demanding Before Any Vote
Surrounding residents have formally asked CMS to require independent studies evaluating traffic, parking, noise, stormwater, and environmental impacts before approving any construction at the Pinewood Elementary site, according to Neighborhood Link. Whether the school board will require those studies, hold DYSA to a formally amended two-field plan, or move forward with the original February agreement remains unresolved after Tuesday's meeting, where board members heard directly from neighbors pressing to keep the park as it is.
