Atlanta Parks

[427MM]

Hey Atlanta Lovers,
I’m doing a project on City of Atlanta Parks and Stone Mountain. If you have good information please feel free to post it. Also, in the past I have seen some wonderful pictures of parks around the city and I would greatly appreciate it if the people who posted them would either repost them or direct me to the thread where they are located.

Thanks

Piedmont Park









Centenial Park







Stone Mountain Park




Any info on this project?


And of course the future of ATL, hopefully that is.



These parks don’t just have an effect on the city as a whole, they often times spur development near them. This is another aspect that I am curious in. I know that Centennial has seen many great things going on around it lately. Also, are there any new parks planned?
Thanks

[Andrea]

The city's largest park is Chastain, I believe, and they've recently released a new master plan. It's online at the Chastain Park Conservancy.

[NativeAtlantan]

The City of Atlanta recently completed the purchase of the land that the Bellwood Quarry sits on (or in?). This will be turned into a water reservoir and surrounded by more than 300 acres, I believe, which would make it the largest park in the city, by a considerable margin. The land is on the west side of Atlanta and the park will be known as Westside Park. Here is an article about it in the Atlanta Business Chronicle: http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlan...6/daily43.html

There are many other pockets of land dotted along the proposed path of the beltline that will, hopefully, one day be turned into parkland. You can find more info at www.beltline.org .

The Trust for Public Land is probably more active in Atlanta right now than any other city in the country.

The next to last picture you show is the 5th St. bridge near GA Tech. This project is finished.

[NativeAtlantan]

Interesting....this article on the city's website does not recognize Chastain as one of the larger city parks. I am guessing it has to do with the fact that most of Chastain is a golf course?

http://www.atlantaga.gov/media/nr_quary_063006.aspx

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by NativeAtlantan

Interesting....this article on the city's website does not recognize Chastain as one of the larger city parks. I am guessing it has to do with the fact that most of Chastain is a golf course?

http://www.atlantaga.gov/media/nr_quary_063006.aspx

Probably because the park is in Buckhead. Chastain is the largest park in the city, but the northside generally ejoys "Least Favored" status when it comes to city government.

[sprtsluvr8]

Freedom Park is one of Atlanta's newest green spaces and one of my favorites, built around the Carter Center and Freedom Pkwy. In the google earth image, Freedom Pkwy runs North-South and the park is all of the green space on both sides of the parkway...you can see the bike paths throughout the park. Then in the middle part of the photo the park turns to the East and encompasses the Carter Center (the circles) at the bottom of the photo. Freedom Park has some nice open grassy areas and some shady spots with large older trees. The area around the Carter Center is beautifully landscaped with a Japanese Garden, a Peace Garden and a Rose Garden. The photos are from flickr...there are lots more.







Peace Garden



Reflecting Pool

[sprtsluvr8]

Woodruff Park is located Downtown across Peachtree Street from Fairlie-Poplar and beside Georgia State campus. It has some great fountains and statues. Because of its central location, Woodruff draws political rallies, coporate outings, fundraisers, protests, students, lunch eaters, and homeless folks.

[sprtsluvr8]

Hurt Park is the entrance to Georgia State University, located across Courtland Street from Alumni Hall and behind Hurt Plaza. There is a beautiful fountain in center of the photo...I couldn't find a good photo of the fountain.


(flickr)

[smArTaLlone]

Originally Posted by Greg

Any info on this project?

This is the 5th street bridge and was completed last year. It connects the GA Tech campus with Midtown and GREATLY improved the pedestrian experience crossing the freeway.

[dante2308]

the 5th Street Bridge has vines growing on the vine stands now and the grass is dying due to lack of watering. No other new news on it.

[djkix]

Originally Posted by smArTaLlone

This is the 5th street bridge and was completed last year. It connects the GA Tech campus with Midtown and GREATLY improved the pedestrian experience crossing the freeway.

i think the intention was good but the view is severly obsured. you can no longer see the highway (debatable whether one wants to see it or not) as one walks across and the grand "city view" is lost, if that makes any sense. it's also very concrete without any impressive characteristics that would make a pedestrian stop and appreciate the bridge. and while there are patches of lawn, it's not a place where you'd want to bring a beach towel, lay down and read a book on a nice day (you'd get lung cancer by the time you finished chapter 1). ga tech fans now tailgate there on gamedays but seriously, the air is just disgusting.

