The Piedmont Park Conservancy launched its first comprehensive plan in 25 years on April 24 at the 28th annual Landmark Luncheon, kicking off a decades-long effort to turn the city’s iconic park into a true “crown jewel.”
It’s a major plan to maintain and update Atlanta’s signature park, which sees over 6 million visitors every year. Planned projects include a Northeast expansion at Piedmont Avenue and Monroe Drive, new courts and fields at the Active Oval, a boardwalk for and resteration of Lake Clara Meer and a canopy trail called Clear Creek Walk.
Piedmont Park Conservancy CEO said the plan was a holistic process. The nonprofit, which works with the city to run park care and improvements, has done pieces of a plan before. But as staff started looking at park expansions and Beltline planning, the scope grew bigger. Widener said he realized “this needs to be all in.”
It kicked off Piedmont Park’s first comprehensive plan since 1995.
For eight months, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architecture and Perez Planning and Design led the design process through meetings with Piedmont Park Conservancy and a steering committee for the plan. The project is a joint effort between the conservancy and the City of Atlanta.
Project leaders also ran an intense public engagement and planning process. For months, park representatives ran surveys and public meetings to gather input. Widener said the entire planning process was seen by over 25,000 people and about 2,100 gave direct feedback in person and online.
“What we hear from people is that we’ve got all these ideas, but the park looks good, but the park could and should look great,” Widener said. “Our crown jewel should look like our crown jewel.”
The final comprehensive master plan is a bit of everything: big and small projects, recreational and natural areas. It details little things like better path care and massive additions like a northeast park expansion.
“I’m so pleased where we are with what we’ve created and so excited to share it with the public,” Widener said. “I’m even more excited to get going.”
A lot of the large-scale projects will be phased out over the next 10-15 years, but the most immediate work will be better overall care of the park. It’s the unglamorous and necessary work to keep the park in good shape.
“It’s all the basic things you don’t notice until they’re not awesome,” Widener said.
Basic improvements will target natural area restoration, drainage issues, bathroom and water fountain maintenance, manicured area improvements and path care. The conservancy aims to fix up the paved roads to be more pedestrian-friendly with one-way car paths and pedestrian and bike lanes. Widener said the park will also add six new miles of walking paths.
The Conservancy also launched Seeds for the Future on April 24, a three-year tree care initiative to inventory over 3,000 mature trees, plant new ones, and run an interactive app and volunteer stewardship program.
It’s the baseline work for an ambitious plan. Widener said: “If you don’t do anything else, do this.” The rest of the plan is phased. Each phase will depend on funding and interest for additional major projects.
“We know this is going to take time,” Widener said. “Even if we had all the resources in the world to do all of this, we wouldn’t, and we couldn’t because we don’t want to shut down the most visited park for how many years to do all this.”
The baseline, ongoing park improvements and maintenance will act as “phase zero” of the plan. Phase one will focus on the northeast park expansion, moving the maintenance facility and building Clear Creek Walk.
The City of Atlanta is still acquiring land at the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and Monroe Drive, but once finished, the expansion will add two new playgrounds, a play trail and rock scramble and sprawling green lawns to picnic or host art markets.
Clear Creek Walk will build out walking trails adjacent to the Beltline to create direct creek access and reduce congestion on the Beltline. The plan shows different vantage points and paths, with a boardwalk directly alongside the creek, a suspended canopy walk and unpaved trails through the greenery. Piedmont Park Conservancy will work with the Department of Watershed Management to restore the creek, too.
The phase one projects could start as soon as 2027 if the conservancy can get the necessary funds. Widener said phase one will cost somewhere between $50 million and $75 million, with the rest estimated at $115-175 million.
“A lot of it is going to be dependent on how well the first phase goes and what the interest and capacity is for more of this,” Widener said.
The rest of the phases are flexible, but the major projects are at Lake Clara Meer and the Active Oval at Piedmont Park. Designs show a full boardwalk loop with overlook areas planned for the lake alongside dredging restoration and water edge plantings to help the lake’s health.
The Active Oval has several planned improvements, including four new pickleball courts near the tennis center, three new basketball courts and three new sand volleyball courts. The oval layout will be redesigned to include two ballfields on the north end and two soccer fields on the south end, with a tree-lined central path to walk and watch games.
Widener stressed that the conservancy’s plan is flexible and that he knows needs will change over the next decade, but he wants to get the work started as soon as possible.
“I feel like the momentum is already there; I feel like the time is now,” Widener said.
But the planning isn’t truly done. In the early planning stages, conservancy leaders expressed concern about frequent park events and a lack of maintenance. Popular Piedmont Park events like the Dogwood Festival and Peachtree Road Race are under the city’s jurisdiction, not the conservancy — so are park maintenance responsibilities.
It adds some difficulty to things like basic bathroom repairs or fixing tree root system damage caused by thousands of event attendees. Widener doesn’t have all the details worked out around park conservancy and city roles, but he said the next steps will be to lay out specific responsibilities and “own” them.
He also said the conservancy plans to work with the city on major events and festivals. Widener said it won’t be a matter of saying yes or no to hosting things, but “how many and what’s the cadence.” The CEO said the park needs breaks between events or possible “zones” for differently sized festivities to reduce the event footprint. Solutions will involve a deeper dive with the city, but Widener is optimistic.
‘I think the fact of how involved the city was in the creation of this plan is real, demonstrative proof of the deepness of this partnership,” Widener said.
Piedmont Park Conservancy extended its memorandum of understanding with the city for the next four years. It allows the conservancy to raise funds and handle many day-to-day operations in the park. Widener hopes with the master plan done, the conservancy will be able to take a few months to “refine relationships” moving forward.
More than anything, Widener is looking forward to the next steps after being able to reveal “his baby.”
“Now to be able to take all these ideas and put them into action, to have a plan that’s been well vetted and collaborated on with all these partners, including the city, it just feels really exciting to be able to put it in place,” Widener said.
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