Trust for Public Land in Georgia - 2022

Georgia

THERE IS SO MUCH TO BE PROUD OF IN 2022 AND MORE TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN THE YEAR AHEAD

A letter from TPL’s Georgia team

In 2022, Trust for Public Land’s Georgia Office celebrated 30 years of cutting ribbons and opening parks, connecting more people to the outdoors. Access to nature is a fundamental human need, which means that every park we open or land that we preserve improves physical and mental health and builds stronger communities.

It is your support that allows TPL to create and open innovative parks, schoolyards, greenways, and blueways with transformative impacts for the communities that need them most. Our Community Schoolyards™ program is rapidly accelerating, creating vibrant outdoor spaces at schools in Atlanta and expanding across the region. In Vine City, Cook Park is being lauded in popular and professional circles for its innovative and unique community-centered design.

The audacious vision of the Chattahoochee RiverLands is quickly garnering support. This project will deliver unprecedented access to one of Georgia’s greatest natural assets and create the region’s defining outdoor

destination. This is a generationally impactful project that would not be possible without your investment.

As we look forward to our next 30 years in Georgia, we are continually grateful to have you as part of our TPL community. And we hope that you will join us in 2023, as we gather to celebrate TPL’s 50th anniversary nationwide.

With gratitude, Jackie Gingrich Cushman , Chair, Georgia Advisory Board George Dusenbury, Georgia State Director

© JASON FLOWERS

Georgia has so much to celebrate, and so much more to achieve

Our motto is ‘learn without limits,’ so we want to take the students outside… and make sure they have exposure to other opportunities, and not only go out into the community, but bring the community in to us.

There are a lot of things that the students, the parents, and the community will be really, really excited and proud to have in their neighborhood.”

Principal Tiffany Ragin, Dobbs Elementary School

On October 15, 2021, we gathered at the Atlanta History Center to celebrate TPL in Georgia’s 30th anniversary and the tremendous impact that we have had across the state. Among the more than 200 projects accomplished over the years, we recognized four that were particularly transformative. TPL facilitated the first acquisitions of public land needed to open both the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park and the Cumberland Island National Seashore . We created the Atlanta BeltLine’s Emerald Necklace park vision—and acquired $47 million worth of land to get it started. And we have preserved more than 18,000 acres and 80 miles of riverfront along the Chattahoochee River. These public spaces are enjoyed by millions of Georgians and visitors annually, and strengthen the communities around them.

Our work would not have been possible without the contributions of those who founded the Georgia office— Rand Wentworth , Christopher Glenn Sawyer, and Greg Gregory—whom we honored for their service.

We also recognized Tiffany Ragin , principal at Dobb’s Elementary School, as our Community Hero awardee. Principal Ragin was the first principal to partner with us on our Atlanta Community Schoolyards, helping to launch a city-wide effort to ensure that every child and every community across the city has access to safe, high-quality outdoor play spaces. As a dedicated partner and someone who goes above and beyond for her students, we were delighted to surprise her with this award.

© DV PHOTO VIDEO (ANMARIE SMITH)

Creating healthy places for kids and families to spend time outside is incredibly important. But if the infrastructure in the surrounding neighborhood makes it almost impossible for people to walk or bike safely to where they need to be, then these schoolyard improvements won’t be achieving their maximum benefit.”

— Sarah Kirsch, Urban Land Institute Atlanta

Atlanta Community Schoolyards

In February, we reached an enormous milestone: opening Atlanta’s first two Community Schoolyards on the same day!

In Southwest Atlanta, L.O. Kimberly Elementary School students, teachers, and families celebrated their revitalized schoolyard. With help from our partners at Park Pride, students designed a schoolyard with innovative features for learning and playing: a new, accessible sidewalk, shaded outdoor tables for learning, seating for all ages, and a challenging obstacle course. In addition, our partners at the Urban Land Institute identified sidewalk and street crossing improvements to provide safer community access to their new park.

In South Atlanta, students of John Wesley Dobbs Elementary School designed their new schoolyard to include a pollinator garden, three new trellises with benches, an expansion of the playground, and a dozen new shade trees. We worked together with Delta Air Lines to bring the Dobbs Elementary schoolyard to life, with over 80 Delta Air Lines volunteers and 20 community volunteers coming together to build colorful slides and monkey bars, a renovated outdoor classroom, new raised garden beds, freshly painted picnic tables, and a rain garden.

