Plans for Buckhead graves trouble preservationists

A public hearing on the application is scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday at Atlanta City Hall.

The commission can recommend approval, approval with conditions or deny the application to the city council, which has the final say.

Christine McCauley, executive director of the Buckhead Heritage Society, said the graves' relocation would be a loss of an important historic resource. The society opposes the application.

"We think this will be a real loss for Buckhead," McCauley said. "It would be a shame to lose this last bit of history."

Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition, said the group is also against the proposal for historic preservation reasons.

"There will be considerable opposition to this from all quarters," Massell said.

Community Preservation LLC's representative, Brandon Marshall, purchased the land from Fulton County for $58,627 in 2006.

Marshall declined to comment Tuesday on his plans for the cemetery site.

The burial ground, comprising less than a quarter acre, contains the marked and unmarked graves of African-American men and women. The number interred ranges from 45 to more than 100, according to preservationists and a genealogical report of the cemetery filed with the application.

The few remaining headstones are deteriorating or have been vandalized.

The cemetery is all that remains of what was once Macedonia Park, a subdivision of modest homes built in 1921. There were grocery stores, restaurants and churches in the community.

But the community was razed in the 1940s after Fulton County confiscated black landowners' property by eminent domain to make way for a park.

Bagley Park, named after a former black businessman and former Macedonia Park resident, was built in 1952. It was renamed Frankie Allen Park in 1980 after a popular Atlanta police officer and baseball umpire.