If you go to the Myers Park High School Foundation's website, you'll find one clean date range for the 75th anniversary: September 22 through 26. A football game under the lights, a Saturday on the Quad, a ticketed evening program. Tidy, five days, done.
But look at what the Foundation's own alumni page has been quietly filling in around that week, and the picture changes. The 75th isn't a single event with a single weekend of traffic. It's the middle of a run that starts in mid-September and doesn't finish until mid-October, with six separate class cohorts converging on the same 62-acre campus at 2400 Colony Road at six different moments. If you live near Colony Road, Selwyn, or Park Road Shopping Center, the disruption you should plan for isn't one Saturday. It's five weeks.
What the Foundation Is Actually Planning for September 22 to 26
The headline week is real, and it's worth knowing what's actually in it. Myers Park High School opened in 1951, and the Foundation, working with current principal Robert Folk, has built a school-wide program around the 75th year rather than a single ceremony. Students get activities built around the decades and traditions of the school throughout the week. The anniversary itself is marked with a special home football game at Gus Purcell Stadium, with alumni seating and recognition built into the night. Then on Saturday, alumni are welcomed back to the Quad from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., with class gathering areas, school memorabilia, and food available for purchase. That rolls into a ticketed 4:30 p.m. community program in the stadium, with music, games, food trucks, and speakers recognizing past and present students and staff.
That's a full campus day, and if you're anywhere near Colony Road that Saturday afternoon and evening, you'll feel it. But it's also just one date on a longer calendar.
The Six Dates Nobody Publishes Together
Scroll further down the Foundation's alumni page and you'll find something the anniversary week press doesn't mention: a string of individual class reunions landing in the same window, each planned independently by its own class committee, each pulling its own wave of alumni back into the neighborhood.
| Class | Milestone | Date(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1966 | 60th reunion | September 11 to 13, 2026 |
| All classes | Official 75th anniversary week | September 22 to 26, 2026 |
| 1986 | 40th reunion | September 26, 2026 |
| 1971 | 55th reunion | October 3, 2026 |
| 1976 | 50th reunion | October 9 and 10, 2026 |
| 1964 | 80th birthday celebration | October 17, 2026 |
Line them up and the pattern is obvious once you see it: the Class of 1966 is already back in town nearly two weeks before the school's official celebration even opens. The Class of 1986's 40th reunion lands on the exact Saturday that closes the anniversary week, meaning campus hosts both the school-wide program and a standalone class reunion on the same day. Then three more reunions follow through mid-October, each with its own venue and guest list, each adding another few dozen to a few hundred alumni back on streets that don't usually see that kind of concentrated, out-of-town traffic.
From the first reunion to the last, that's 36 days. Anyone reading only the Foundation's front-page dates would plan for a weekend. The actual footprint is more than five weeks.
From the Quad to Park Road Shopping Center
The campus events are the visible part. The quieter part is where alumni actually eat and gather once they're back in town, and it isn't confined to Gus Purcell Stadium or the Quad.
The Class of 1964 has kept a standing lunch going for years: the first Monday of every month, 11:30 a.m., at Midwood Smoke House on the rear lot of Park Road Shopping Center. That's a regular fixture independent of the anniversary, which means it's already part of the neighborhood's normal rhythm. What changes this fall is the density around it. With reunions stacking up from mid-September through mid-October, the odds that any given week brings extra alumni traffic through that same Park Road corridor go up considerably, not because of one big weekend, but because six different class years are each making their own separate trip back.
If you live or shop near Park Road Shopping Center, this is worth knowing less as a warning and more as context. The uptick in unfamiliar faces at a familiar lunch counter this fall isn't random. It's alumni math.
Not the Only Milestone on the Calendar This Fall
Myers Park has a habit of aging its institutions into anniversaries at the same time. This is also the season Wing Haven Garden is marking its own centennial, a coincidence of timing that means two of the neighborhood's oldest institutions, one a garden founded in the 1920s and one a high school that opened in 1951, are both drawing return visitors to the same few blocks this fall. Neither anniversary was planned around the other. Both happen to land in 2026.
For a neighborhood that prides itself on institutional continuity, that's not filler trivia. It's a reasonable explanation for why September and October feel busier than a typical Charlotte fall, even without a single citywide event driving it.
What This Means If You Live Near Colony Road or Park Road
None of this requires action from a resident who isn't an alum. It's useful mainly as a translation key for five weeks that might otherwise feel unexplained.
Expect heavier evening traffic around Gus Purcell Stadium and the surrounding blocks of Colony Road on the anniversary football night, with a second smaller spike the following Saturday for the Quad and community program, and a third distinct spike that same Saturday afternoon and evening for the Class of 1986's reunion running in parallel. Expect scattered but real upticks in weekday lunch crowds at Park Road Shopping Center through early and mid-October as the 1971, 1976, and 1964 gatherings each bring their own smaller wave through. None of these individually rival a major citywide event. Stacked across five weeks, they add up to a neighborhood that's noticeably busier with familiar faces from decades ago, all at once, all within walking distance of campus.
If you've lived in Myers Park long enough to remember when Colony Road felt quieter in September, this is likely why this particular fall won't.
Myers Park has always been a neighborhood defined as much by who keeps coming back as by who lives here now. This fall just makes that visible on a calendar. If you're weighing a move into the neighborhood, or thinking about what your own home might be worth heading into a season with this much foot traffic and attention on the area, Katie Harrison knows these streets well enough to walk you through it. Let's Connect.
