Arthur Blank Family Foundation

By MARIA SAPORTA / Staff

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank knows that you win some and you lose some.

But when it comes to maintaining and expanding the city's park space, "there is no finish line," says Blank, who has served as chairman of Mayor Shirley Franklin's Parks Commission.

Last week, the commission's recommendation to create a self-standing parks district to manage and oversee Atlanta's green space was shot down by the City Council in an override of the mayor's veto.

After the vote, Franklin was quoted as saying, "At some point, you have to move on to other things. I think it's dead for the rest of my term."

Those words are hard to hear for many Atlantans who strongly believe the city's parks must continue to be a priority for the Franklin administration and the City Council.

Blank draws upon a football analogy to make his point.

"The ball has been fumbled," he says. "It's on the ground, and we've got to pick it up and keep going with it."

Blank, who has not yet had an opportunity to talk to the mayor, says he's prepared to disband the commission if that's what she wants.

But he also knows that Franklin feels passionately about parks and green space. He proposes a "cooling-down period," and then reconnecting interested Atlantans around the issue in a couple of weeks.

"You don't give up," Blank says. "I'm not going to give up, my staff is not going to give up and the members of the Parks Commission aren't going to give up. A lot of people are committed to solving this problem."

On a per capita basis, Atlanta has "a fraction" of the amount of park space inother cities, Blank says. It also spends about one-third the budget on parks maintenance when measured against comparable cities.

Blank and his family foundation decided three years ago to make parks and green space inside I-285 a major priority --- pledging between $20 million and $30 million for land acquisition and maintenance.

The Blank Foundation plans to give away between $8 million and $9 million this year as part of its green-space initiative. When that money is gone, Blank says the foundation likely will renew the initiative, but he's not sure what form that will take.

"Green space is a lifetime issue," he says. "I don't have a term as a citizen."

But Blank is quick to say that the commission could have done a better job communicating with the City Council on how it came to the conclusion that a parks district would be the best solution for Atlanta.

"At the end of the day, I do think the City Council, if presented with the facts, and we work with them in a constructive and inclusive way, we will be able to come up with a solution to serve the people of the city," he says.

The model for a parks district has been successful in other major cities, such as Chicago. If council members could go to Chicago to learn about its parks district, perhaps they would have a greater appreciation of how one could work in Atlanta. In Chicago, the parks district receives dedicated funding so its budget is not vulnerable to being raided when there's a gap in the general fund.

Fellow Parks Commission member Ben Johnson, managing partner of the Alston & Bird law firm, also doesn't want to give up on a parks initiative.

"I would like to see there be enough dialogue with all the interested parties for everybody to understand why it's important to expand the amount of green space that we have," Johnson says. "More parks and more green space is good for everybody."

Franklin is understandably frustrated and disappointed that her initial run at creating a parks district failed. But she doesn't typically walk away from a tough situation. "I don't think we should give up," she said late last week. "We need to give council a chance to come back and tell us what they would like."

In an open-space forum last week, Franklin talked about how the late Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. unveiled a plan in 1968 to double the amount of city park space by 1983. Instead of adding another 3,000 acres, the city added 400 acres of park space.

In 2002, Franklin made a similar challenge to Atlanta to double the amount of green space to more than 6,000 acres within 10 years. Since then, the city has added about 300 acres.

The status quo is unacceptable. The community of Atlanta must find a way to protect and maintain the little green space we have left and to seize every opportunity to add to what we have.

Giving up won't get us there.