A 70-mile drive just to jump in a pool may border on the excessive. But not to the Welchels.
With Piedmont Park having opened its refurbished 6,500-square-foot pool, Kevin Welchel had no hesitation in loading up the car and commuting from Rome to ply the azure waters of Midtown with his two daughters.
"I would rather drive down to Piedmont Park than use my park up there," said Welchel, a former Midtown resident now living in Floyd County.
"The pool is worth the drive," he said.
This is a high time for the park, with a burgeoning farmer's market every Saturday morning, its remodeled playground and foremost, the remodeled pool, which is drawing boffo early reviews.
With the dedication of its restored historic bathhouse next Saturday, the pool is the centerpiece amenity for the first phase of the Piedmont Park Conservancy's $41-million expansion of the park.
And if public response to the controversial new parking deck is still undecided, the water is just fine.
Welchel was in a long string of recliners of men and women sunbathing one day this week.
Nearby, at a table under an umbrella, 8-year-old Gabrielle Allen, a member of the Atlanta Dolphins swim team, pronounced the pool "really cool."
The pool has a fountain area, a lap section and a "current" that takes children for a ride and exercisers for a workout by walking against it.
"We've been raving about it. It's a thumbs up," said Gabrielle's mother, Synthia Allen. "They've designed it so there are different things to do, and even though it is small, it is spread out."
Thus far, the conservancy says the pool averages about 250 paid visitors a day—- $4 for adults, $2 for children.
But that figure doesn't count visitors with season passes or those who come for the free swim from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. weekdays, said Conservancy Vice President Monica Thornton.
Elsewhere, the park has added 53 acres of usable land, which in the first phase is being transformed into walking trails, gardens and a lot of passive space.
The next phase, starting in 2011, will focus more on amenities like a skate park, a carousel and boccie, a lawn bowling game imported from Italy.
"This is going to be the green-space mecca of Atlanta," said Mary Pat Matheson, executive director of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. "You'll be able to walk from Westminster Drive to 10th Street without seeing a car."
It was that notion of a traffic-free park, and the controversial parking deck that was part of the Botanical Garden's own $30 million expansion, that dominated the discussion about the Conservancy's expansion.
Friends of Piedmont Park, an advocacy group, unsuccessfully sued to stop the tower, arguing it would draw more cars into the park and would use up land.
"There was the feeling that the park would become overcrowded," said Martha Berlin of Morningside, who brought her two children to the pool. "I don't think people could envision it."
The parking garage now blends into a hillside. Cars enter the deck either through the botanical garden's entrance off Piedmont Avenue or from Monroe Drive, where the access road traverses what had been kudzu-covered hill.
The deck splits its 750 spaces between the park and the botanical garden and charges about $2 an hour.
Synthia Allen, who used the deck, said while the controversy was ongoing, she sided somewhat with the Friends of Piedmont Park but now believes the fuss was misplaced.
"It is sort of like you don't know what is good for you until someone puts it in front of your face," she said.
This week, however, the deck wasn't seeing much use during the day. Thornton said that was because most visitors use the park after 5 p.m.
Welchel, the dad who drove from Rome, said he opposed the deck when he lived in Midtown and refused to support it today.
"I think Atlanta could have done without that parking deck," he said. "It would be ridiculous for me to pay when I was against it. I can park on the street for free."
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