MARIA SAPORTA, AJC - Published on: 10/31/04
 
Piedmont Park is sacred ground for Atlanta and for me.

When I was growing up, my parents would express their belief in a higher presence by taking my sister and me to the park to experience nature hiking in the wilderness area or swaying on swings overlooking Lake Clara Meer enjoying the shade and fragrance of magnolia trees while being mesmerized with sunlight bouncing off the water.

It was no accident that my parents moved us from an apartment on North Avenue in 1970 to a house only a couple of blocks from Piedmont Park. And 20 years ago, I built a home down the street from my parents so I, too, could enjoy Piedmont Park on a daily basis.

Because the park has been an integral part of my life for nearly five decades, I become quite protective when misguided and misdirected proposals threaten to ruin it.

I remember back in the early 1970s when city fathers feeding off a fear that flower children were taking over considered a proposal to fence off the entire park and turn it into an active sports center with multiple playing fields. Fortunately, the public turned out in droves to kill that idea.

In 1991, the city proposed building a sewage treatment plant in the park at the visible corner of 10th Street and Monroe Drive.

Of course, the plan (meant to help the city solve its combined sewer overflow problem) was presented with beautiful watercolor drawings showing the meadow being turned into "Georgia Lake."

In truth, Georgia Lake would have been a holding pond for storm and sewage water waiting to be cleaned by the multistory sewage treatment plant.
Such an idea seems ludicrous today. But it came very close to reality. The city approved the plant, and it was advertised so engineering firms could bid on the project.

My father, I.E. Saporta, then 81, began a grass-roots campaign with other citizen activists called S.T.O.P. (Sewage Treatment Out Of Park) collecting more than 100,000 signatures from park users against the plan.

Papa, an architect and artist by training, sketched an 8-foot-long drawing of how the plant would really look calling it: "The Impending CSO Disaster." With petitions in hand, he and fellow activists met with Mayor Maynard Jackson, urging him to stop the project.

Jackson later told me my father was the city's conscience, helping him realize how bad an idea it was to turn city parkland into a sewage treatment plant. The mayor called the public works department during that meeting to halt the project.

Today, a threat just as grave faces Piedmont Park. If Papa were still alive, he would label it: "The Impending Parking Deck Disaster."

An 800-car parking deck, being shoved down the community's throat by the Atlanta Botanical Garden with passive consent by the Piedmont Park Conservancy, is as misguided as building a sewage-filled lake and treatment plant in the park.
The deck is to be built in the heart of the park. The pretty drawings don't reflect how ugly the mutideck garage will look in the dead of winter when the trees are bare. And 77 trees will be cut down to make way for the garage.

More importantly, the parking deck will have to be served by a major road from Piedmont and another major road from Monroe Drive, basically cutting the park in half with a major thoroughfare. The roads, which will cause even more trees to be cut down, will totally change the pastoral ambience.

And the parking deck flies in the face of what the Piedmont Park master plan advocates. The Piedmont Park Conservancy created a master plan with strong community consensus and City Council approval that calls for removing all cars from the park.

Opposition to the deck is widespread and mounting. Surprisingly, the Botanical Garden and the Conservancy have not backed down causing both institutions (of which I am a member) to lose face and support in the community.

When did the Garden or the Conservancy begin looking at Piedmont Park as their own property? It is not.

Piedmont Park belongs to the public. Already the city suffers from having way too little park space. It's amazing that a proposal to turn one acre of the city's most popular park into a garage continues to linger.

The Gardens and the Conservancy must give up and go back to the drawing board. They should embark on an honest, clean planning process ? analyzing all alternatives for access, transit and parking. They should not have an answer in concrete before seeking the best solution.

Imaginative ideas exist. The possibility of building a garage on a commercial stretch of Piedmont next to the Belt Line with street level retail has great potential.

But a parking deck in the middle of Piedmont Park is a bad idea. As someone who has loved Piedmont Park all my life, I can't bear to see yet another asinine proposal threaten this sacred ground.

It's time to stop the impending parking deck disaster.