Also there was an article in The Technique (GT's student newspaper) which specifically mentioned that Georgia Tech is very near to running out of space to build anything and has essentially reached its eastern border (Spring Street). Therefore one may infer that the mid-rise building and parking lot and in the area bounded by 5th, Spring, and W. P'tree (not including the lofts on the Abercrombie border) would be built up into usable space for the Institute and not a pocket park.
And what is this about wanting to set out a picnic in a park and the horror of having to go ALL the way to Piedmont Park? As someone who grew up in the NYC ( I mention this as NYC was cited a few times as a place with urban pocket parks), these neighbourhood parks did NOT have picnic areas and the like. There were swings, see-saws, basketball courts, tennis courts, and monkey-bars. The ground was generally concrete or cobblestone. What made them parks in NYC-eyes were the presence of large trees. If we ever felt a need to picnic it was considered a treat to go to the larger parks, i.e. Central, Prospect, Van Cortlandt, Flushing Meadows, among others. If you live in midtown and don't want to go to Piedmont then go to Georgia Tech! There is plenty of greenspace there and if one is respectable acting and looking (i.e., not using the grounds of the Institute as one's personal toilet) then one can relax there to one's content. There is Yellowjacket Park in the centre of the school that provides plenty of skyline views and sunshine as well as at least two acres or so of grassy field.
I argue that due to the climate and topography of the areas along Peachtree Street that we ought to focus on REDUCING the spacing between venues. Note well that Peachtree is on a ridge and therefore nearly all roads lead UP to P'tree....parks are great but I fear that they really wouldn't be used as often as we would like to think. Another reason as to why not? We have not, nor is it likely that we will ever reach the critical mass necessary for the making such urban greenspaces actually worth the trouble. Atlanta is a interesting animal in the sense that although we lack natural boundaries, we still have a freeway on the west side (our concrete river), a university, a globally-known studio and company HQ and Atlantic Station (all going no where anytime soon), a freeway on the north (dividing Midtown and Brookwood), the city's major park and botanical gardens,a historic district, and Freedom Parkway ( a bit of a stretch but who knows in the future?) on the east side, and a freeway on the south side. These delineated area is quite walkable and should be the focus of intense development. With the development of the park in the Old 4th Ward area and along the Beltline this should suffice for parks in the sense of what was mentioned earlier: places for picnic-ing, etc.
Personally one way that we could preserve the canopy within the city centre is to remake the major thoroughfares with tree-lined medians, and to get wild for a moment, palm tree-lined! Certain palms do quite well here (reference many properties in the Druid Hills/Lake Claire/Candler Park which have a lovely amount of palms) and would leave a mark in the mind of a winter-weary visitor to our city in the winter. Palm trees automatically place the idea of vacation spot in many people's minds...we ought to capitalise on that!
Ok enough of the wild dreams now.
Cheers.