UPDATE: The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners approved the purchase of 40 acres adjacent to Lawrenceville's Alexander Park on Tuesday afternoon.
ORIGINAL STORY: One Gwinnett County park may be getting a whole lot bigger.
The county’s Board of Commissioners is slated to vote Tuesday on a plan to purchase more than 40 acres that border the already existing Alexander Park. The new addition to the park — located near the Lawrenceville-area intersection of Scenic Highway and Sugarloaf Parkway — would be dubbed the “Ezzard Nature Preserve at Alexander Park,” in honor of the property owner’s late husband and his father, according to county documents.
Drs. George P. Ezzard and Webster P. Ezzard were longtime physicians in Lawrenceville. George Ezzard, who died in 2002, was one of the founding physicians of the Gwinnett Hospital System, according an obituary published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
His wife, Polly Ann, hopes to sell the property adjacent to Alexander Park for just over $3.7 million. The county would pay for the land using 2009 SPLOST funds, according to documents.
The contract that’s scheduled to be voted on Tuesday calls for the county to “make every reasonable effort” to “preserve and protect” several sugar maple, black walnut and magnolia trees on the property.
Alexander Park opened in 2009. It currently consists of about 91 acres and features an 18-hole disc golf course, a lake for fishing and several miles of walking trails.
