The Trust for Public Land in Action: 2020 C E L E B R AT I N G W HAT YO U M A D E P O S S I B L E IN GEORGIA AND BEYOND
Thank you so much for partnering with us in Georgia! Welcome to the 2020 Year in Review. What a year it has been! Parks are widely recognized as critical for health and wellness, reducing anxiety, stress, and depression and improving physical health—all the more necessary during this public health emergency. We are rising to the challenges of this unprecedented moment to bring parks and green spaces where they’re needed most. In Georgia, we are building our first two schoolyard parks, creating accessible parkland for hundreds of residents. In Atlanta’s west side, we are partnering with the city to construct the innovative Cook Park as part of our effort to revitalize long-neglected communities. Through the audacious Chattahoochee RiverLands program, we are working with dozens of partners to change how metro Atlanta interacts with its river. Across the state, we advocated for trails and parks by launching the Georgia Outdoor Recreation
Coalition and hosting the Georgia Trail Summit (georgiatrailsummit.com). In Atlanta, we built a network of nonprofits to help children of color Thrive Outside (thriveoutsideatl.org). With your help, we’re creating parks and green schoolyards and connecting people to trails and the outdoors all across the country. Thank you!
Chad Wright Advisory Board Chair
George Dusenbury Georgia State Director
P.S. In October 2021, we’ll celebrate 30 years of protecting land for people. We can’t wait to mark this milestone with you.
HOLLIS BENNETT
Chattahoochee River
Atlanta community schoolyards LAUNCHING A PILOT PROGRAM In 2019, we launched a three-year, ten school pilot project to implement schoolyard greening. Using data-driven decision support tools, we identified priority schools where we could significantly impact the community. The first two schools in the pilot are Dobbs Elementary and Kimberly Elementary, chosen based on community need and school leadership commitments.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored that close-to-home parks are crucial to a community’s quality of life. During this crisis, people have turned to their parks like never before—for fresh air, exercise, meditation, solace, and a muchneeded break from the stresses of a quickly changing world. Sadly, only 72 percent of Atlanta residents have close-to-home access to a park, meaning nature’s benefits are out of reach for 134,000 people. We aim to fix this.
Fourth and fifth-grade students participated in an interactive STEAM-based curriculum developed by The Trust for Public Land and Park Pride to guide them through their vision for their future schoolyard.
In older cities like Atlanta, it can be difficult to identify sites for new parks to serve this need. However, existing public land at schools provides a creative solution to this problem. Greening schoolyards encourages school children to play more actively, engage more fully in learning, and improve their social skills. And when designed with input from nearby neighbors, we can create appealing green spaces for community members to recreate, relax, and recharge during non-school hours.
“The experience that Dobbs Elementary has had working with the entire Atlanta Community Schoolyards team has been nothing short of amazing! The Dobbs family is forever grateful!” – Dr. Tiffany Ragin Principal at Dobbs Elementary
TPL STAFF
We’re partnering with Park Pride, the Urban Land Institute, community members, and teachers and students at Atlanta public schools to launch our vision to place a public park within a 10-minute walk of more than 50,000 Atlantans.
Construction is currently underway at both schools, and we’ve selected four new schools to partner with for the 2020-21 school year. We can’t wait to showcase these schoolyard transformations to launch a green schoolyard movement in Atlanta and across the entire state.
Kimberly Elementary Atlanta, GA
Cook Park: Westside’s newest park nearly complete! After five years of preparation and construction, Rodney Cook, Sr. Park in Historic Vine City is very close to the finish line! Although opening celebrations will be delayed due to the pandemic, area residents will soon explore the park paths, the great lawn, and pond area of Cook Park.
N AT U R E ’ S B E N E F I T S The 16-acre site was previously home to 160 families living in single and multi-family housing, but after a 2002 flood displaced all those families, the space was identified as the perfect place for a park to capture rainwater for the entire community. The park was designed to provide multiple benefits to the neighborhood, including attractive green infrastructure that collects and manages the rainwater that falls on the 160 acres surrounding the site. In addition to alleviating flooding, Cook Park is a safe, secure space with community-designed amenities like a large open field for spontaneous play, a multi-use sports court, fitness equipment, a climbing boulder, a playground, and a splashpad.
The park also has meandering paths for walking, public art inspired by the neighborhood, shade structures, and public restrooms.
T H A N K S T O O U R PA R T N E R S Designing and building Cook Park has been a complex undertaking made possible thanks to our partners: • Community members and local nonprofits contributed to the understanding of historical and current-day neighborhood context. • The City of Atlanta provided technical expertise and $30 million in critical public funding. • Designers, engineers, and construction contractors built the park. • Donors like you contributed nearly $14 million of private funding. Thank you to everyone for five years of hard work. We are eager to celebrate this new public park with the community as soon as we are able. Atlantans will enjoy the long-term positive impact of this new public space for generations to come!