Both Dobbs and Kimberly Community Schoolyards are open to the public, allowing surrounding

neighborhoods to enjoy the benefits of nature outside of regular school hours—a key element of our Community Schoolyards vision.

Our Atlanta Community Schoolyards program continues to grow: In May, we celebrated the completion of the Miles Elementary and Sarah Smith Elementary schools’ new Community Schoolyards and six more schoolyards are moving toward construction.

Delta is proud to partner with Trust for Public Land…to help bring parks and play to communities throughout our hometown of Atlanta. Through this partnership, we also get to support our long-time partner Atlanta Public Schools to provide their elementary and middle schools with new resources for students while focusing on our commitment to the environment and sustainability.”

Tad Hutcheson, Vice President, Community and Public Affairs at Delta Air Lines

PHOTOS: © CASEY SYKES/RANK STUDIOS; © CASEY SYKES/ RANK STUDIOS, © WANDA MCRAE JONES

Partnerships for healthy children, families, and communities

We sat down with Scott Elementary School STEM Specialist Wanda McRae-Jones and Village Tutorial’s Cheryl Jones-Allie to share their experience teaching STEM through gardening in the Scott Elementary Community Schoolyard.

Wanda McRae-Jones: We knew the community schoolyard would be instrumental in having that connection between the community and the school. This is helping our babies and their families, and we have something that they can learn about, which is gardening. Not only are they learning about gardening or STEM skills, they’re learning about sustainability in their community, and they’re gaining entrepreneurial skills based off of what they’ve learned in this community schoolyard.

Cheryl Jones-Allie: When we’re in the garden, I make sure the children are understanding not only the ground and what grows from it, but also a lot of the history, a lot of reading, a lot of research, a lot of technology, a lot of math. We have a farmer rotation, so students can have the experience of different farmers, and also for students to see a physical representation of what they can grow into. And if the babies take it home to their elders, then the elders look at what the kids are doing and start to adopt the same habits. It’s a beautiful change for the community. It does teach everybody—all the stakeholders, parents, community members, staff, and students—the importance of eating healthy.

Wanda: Not only is our school in a food desert, we’re in a park desert. There’s no safe place really for students or families to just, you know, be.

Cheryl: People don’t understand that when you’re out there touching the earth, that it does create some type of call. So whenever we have a farmer that works with the kids, we go outside and just sit. Listen. Kids don’t know how to sit and listen, but neither do adults, so we take that opportunity with something like lavender. I give it to them, they crush and they smell it, and I make them breathe. And we just sit. I just try to get them more involved, so they can use their bodies, their minds, and their senses. They have a total experience.

Wanda: I’m just thinking about the little babies now. We have somewhere safe for them to play. And then just to sit back and just relax. And just take in the scenery. That’s why we have this partnership with you, Trust for Public Land. Thank you.

A lot of kids don’t like to eat vegetables, but they’ll eat it if they grow it.”

Wanda McRae-Jones, STEM Specialist at Scott Elementary School

Chattahoochee RiverLands

Thanks to your support, the Chattahoochee RiverLands— a transformative 100-mile network of greenways, blueways, and parks—is coming to life! Together with 19 cities, seven counties, and nearly 80 partner organi zations, TPL is shepherding this effort to improve quality of life for millions of residents, provide first-time river access for dozens of communities, and create a more prosperous and resilient future for the metro Atlanta region.

For 30 years, TPL has worked to protect over 18,000 acres of land and 80 miles of riverfront for public use, restoring the region’s iconic river as a natural solution to the region’s pressing needs for increased, varied, and inclusive access to the outdoors. Despite our progress, the river remains hidden or inaccessible to the vast majority of the nearly one million people living within a 15-minute bike ride of this spectacular recreational resource. The proposed Chattahoochee RiverLands seeks to introduce the region to its river. TPL is working to bring this vision to life, with two projects already underway.

