The Riverside community near Six Flags in south Cobb does not have a public park.
Community members were excited in 2020 when the county was awarded a $75,000 matching grant from the Atlanta United Foundation to build a mini-pitch soccer field at a planned park near the Riverside Epicenter, bringing a park to an area that is notably underserved, lower-income with a population that is majority-minority.
A mini-pitch is a small, enclosed field made of artificial turf or another hard surface, ideal for urban areas because they do not require the acreage and grass of a full field.
The original plan pitched to the community was a pocket park repurposing a county service road. It would have included the soccer mini-pitch, a community garden, a walking trail and exercise stations, and it was deliberately placed near a transit stop to be more accessible. Leaders at the neighboring Riverside Epicenter had offered some land for a parking lot.
Three years later, nothing has been built, and the soccer field will now be placed in an existing park about four miles away.
“It would have been a new park — all this stuff, for a community that is a park desert,” said Matt Stigall, who helped organize plans for the park in hopes of bringing soccer to transit stations. “It was connected to transit — that was the whole entire idea to begin with.”
County spokesman Ross Cavitt said the pocket park — minus the soccer pitch — will still be placed at that location, and the plans are being finalized.
The decision to move the mini-pitch caused disagreement on the Board of Commissioners last week when Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, who was the District 4 commissioner when the plan was developed, pushed back on why the park was being moved.
“The park project — that we had planned for and had community meetings with respect to — to buoy this area of the county was now going to have that project moved to an area that is miles away from the Six Flags area in more of a single-family home residential community,” Cupid said.
But current District 4 Commissioner Monique Sheffield said the pitch needed to be moved because of project logistics with the Riverside Epicenter and the proximity to “seedy” hotels and motels in that area.
“There is grave concern with this location being right off I-20,” she said. “While we have some of the crime under control, there is still crime on Riverside.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Monica DeLancy, a resident and advocate for tenants in the Riverside area, said moving the soccer pitch to Wallace Park makes sense.
“You already do have kids going to that park because of baseball, football — it’s already a sports complex,” she said. “That’s not to say that another park cannot go in the Riverside corridor.”
The Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved the plans last week over Cupid’s opposition and named Sweetwater Mission, a nonprofit based in south Cobb, to manage the grant.
The county will also be renovating the basketball court and making other improvements to Wallace Park. The county’s total cost from the parks department budget will be $93,000. The $75,000 grant for the mini-pitch brings the estimated total to $168,000.
The goal of the grant program through the Atlanta United Foundation and Local Initiatives Support Corporation is to build 100 mini-pitches “to increase access to safe sports activities, specifically soccer, for youth in underserved communities.” The push is being made throughout the state and ahead of the 2026 Soccer World Cup, which will include Atlanta as one of the host cities.
Cupid said the intent of the project is to be “visible and accessible to an underinvested community.” Moving the mini-pitch field to the existing park undermines that mission, she said.
But Sheffield disagreed: “I’m making decisions that would benefit all parties, not just focused on the Riverside area. There’s an area near Wallace Park that can benefit from having the pitch park.”
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