COOK PARK PHOTOS BY TPL STAFF
Cook Park Atlanta, GA
Ms. Linda Adams: Behind-the-scenes advocate Linda Adams is not one to toot her own horn—she’s much more comfortable working behind the scenes to improve her Vine City neighbors’ lives. For over 20 years, Ms. Adams has quietly helped her neighbors—from promoting Soccer in the Streets for area youth to making the new Legacy at Vine City a great place for seniors like her to live. When she heard that there was an opportunity to transform a vacant lot into a new community park, she wanted to be involved because she believed it could positively impact the lives of Vine City residents of all ages. For the past five years, Ms. Adams has served as a sounding board for Trust for Public Land staff navigating the complex design, communication, and political issues to create Rodney Cook, Sr. Park. Her deep knowledge of the community has helped guide conversations with residents whose
experience of broken promises initially diminished their enthusiasm for the park. She has also been a boots-on-the-ground volunteer, joining forces with Georgia Power and Trust for Public Land staff to remove overgrowth from the park on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
“When I heard that a park was coming to my neighborhood, I was very happy. It is within one block of the new seniors’ facility. We can’t wait to start our walking club. The late Councilman Ivory Lee Young worked for over ten years to make sure that this park will be the best park in the City of Atlanta!” – Linda Adams, community member
TPL STAFF
Cook Park Community Engagement Day Atlanta, GA
Big news for the Chattahoochee River! MAKE THIS VISION A REALITY Help us spread the word about this audacious project and the potential benefits for all communities along the 100-mile stretch. Ways you can help:
The Trust for Public Land has spent decades preserving land along the Chattahoochee River – 18,000 acres and 80 miles of riverfront ranging from Helen to Columbus. After a collaborative 18-month-long process, we’ve studied and made recommendations on many creative ways to activate the public spaces along the river!
• Volunteer to lead RiverLands Walk and Talks to introduce community members to the vision (contact Karen Clarke at karen.clarke@tpl.org).
The Chattahoochee RiverLands is a bold vision to create a singular outdoor destination for the people of the metro Atlanta region—reuniting them with the river and linking suburban, urban, and rural communities into a continuous 100-mile public realm.
The Camp and Paddle Trail will introduce camping to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area and create new opportunities for multiday paddling, hiking, and camping experiences. The Trust for Public Land is leading the effort in partnership with the National Park Service and Georgia River Network to make this 48-mile blueway vision a reality by 2022.
NEW ENDOWED POSITION We successfully raised $2 million to endow the Michael J. Egan Chattahoochee Conservation Fellow, named in memory of the late Trust for Public Land advisory board member. Mike championed our work along the river until his death in 2016. He inspired us to think big about our responsibility to conserve land in this scenic landscape. Endowed funds enable us to plan for the long term, providing a steady and significant source of income to support our land-for-people mission. Walt Ray is the inaugural fellow.
• Visit ChattahoocheeRiverLands.com to read more about this transformational regional program. HOLLIS BENNETT
Implementation is already underway. In February, the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program awarded partial funding to two RiverLands projects, including the Camp and Paddle Trail.
• Support this generational vision by becoming an early supporter for the upcoming capital campaign (Contact Susan Patterson at susan.patterson@tpl.org).
Chattahoochee River Carroll County, GA
Georgia Advisory Board We are so grateful for our exceptional volunteer leaders! Doug Aldridge Hunter Amos Marcia Bansley Patricia T. Barmeyer Dr. Mark Berry W. Moses Bond Mary Calhoun B.W. Cardwell Jackie Cushman Jocelyn Dorsey Robin Dunson Ralph G. Edwards, Jr. Alan Elsas Chris Graham Henry D. Gregory, Jr. John Hardman
Paula Hennessy Jim Irwin Bob Kinney David S. Martin Suzanne Masters James H. Morgens Gary Motley Alan S. Neely Carlos Pagoaga Amy Phuong Christopher Glenn Sawyer Sally Seeds Markham Smith Rian Smith Shelli Willis Chad Wright, Chair
TPL STAFF
THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND IN GEORGIA • Karen Clarke, Philanthropy Coordinator • Mallory Costen, Georgia Trail Summit Manager • George Dusenbury, Georgia State Director • Michele Kresge, Engagement Officer • Daisy Mugford, Thrive Outside Program Coordinator • Susan Patterson, Director of Philanthropy • Ruth Pimentel, Atlanta Community Schoolyards Project Manager • Walt Ray, Michael J. Egan Chattahoochee Conservation Fellow • Jay Wozniak, Director, Georgia Urban Parks
CHRISTOPHER T MARTIN
Thank you
for joining us as we reimagine and realize the power of land for people to create stronger communities. We couldn’t do it without you.
Join us. The Trust for Public Land creates parks and protects land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come.
tpl.org
George Dusenbury Georgia State Director george.dusenbury@tpl.org Susan Patterson Director of Philanthropy susan.patterson@tpl.org 600 W. Peachtree Street, Suite 1840 Atlanta, GA 30308
COVER (CLOCKWISE STARTING TOP LEFT): CASEY SYKES, TPL STAFF, TPL STAFF, TPL STAFF, PHOTO COURTESY OF ARTHUR BLANK FAMILY YMCA.