THE CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVERLANDS SHOWCASE

The RiverLands Showcase project includes more than 160 acres of community park space; a 2.7 mile greenway and multi-use trail designed for walkers, bikers, strollers, and wheelchair users; a 2 mile tributary trail connecting the adjacent neighborhood to the river; and a regional trailhead park with a boat launch, restrooms, parking lot, and recreation amenities. Additional soft-surface trails, designed exclusively for walking, will allow users to enjoy a more natural setting and provide direct

access to experience restored wetlands, preserved Civil War earthworks, and more than 100 acres of forest.

CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVERLANDS CAMP & PADDLE TRAIL

This 48-mile experience is the first step in implementing a transformational blueway river trail—a section of river designated for boating, fishing, and other water activities, supported by access points and amenities along the way.

Imagine a long weekend—four days and three nights— paddling and camping through metro Atlanta. The scenery is largely natural, punctuated by the occasional bridge, theme park, or industrial complex. Three riverside campsites between Peachtree Creek and Carroll County’s McIntosh Reserve will allow you to escape the hustle and bustle of urban life while providing basic amenities such as running water and comfortable restrooms. Kayak and canoe launches connect the campsites to the river, providing easy access for tired adventurers to rest after a day of paddling—or set out through the mist rising from the river in the morning sun.

Today, such an experience is impossible; but thanks to your support, we are making the wonders of the Chattahoochee accessible to all.

In the year ahead, we will start construction of the Camp & Paddle Trail campsites, and when the weather turns warm in spring 2024, residents from across the region and beyond will be able to escape to Atlanta’s one-of-a-kind water trail. We invite you to join us as we make camping along the Chattahoochee River a reality.

The RiverLands is a visionary concept with the potential to be transformative for the Chattahoochee River and environs, linking communities that once thought they had little common ground with land and water trails.”

— Sally Bethea, Founding Director of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper

Earlier this year, our Georgia Advisory Board joined local staff and partners to tour the first leg of the Chattahoochee RiverLands’ signature Camp & Paddle Trail. MIDDLE: © TPL STAFF; BOTTOM: © TPL STAFF

TOP: © TPL STAFF/BAILEY GARROT

At the time of its completion in 2021, Cook Park was the largest investment in a public park in Atlanta’s Westside neighborhood in more than 50 years.”

Robby Bryant, HDR

Cook Park innovation recognized nationwide

In 2021, TPL, the City of Atlanta, and the community celebrated the opening of Cook Park. The new park is designed for more than just fun: it alleviates flooding for the surrounding neighborhoods and reduces water pollution risks downstream. During storms, the 16-acre park’s retention pond expands to store up to 10 million gallons of water that can be released gradually and treated properly to remove contaminants before flowing downstream.

In Georgia and across the country, Cook Park is being lauded for its transformational, community-centered design, and impact in Vine City, Atlanta:

AWARDS

American Society of Civil Engineering: Innovation in Sustainable Engineering

American Council of Engineering Companies: 2022 Grand Award

Urban Land Institute Atlanta: Excellence in Mission Advancement

Georgia Council of Engineering Companies: Engineering Excellence; People’s Choice; and Grand Prize

Atlanta Regional Commission: Regional Excellence Award: Great Place

Engineering News-Record: Best Projects–Landscape/Urban Development

Fast Company Magazine:

Innovation by Design Awards–Honorable Mention

PRESS

Parks & Recreation Magazine:

“How a Stormwater Park Is Revitalizing a Historic Atlanta Neighborhood”

Fast Company Magazine:

“This 16-acre Atlanta park was built to flood”

Outside Magazine:

“The 20 Most Livable Towns and Cities in America”

PHOTO: © ALEX JACKSON

Cumberland Island National Seashore

PROJECT FLASHBACK

As we celebrate our accomplishments of the last 30 years in Georgia—and nearly 50 years across the country—we reflect on one of our earliest projects: Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia’s largest and southernmost barrier island. In collaboration with the Georgia Conservancy and others, TPL preserved over 2,195 acres of the island’s pristine maritime forests, undeveloped beaches, and wide marshes that whisper the stories of nature and the past.

