New plan to enhance Piedmont Park will need our support

What an undertaking!

The Piedmont Park Conservancy unveiled its new comprehensive plan on April 24 that will guide the future growth, maintenance and use of Atlanta’s signature green space.

The 28th annual Landmark Lunch provided the venue of the “Big Reveal” with a keynote speech by Thomas Woltz, senior principal of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. His firm led the design work along with Atlanta-based Perez Planning and Design, which engaged the public — thousands of people — to weigh in on the plan.

“Since 1895 with the Cotton States and International Exposition, this piece of land has told the world who Atlanta is,” Woltz said. “That’s an extraordinary fact. For over a century, this land tells the outside world who Atlanta is and Atlanta’s values. Today, we celebrate the very best of what Atlanta is — in Piedmont Park.”

In short, Piedmont Park has something to everyone, and the public is passionate about what happens to the space we all feel belongs to us. Planners had to balance all the aspects of the park — from its ecological foundation to its amazing place in the city’s history — while planning for a vibrant future.

Doug Widener, president and CEO of the Piedmont Park Conservancy, said he is so pleased with how the plan has come together because it demonstrated the need “to be comprehensive from every perspective.”

After reviewing the entire plan, I commend all the work that has gone into developing the four core goals:

• Expand access to free public open space for all.
• Create a more people-friendly environment.
• Steward healthy and resilient natural systems.
• Plan for a fiscally sustainable and physically maintainable future.

The effort to plan for Piedmont Park’s future is amazingly complex. The plan calls for expanding the park to the north while improving its existing footprint. 

It gets complicated because the Piedmont Park Conservancy, founded in 1989 by the Friends of Piedmont Park, must perform a balancing act between all the various constituencies that impact the park. 

That includes the City of Atlanta, which has owned the land that is now Piedmont Park since 1904. The Conservancy has a Memorandum of Understanding with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. 

Widener said the city is open to discussing a new MOU now that the comprehensive plan has been released. “We are excited for those conversations to start,” he said.

The Atlanta Botanical Gardens (ABG) has a major impact on the park. Of Piedmont Park’s 185 acres, the Gardens leases 30 acres on the western edge, which are fenced and not freely accessible to the public. 

Yet the ABG wields tremendous influence in this town, so it’s more important than ever to balance the needs of the public versus the desires of the Gardens.

On the eastern edge of the park, the recently opened Atlanta Beltline trail travels through the space, and it is expected to bring millions more visitors to the existing to the six million who currently enjoy the park every year.

“This is really one of the most difficult knots to unravel,” Woltz said. “You already have a beloved park with a tremendous amount of activity. You’re about to expand to the north, and you have this one skinny area that belongs to Piedmont Park over a gorge with the Botanical Garden pressing down.”

Woltz described the squeezing of the park as a jugular, saying they had to get creative by creating a canopy walk and other pathways along the gorge, making Clear Creek much more prominent to park visitors.

The new comprehensive plan will give the Piedmont Park Conservancy a foothold to protect what is publicly owned land to be used freely by the public. 

One of my major criticisms of the plan is that it did not strongly state the need to limit the use of vehicles in the park. Not a day goes by when I visit the park that I don’t see numerous cars or vehicles using the roadways — a danger to all the people who walk, bicycle, skate along those pathways.

When ABG and the Conservancy pushed to build the parking garage, one of their selling points was that it would remove vehicles from inside the park. But cars are invasive species, finding ways to take over spaces that should be dedicated to non-vehicular modes of transportation.

Before, the city used to patrol the park with policemen on bicycles. Trash would be picked up by someone in a golf cart rather than huge trucks. And then the parking codes are liberally handed out to the cars of those holding events in the park, creating a conflict with the pastoral nature of the green space.

“Cars in the park will be an issue so long as the number of events is what it is,” Widener wrote in a text. “These organizers get the codes and overshare them. Work to be done there.”

And that brings me to another pet peeve. The City of Atlanta uses gas-powered leaf blowers and maintenance equipment (rather than electric equipment) which pollutes our air. We can do better.

Widener said a major part of the plan is creating a baseline level of maintenance and care.

“The park looks good,” Widener said. “[But] our park should look great.”

There’s a need for the park to be better maintained — whether it be fixing the rough roadways, finding solutions to the numerous drainage issues, improving Lake Clara Meer, which Woltz described as an “iconic work of art, and preserving and enhancing the tree canopy throughout the park.

As proposed, to implement the first phase of the plan — upgrading the baseline maintenance of the park and expanding the park on the north — will cost between $50 million and $75 million. Completing the entire plan would likely cost up to $150 million to $175 million, which would include the restoration of Clear Creek and Lake Clara Meer. 

“We know this is going to take time. Even if we had all the resources, it’s going to be phased in for a variety of reasons,” Widener said. “I’d like to see all the major projects done in the next 10 to 12 years.”

Widener, who joined the Conservancy in October 2023, added: “Atlanta is my home. I invested in this city for the long haul.”

Admittedly the comprehensive plan is a “high-level concept,” Widener said. The Conservancy is expected to continue working with the city, planners and the public to refine and detail how the various projects will be implemented so Piedmont Park can fulfill its potential as a world-class amenity. 

“I’m a nature lover. All the ecological restoration — this makes me happy,” Widener said. “We have all this density. And we have these little vignettes of nature.”

Woltz said our parks are an indicator of who we are as a civic society.

”Why does this work? Because we care about each other, because we care about our planet,” Woltz said. “The results are beautiful. We get a healthier city from the point of view of biodiversity, water, trees, air. If everything gets better, then Piedmont Park gets better.”

Pragmatically, Woltz said people move to Atlanta and stay here because of amenities like Piedmont Park, which makes our community stronger.

“We stand today at the center point of the history of Piedmont Park,” Woltz said. “We have over 100 years of history to build on, and we have far more than 100 years to come.”

Note to readers:  When Piedmont Park turned 100 years old in 2004, the Conservancy published a coffee table book: “Piedmont Park: Celebrating Atlanta’s Common Ground.” I gladly wrote the closing essay in the book: “Celebrating the Seasons of My Life at Piedmont Park.”

More than 20 years have passed since the book was published. But every day that goes by, I think about my parents and the hundreds of people who have been engaged in making sure we protect and preserve Piedmont Park — making sure the general public’s interest is respected.

It would be wonderful if we could revive the Friends of Piedmont Park to help steward the park and make sure the Conservancy is able to work on our behalf to implement the new comprehensive plan.