A few days ago, Ebony Tuff was riding her bike around her neighborhood when she stumbled upon Buckhead Triangle Park, a .7-acre patch of land at Peachtree Street and Roswell Road.
“I told my friend, that little thing is not a park,” said Tuff, an avid bike-rider who has lived in a Buckhead high-rise for five years. “I like to have picnics and ride my bike, but I end up going to Piedmont Park to do it. I want to ride my bike closer to home. And my neighbors want to have some place to walk their dogs.”
For all that Buckhead has — shopping, restaurants, fabulous homes and prestige — it is noticeably lacking in parks and green space.
In Atlanta City Council District 7, where most of Buckhead is located, there are about 80 acres of public green space, according to city estimates. That makes the district the most under parked area of one of the most under parked major cities in the country.
“For all of the things for Buckhead to brag about, this is a pretty big hole,” said the district’s councilman Howard Shook.
Shook and Denise Starling, executive director of the Buckhead Area Transportation Management Association (BATMA), are hoping to begin what might be the long and expensive process of adding more parks. Through BATMA Starling has launched the Livable Buckhead Initiative (LBI) to identify areas in District 7 in need of more green space, and to eventually secure them.
“We want to recreate a sense of place to activate the community and give it appeal,” Starling said. “We held the [2008] Dogwood Festival in the parking lot [ of Lenox Square Mall]. That was sad. We just don’t have space to do those types of things.”
LBI estimates it will need tens of millions of dollars to buy land in exclusive Buckhead to build parks. The public-private partnership plans to accomplish this by getting grants from the federal government and through conservation trusts. No tax money has been devoted to the initiative, although there could be a time when the city will be asked to pitch in.
Atlanta has increased park and green space acreage to around 5,000 from 3,508 in 2001, according to a study by Park Pride. But the city’s 7.7 acres of parks per 1,000 residents is still less than half the national average.
The largest area for parks is District 12 in Southeast Atlanta, with more than 630 acres, followed by District 11 in Southwest Atlanta with 557 acres. District 8, which has portions of Buckhead, has more than 500 acres of parks, mostly consumed by Chastain Park and Atlanta Memorial Park. The rest of the district has about 55 scattered acres.
The Historic Fourth Ward Park opened recently in District 2 with 17 acres as part of an Atlanta Beltline project that will ultimately bring 1,200 new acres of green space to Atlanta. The city has been devoting most of its park planning capacity to the Beltline project, which is one of the reasons why the LBI initiative was launched.
George Dusenbury, commissioner of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, the city is “excited that (LBI) recognizes the need” for more parks. Dusenbury announced in a recent speech Atlanta is no longer last among the nation’s 25 largest cities in the percentage of land devoted to parks. Atlanta has improved to 24th.
But little of that has trickled up to Buckhead.
Kathy Collura, president of the Peachtree Heights East Neighborhood Association, said more parks are needed to relieve the stress on the existing ones.
“It is pretty clear that we need more parks, because the parks that we do have are so heavily used and it is hard to keep them up,” Collura said.
Starling said private and corporate parks and oversized yards make it appear as if Buckhead has plenty of green space, masking the need for a major gathering spot.
“Our problems are not considered problems by some people,” Starling said. “A lot of times, when we go to get funding and they say, ‘You are Buckhead. Do it yourself.’”
But it’s not that simple. Buckhead is one of the most expensive zip codes in the city, and, as Shook says, “transactions are going for $500 per square foot.” So while parks are not common, billion-dollar glass buildings are, which add to Atlanta’s bottom line and tax base.
Shook said at least two deals are in the works and announcements could be made as early as May. “What we are looking at is a long-term plan that would cost tens of millions of dollars,” Shook said. “But we are taking it just a bite at a time.”
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