Cumberland Island has a rich history, from early Native American inhabitants to Spanish missions to British Colonial forts to the enslaved African Americans who made Cumberland Island their home. Notable island residents include Revolutionary War hero Nathanial Greene, who named his home Dungeness; and later, members of the Carnegie family built estates on the island. Amid the natural wealth of sweeping sand dunes and open marshland, ample evidence of a long human history can be found: the park features more than 85 structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, visitors can experience the natural beauty of its shorelines, dunes, and marshes; enjoy primitive back-country camping; and wander and wonder at the remnants of the island’s Native American and colonial past—including wild horses descended from the 1700s farms that once occupied the island.

Cumberland Island National Seashore, Camden County, Georgia. BOTH PHOTOS: © TPL STAFF

Looking Ahead

2022 has given us so much to celebrate, and we are so grateful for your partnership. We have accomplished so much together: Children and families have vibrant, safe, nature-rich places to play and learn. Historic Black communities are rising to reclaim their neighborhoods and the outdoors. And millions of Georgia residents are gaining new access to the iconic Chattahoochee River, creating an unprecedented outdoor experience that honors our past and strengthens communities throughout the region. None of this would be possible without you.

CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

Community Schoolyards™: Transform barren schoolyards into vibrant green spaces for learning and play.

Chattahoochee RiverLands: Connect more than a million Georgians along the 100-mile Chattahoochee RiverLands.

Leave a legacy: Create an even bigger impact by demonstrating your commitment to outdoor connections and making a gift through your will, trust, charitable gift annuity, charitable remainder trust, beneficiary designation, or appreciated assets.

Trust for Public Land: Give a gift to connect everyone to the outdoors.

GEORGIA ADVISORY BOARD

Virginia Almand , Community Volunteer

Hunter Amos , Newmark Knight Frank

Patricia T. Barmeyer, King & Spalding

Cory Boydston , Ashton Woods Homes

B.W. Cardwell, Jr. , Colliers International

Jason Carter, Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore

Alex Crumpler, EPAM

Jackie Cushman , Board Chair, Community Volunteer

Jocelyn Dorsey, Community Volunteer

Ralph G. Edwards, Jr. , EBS Property Investments

Natalie Giurato, Cox Enterprises

Chris Graham , Georgia-Pacific

John Hardman , WildArk, Woodleaf Partners

Paula Hennessy, Community Volunteer

Jim Irwin , New City

Bob Kinney, Community Volunteer

Alison Lathrop, Delta Air Lines

Trey Loughran , Purchasing Power

Suzanne Masters , Community Volunteer

James H. Morgens , Morgens Property & Investment Co.

Gary Motley, State Farm

Alan S. Neely, Community Volunteer

Carlos Pagoaga , The Coca-Cola Company

Kevin Pearson , Georgia Power Company

Amy Phuong , Atlanta Hawks

TPL’S LAND AND PEOPLE LAB

TPL’s Lab uses evidence to increase the impact of our on-the-ground work and spark a national movement for parks and public land. We inform policies and practices, build partnerships, and share resources to expand the many benefits of nature and the outdoors.

The Lab provides tools such as the ParkScore® Index , which is the national gold-standard comparison of park systems across the 100 largest cities in the U.S. and ParkServe®, which enables anyone, anywhere to locate their existing parks and advocate for new parks based on local community, health, climate, and equity needs.

Michele Reale, The Shopping Center Group

Christopher Glenn Sawyer, Community Volunteer

Jeff Seavey, Truist

Sally Seeds , Community Volunteer

Markham Smith , Smith Dalia Architects

Rian Smith , The Integral Group

Emily J. Sweitzer, Pollack Shores Rangewater

Alex D. Watts , Merrill Lynch

Shelli Willis , Troutman Pepper

Chad Wright , GDP Holdings

THANK YOU

for helping improve the health, equity, and climate outcomes for communities in Georgia and beyond. We could not do this without you.

Join us

Help ensure everyone has access to the outdoors. Every park we create, schoolyard we transform, trail we extend, and landscape we protect is thanks to supporters like you. tpl.org/donate

George Dusenbury, Georgia State Director george.dusenbury@tpl.org

Nicole Blackshear, South Region Director of Philanthropy nicole.blackshear@tpl.org

600 West Peachtree Street, NW, Suite 1840, Atlanta, GA 30308

COVER, TOP: © TPL STAFF; © JOHN BILDERBACK; © ALEX JACKSON; LARGE: © JULIETA VERGINI; THIS PAGE: © ALEX JACKSON