Military Entrance Processing Station

The Charlotte Military Entrance Processing Station and the city of Charlotte have a relationship stretching back to the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The Mecklenburg County Draft Board, which first served the military entrance processing function, was originally located in the Coddington Building at the corner of West Trade and Graham Streets. In 1941, the station moved to the Quartermaster Depot on Statesville Avenue where it operated until December 1967. By then known as the Charlotte Armed Forces Entrance and Examination Station (AFEES), it relocated to 914 Pecan Avenue, where it would remain for the next 18 years.

In January 1982, the name AFEES was changed to Military Enlistment Processing Station (MEPS). The word "Enlistment" was replaced by "Entrance" the following year, creating the current designation, Military Entrance Processing Station.

The station moved again in November 1984, to the Charles R. Jonas Federal Building on West Trade Street, diagonally across from its original 1930's location. The federal building housed both the courthouse and the post office until the post office moved to a new location in the early 1980s. The Charlotte MEPS operated in the space first occupied by the post office until 2003, when the station then moved to a facility on Tyvola Centre Drive, at the corner of South Tryon Street, where it remained for a decade.

The Charlotte MEPS officially occupied the newly constructed, purpose-built facility on Whitehall Park on January 25, 2013.