Metro Atlantans who love to live near open spaces and dense green patches of forest often go to great lengths to preserve those little pieces of tranquility in the burgeoning suburbs.
Longtime Roswell resident L.W. Tucker became such a conservationist after discovering a “for sale” sign standing by the banks of the Chattahoochee River near the Martin’s Landing and North Cliff subdivisions.
“I was shocked. I thought (the land) was a greenbelt around our neighborhood,” said the North Cliff resident, who learned that the property adjacent to the Don White Memorial Park was slated for 38 condominiums.
As others have done before him, Tucker quickly brought together forces to fight the project. He contacted Roswell City Hall and the Trust for Public Land, a national, private nonprofit land conservation agency.
Conservation officials and many residents across metro Atlanta echo a single sentiment: There is a great urgency to preserve the “pocket parks” inside neighborhoods because these green spots are becoming more scarce.
Greenways should be treated with the same degree of importance as water and sewer lines, conservationists said: necessary infrastructure. The window of opportunity is the next five years, officials agree, because development is moving so quickly.
“When the neighborhoods help themselves by protecting land, they help everyone else, too,” said Marcia Bansley, executive director of Trees Atlanta Inc., which has planted and preserved trees for 12 years.
It’s working in Roswell. After months of negotiation, a deal was secured: Residents like Tucker, city officials and TPL have until July 1999 to raise the purchase price and preserve the tract as a park in north Fulton County.
Roswell pledged $500,000 and points to this project as another installment in providing a continuous greenbelt along the northern banks of the river. Trust officials say fund-raising efforts have just begun. In the past year, TPL also helped preserve Power Homestead–an 1840s cabin on pristine acreage along the Chattahoochee in Cobb County.
The growth of sharply defined community land trusts, local nonprofits that work like TPL, has been exponential in metro Atlanta. Their numbers have bloomed from two to nine in the past five years, said Hans Neuhauser, director of the Georgia Land Trust Service Center in Athens. The private, nonprofit agency provides legal assistance and public policy to land trusts, and works under the umbrella of the Georgia Environmental Policy Institute.
More trusts are being formed, Neuhauser said, because people are looking outside local governments–which are either unwilling or unable to purchase developable land — for help in protecting open spaces in their communities. It’s estimated that 36 conservancy groups in Georgia have combined to save at least 200,000 acres so far.
In most cases the acreage saved is small, officials said. A tract of nearly 2 acres in DeKalb County’s Pinellas Triangle neighborhood, is one example. When the quiet spot near the busy Clairmont and LaVista intersection was put up for sale, nearby residents formed PARC– the Pinellas Area Restoration Committee–and raised two-thirds of the $152,000 price from 1,200 neighbors to buy the land in 1995. Payments on the land continue. To boot, a local company has donated $25,000 worth of landscaping services and planted 93 trees native to Georgia in the tract.
In Gwinnett County, 1,100 residents of secluded Berkeley Lake willingly tripled their local property taxes last year to buy nearby woods and protect them from development. On Nov. 4, residents will vote on options for the property. Choices range from leaving it alone to putting in walking trails or tennis courts, said Sherwin Levinson, head of the Berkeley Lake Greenspace Committee.
The vote will not be binding, Levinson added: “But, if they (officials) don’t want to be annoyed by the residents calling all the time and if they want to be elected a second time, they should follow the suggestions. This is a rare piece of property.”
Meanwhile, residents on Fulton’s south side convinced the County Commission earlier this month to pay nearly $3 million for a tract along Cascade Road where a developer had plans for a 360-unit apartment complex. The property is being considered for a park or as a site for a government center.
And there are others such as Alpharetta physician Chip Reed and his wife, Roberta. They founded the Chattowah Open Land Trust three years ago, focusing on saving open spaces in metro Atlanta and North Georgia counties.
The Reeds proudly cite a 189-acre wildflower cove they’ve saved in the Towns County mountains. Their current projects include protecting some riverfront property in Duluth and hundreds of acres of wetlands in Douglas County.
