New Park for Buckhead Only 2.5 Acres

The City of Atlanta recently announced the addition of 2.54 acres of new parkland to the Buckhead area. The area is located at 3162 Lenox Road along the busy Lenox Road corridor, in the Pine Hills neighborhood. The city is purchasing the property from The Conservation Fund, a national non-profit organization, dedicated for nearly 30 years to expanding green space and saving special places across America. The City estimates that with the purchase price, closing costs, site cleanup and environmental due diligence costs, the price tag to the Atlanta will be $1.17 million.

The Atlanta Park’s Department is demolishing and removing an existing house before the planning process to transform the area into a park can truly begin. The property is located within walking distance of thousands of residences in the Pine Hills neighborhood and all the apartments and condos on the densely populated Lenox Road corridor. The two and a half acres is covered in trees with mature stands of bamboo and has a creek running through it.

Buckhead has been called “the Jewel of Atlanta”, but it has less green space and parkland than any other area of the City of Atlanta. It also has less than similar areas in other comparable U.S. cities. With only 23 parks, from pocket parks and traffic islands to passive wooded areas to parks with recreational activities, Buckhead only has a combined area of 73.6 acres of parkland. With a population in excess of 34,419, that works out to about 2.14 acres for every 1000 residents (and that is based on numbers from the 2000 Census). So while 2.5 acres may not seem to be much, we need to be happy with every acre we can get.

Boyd Leake is a Buckhead native and the founder and owner of Community Environmental. Since 1995 he has been an environmental and sustainability consultant with an emphasis on recycling, composting and “green” solid waste management.