Arthur Blank Family Foundation

By MARIA SAPORTA/Staff

Piedmont Park may be one of the best-used and most popular parks in metro Atlanta.

Yet few people realize that when they go to Piedmont Park, they really are just visiting its southern half --- where the lakes, the ball fields, the meadow, the tennis courts and Oak Hill are located.

Of Piedmont Park's 186 acres, only 100 acres are in active use.

But now the Piedmont Park Conservancy wants to open up, improve and expand the northern area of the park. It has received a $100,000 grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, which will be matched by another $150,000 raised by the conservancy, to develop a strategic plan for the area known as the North Woods.

"If this all comes together, we can actually almost double the amount of usable area in the park," says Debbie McCown, executive director of the Piedmont Park Conservancy. "It's so exciting to be able to expand the park."

Before that happens, there are multiple issues to work out.

The city owns two 12.5-acre sites adjacent to Piedmont Park. One parcel, referred to as the Halpern property, contains a combined sewer overflow facility. (One idea would be to move the city's maintenance facility with its trucks on that site.)

The other site is known as the West property, and it is a large field that connects the northern end of the park almost to Ansley Mall.

The issue, however, is that the city property was not acquired by the parks department but by the Department of Public Works (and now may be under the control of the Watershed Management Department).

The conservancy is exploring adding that additional 25 acres to Piedmont Park.

"My attitude here is that anything is possible until you determine it's impossible," says Dianne Harnell Cohen, acting commissioner of the city's Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, when asked whether those sites could be transferred to her department.

Another key issue is the future development of the Belt Line, the out-of-service rail line that weaves through the eastern edge of the park. City Council President Cathy Woolard and the PATH Foundation, among others, are advocating to turn that corridor into "rails and trails" encircling the city.

The Norfolk Southern property that buffers the rail line could be converted into parkland as well, which would add another 10 to 11 acres.

But the real potential exists on the land already dedicated to Piedmont Park. Kudzu and other weeds blanket much of the land --- hiding the beautiful trees and green spaces on the northern end of the park.

Beyond the existing maintenance facilities, a dirt road leads to what could become a magical meadow, tucked away in the middle of the woods. The "upper meadow" is an area the conservancy would love to reclaim.

Going down the hill toward the area known as the off-leash dog park, one can see the remnants of the city's massive concrete CSO gutter that in its natural state used to be Clear Creek. Today, skateboarders and mountain bikers have turned the area into a mini-extreme sports complex that is a secret to everyone but the hard-core users.

The best way to see the North Woods is to walk along the railroad tracks as they head toward Ansley Mall. That's where nature's real delights unfold.

The railroad tracks cross over Clear Creek --- one of the true gems of the North Woods. Here is an amazingly scenic waterway that gives people an inkling of how Atlanta may have looked before exposed concrete gullies were built to carry sewage and stormwater.

"I couldn't believe I was in the middle of an urban environment that I thought I knew," says Cohen, who was struck by the beauty of the creek meandering through the woods. "If and when developed, it will be a remarkable asset to everytext in the area."

When I was growing up, the North Woods was called the "wilderness area" with multiple hiking trails, providing a green destination for Atlantans. During the winter, people would put nuts, berries and other treats on one of the most statuesque trees --- turning it into a Christmas tree for the birds. And the birds came.

And in the summer, children could attend a nature camp in the wooded area where they learned how to respect the environment and how to survive in the woods.

Over the years, the area became overgrown and a refuge for the homeless and those looking for an unpopulated area where they could engage in unwholesome behaviors.

Today, reclaiming the woods for the general public is one of the key goals for both the Piedmont Park Conservancy and the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

At present, the conservancy and the Botanical Garden each have purview over a section of the wooded area. The garden calls its part the Storza Woods, while Piedmont Park's area is the North Woods. Both organizations are talking about ways to open up more of the woods to the public and garden members.

The two groups also are exploring ways of jointly building a "green" parking deck that would serve both of them. Right now, they are looking at building a deck that would be built into a steep slope near the city's maintenance facilities behind Magnolia Hall.

"We want it to be a signature parking deck for the city of Atlanta," says Mary Pat Matheson, executive director of the Botanical Garden. She envisions that the deck would be stacked so that it would have a border of green space on every level and that it would not disrupt the older-growth trees that are on the top of the hill.

The deck would be accessible from the South Prado entrance into the park, and the Botanical Garden would turn its main entrance to face Piedmont Park rather than Piedmont Avenue.

As the conservancy works on a strategic plan for the area, it is meeting with neighborhood groups and park stakeholders to make sure they participate on the planned improvements.

No matter what, reclaiming a major portion of Piedmont Park will help Mayor Shirley Franklin fulfill her pledge of increasing the amount of usable parkland and natural green space in the city.

"Piedmont Park is a jewel, right in the middle of the city," Cohen says. "On a daily basis, it draws people from all over the region. Because of the dearth of park space that we have, it's wonderful to have the ability to open up to true public use a portion of the park that's almost as large as what's currently being used."

In many ways, the Piedmont Park Conservancy is blazing the green trail for the rest of Atlanta as it seeks to better maintain its existing parks and add to the amount of parkland for its residents and visitors. Already four other city parks are at various stages of forming their own conservancies.

Piece by piece, Atlanta may actually realize its dream of having vibrant parks all over the city connected with greenways and open spaces.

Piedmont Park is a good place to show how it can be done.

(c)2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.