After roughly 15 years of planning and four years of delay-plagued construction, Historic Fourth Ward Park’s Westside sibling is both a functional greenspace and sight to behold.
A ribbon-cutting was held at Rodney Cook Sr. Park last month, officially unveiling a 16-acre centerpiece for Historic Vine City that’s designed to solve the neighborhood’s chronic flooding issues.
This week, the Trust for Public Land’s director of Georgia urban parks, Jay Wozniak, provided fresh insight about the park's construction and functionality for an Urbanize Atlanta photo tour. Wozniak, a registered landscape architect, says the park is “getting some serious use” already, though it was quiet on the sweltering weekday morning we swung through.
Overall, the $40-million project was funded by the city’s departments of Watershed Management and Parks and Recreation (about $26 million contributed, spent mostly on the project’s stormwater green infrastructure, related utilities, and streetscape) and the Trust for Public Land, which covered the project’s features that make it a park.
It’s located two blocks west of the Georgia World Congress Center, connected by new protected bike lanes to the Westside BeltLine Connector trail and the rest of downtown.
The full scope of Cook Park’s impact on Westside real estate and housing prices remains to be seen. (The park’s perimeter is dotted, as must be noted, with boarded-up, graffiti-covered homes and a few sagging commercial structures.)
But what can’t be argued is that Cook Park provides a multifaceted outdoor amenity like few others in Atlanta. Have a look for yourself in the gallery above.
• Vine City flipper: $239K cottage, like other properties, sold before it listed (Urbanize Atlanta)
