An Atlanta City Council committee is to consider an ordinance Tuesday creating a public park, to be called Doctor’s Memorial Park, to honor the physicians at a hospital that was one of the few in the nation controlled or operated by African-Americans.
The park would be created on city-owned land at 500 Fairburn Road SW at Benjamin E. Mays Drive, near the former Southwest Hospital, according to an agenda item of the Community Development & Human Resources Committee.
Residents of the Fairburn/Mays Community have requested a neighborhood park, the agenda says. The green space, to be maintained by the Department of Parks and Recreation, would have an open lawn, playground and exercise equipment.
Southwest Hospital was founded in the 1960s by the Society of Catholic Medical Mission Sisters. It was a private, licensed, nonprofit hospital with 125 beds. It closed in 2009. Today, its building houses the Atlanta Center for Medical Research, which renovated and reopened the facility in 2014.
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