[atl2phx]

Originally Posted by djkix

i think the intention was good but the view is severly obsured. you can no longer see the highway (debatable whether one wants to see it or not) as one walks across and the grand "city view" is lost, if that makes any sense. it's also very concrete without any impressive characteristics that would make a pedestrian stop and appreciate the bridge. and while there are patches of lawn, it's not a place where you'd want to bring a beach towel, lay down and read a book on a nice day (you'd get lung cancer by the time you finished chapter 1). ga tech fans now tailgate there on gamedays but seriously, the air is just disgusting.

although it's not a true park space - i don't think anyone expected the 5th street bridge to attract pedestrians to lay down a towel, catch some rays and pop out a cooler of sierra nevada. please, somebody help us if our goal in atlanta is to draw praise and recognition to interstate overpass projects.

on the other hand, the 5th street bridge is far and away better than any other downtown overpass in atlanta.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by djkix

... it's also very concrete without any impressive characteristics that would make a pedestrian stop and appreciate the bridge.

I'd love it if we had some stone bridges around Atlanta, or more bridges with decorative concrete work or exposed steel. Even the rounded arch railroad bridges like the ones on Whitehall, Ponce, MLK and Stratford, Confederate and Edie, etc., offer much more visual interest. Bridges are major landmarks and they afford a wonderful opportunity for good urban design. Sadly, most of ours are terribly boring.

[atl2phx]

Originally Posted by Andrea

I'd love it if we had some stone bridges around Atlanta, or more bridges with decorative concrete work or exposed steel. Even the rounded arch railroad bridges like the ones on Whitehall, Ponce, MLK and Stratford, Confederate and Edie, etc., offer much more visual interest. Bridges are major landmarks and they afford a wonderful opportunity for good urban design. Sadly, most of ours are terribly boring.

adrea - is this your acquiescence on the existence of the connector?

stone bridges across the downtown connector bridges would be a nice diffrentiator - if they would invest in a design that was substantial and unique. although, in atlanta, it would be too easy to make a cheap replication of stone craftsmanship (like the nightmare on peachtree that took the place of planet hollywood).

i like your idea of recalling the past railroad history of atlanta. i think that would be really nice.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by atl2phx

adrea - is this your acquiescence on the existence of the connector?

Never, atl2phx! We probably won't see stone bridges on the connector until it is dismantled and converted to proper urban boulevards. But in the meantime I don't see why we couldn't devote a little more attention to the design of bridges on our other streets.

[sprtsluvr8]

From ChastainParkConservancy.org:

Chastain is a 260+ acre park, the largest in the City of Atlanta, in a highly underserved area with a growing population that includes multifamily residents. There are no other regional parks from Chamblee to Vinings, from Peachtree Creek to Sandy Springs.

Chastain Park is an historic park, designed to be a world-class park with state of the art recreational facilities in its heyday in the 1940s. Those facilities—the horse park, pool, golf course, tennis center, and amphitheatre—have expanded to serve thousands of people every year. The newest additions to the park are the recreation center, added in the 1970s, the 3.4 miles of PATH, added in the 1990s, and a children’s playground added in its current location in 2000, combining to bring in hundreds more to the park every month. The variety of recreational offerings makes Chastain one of the most diverse of any of the City parks.

[atl2phx]

greg - there are still quite a few parks to consider such as grant park and candler park. i think okland cemetery is even part of the city's park system.

you can find a full list of ATL city parks at:

http://www.atlantaga.gov/government/...locations.aspx

[427MM]

Great, thanks so much for the input guys. I sure do love the foliage in your area of the country. One question, if the beltline does happen, would Marta then have a complete beltline around the city? Or, will they siply go around the upper half?

[sprtsluvr8]

It isn't planned for MARTA to be in charge of the Beltline transit, but I bet in the end MARTA will be operating it. The Beltline will make a complete crooked 22-mile circle through dozens of the city's historic neighborhoods...and will have transfer stations where it intersects with MARTA. It seems pretty certain the Beltline will materialize...the city has been purchasing the land for it and working deals for a couple of years. The first phases of it actually began today.

[dante2308]

[QUOTE=sprtsluvr8;3117039]It isn't planned for MARTA to be in charge of the Beltline transit, but I bet in the end MARTA will be operating it. The Beltline will make a complete crooked 22-mile circle through dozens of the city's historic neighborhoods...and will have transfer stations where it intersects with MARTA. It seems pretty certain the Beltline will materialize...the city has been purchasing the land for it and working deals for a couple of years. The first phases of it actually began today.

Pretty optimistic of yah. People are still calling it a pipe dream despite the progress to date.