A $9.6 million campaign to make Chattahoochee Nature Center more inviting

The Chattahoochee Nature Center (CNC), a focal point to invite people to experience the natural environment and the Chattahoochee River, has launched a $9.6 million capital campaign to make the center even more welcoming.

The campaign will fund several projects to make CNC more open and more inviting to both young people and adults.

“This campaign will basically complete the renovation of the center,” said Chris Sawyer, honorary chair of the campaign who has been involved with CNC from its earliest origins.

That history dates to the 1970s when Boisfeuillet Jones, the first president of the Woodruff Foundation, gave the initial money to buy some land to establish the center.

“We will turn 50 years old in June of next year,” said Natasha Rice, CNC’s president and CEO, who joined the nonprofit nearly four years ago. “The Woodruff Foundation has been wonderful from the get-go.”

The $2.5 million Woodruff grant is the largest gift CNC has received for the “Growing Tomorrow’s Nature Enthusiasts” campaign. 

Other major donors include $1 million from the James M. Cox Foundation, $250,000 from the Waterfall Foundation, $160,000 from the Georgia Power Foundation, $328,000 from the Tony Parker family, $100,000 from Judy and Walter Hoyt, $75,000 from the Koch/Georgia-Pacific Foundation as well as $558,000 from CNC’s board of trustees and $500,000 from Fulton County.

Rice said CNC has raised nearly $6.3 million, but it still has a “delta” of more than $3 million to raise so it can complete a significant upgrade for its core facilities.

A centerpiece of the campaign will be to move the River Welcome Center from its current location to a new, more visible location next to Kingfisher Hall, which will also be transformed to be more open to nature by removing concrete walls and replacing them with glass.

The projects included in the campaign will be phased as CNC embarks on a mission of musical chairs.

For example, the first project will be to move the existing maintenance and operations facility from the Meadow area to another location that is less public. That building will be transformed into the Meadow Learning Center, now in a building that will be redeveloped into the new River Welcome Center. 

“As our partners provide the money, we will complete the projects,” said Rick Hirsekorn, a board member who is serving as the capital campaign construction manager. He said the first phase will be open in September 2026. “We are going to stay open during construction. We will be staging everything so that we are able to stay in operation.”

Hirsekorn, a retired vice president of the Jacobs engineering firm, has played this role before.

“Rick also supervised the construction of the bridge and Boardwalk,” said Jim Stokes, a retired Alston & Bird attorney who is chairing the capital campaign.

The pedestrian bridge and the boardwalk connected the CNC campus to the Chattahoochee River, and it opened in March 2022.

“With Rick involved, we do everything under budget and with top quality,” said Sawyer, senior counsel with Alston & Bird, who used to be the national chair of the Trust for Public Land.

Back in the 1990s, a major initiative was launched to create greater public access to the Chattahoochee River from its headwaters in Helen all the way to Columbus. The Woodruff Foundation gave $25 million to the initiative, as did the federal government. A private campaign raised another $25 million.

“I wanted this to become the center for the Chattahoochee River from Helen to Columbus,” Sawyer said of CNC. “Essentially, it’s in the middle between Helen and Columbus. And in terms of populations, it is in the middle.”

Introducing young people to nature and educating them about the environment is a central CNC’s activity.

“We serve 52,000 school children a year,” Rice said.

Alicia Thompson, CNC’s senior director of learning and engagement, said the Center has a partnership with Atlanta Public Schools, which provides visits for every first grader, and Fulton County Schools, which provides visits for every second grader.

“The Chattahoochee Nature Center is a gateway experience for a lot of people,” said Thompson,” said Thompson, who added the Center gives students a chance to see wildlife up close as they recover from an injury before being reintroduced to the wild or remain in a safe haven because they would not be able to survive in the great outdoors. “It’s a wildlife experience. Usually, our students are here for three hours.”

CNC also has a summer camp that currently serves about 2,500 campers each year. Once Kingfisher Hall is reconfigured, the camp is expected to serve at least 3,000. There are numerous amenities — a butterfly attraction, a beaver habitat, miles of trails, three ponds available for canoeing and a Unity Garden, which grows fresh produce for the North Fulton Community Charities food pantry.

The Center is a 127-acre space where both young people and adults can experience and learn about nature while bringing them closer to the environment.

“We are a multi-faceted jewel,” said Helen Tapp, a longtime board member who also serves on the capital campaign.

David Miles, CNC’s senior director of development, said the organization invited a dozen partners and stakeholders to provide input on how to upgrade and improve the Center. The consensus was to “welcome all people to the river,” he said. About 70 percent of the population living in metro Atlanta gets water from the Chattahoochee.

The end result of the campaign will be to make the spaces more flexible by creating more indoor/outdoor facilities, making them more inviting to the public. It also will open more opportunities to raise money by renting the facilities for events.

“Our goal is to make the Center more usable all year long and not just in summer,” said Rice, adding that 85 percent of its campus is outdoors. “As part of our campaign, we will have a renovation, a rebuild and a reuse.”