BYLINE:    Staff
DATE: September 22, 2004
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
EDITION: Home; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SECTION: Editorial
PAGE: A18

Who knows if the late journalistic curmudgeon H.L. Mencken ever visited Piedmont Park in midtown Atlanta. Nonetheless, his famous observation that "For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong" aptly describes the misguided plan to build a parking garage there.

The problem, as articulated by the Atlanta Botanical Garden and the Piedmont Park Conservancy, is that increasing patronage of their side-by-side attractions has created an untenable parking crunch. The deceptively simple solution they're considering is to carve out a chunk of tree-covered hillside at the edge of the park to erect a "signature" parking facility that would be artfully disguised by greenery.

The proposal calls for building a new road inside the park off Monroe Drive to handle the resulting traffic. Revenues generated by the six-story, 800-space garage would be shared by the gardens and the conservancy, a nonprofit group that has assumed most of the care and maintenance of the park from the city. It all sounds so neat, but it's all wrong.

There's already a surfeit of privately owned parking lots on nearby Piedmont Avenue that are brimming with cars during the weekdays, but are often closed or nearly empty on weekends when the park and garden are more likely to be packed with visitors. It makes far more sense to utilize those empty spaces instead of building new ones, least of all in a park that's supposed to celebrate nature. A trolley system could connect those lots to the park and the garden.

Garden officials have also offered to sweeten the deal with a tempting "land swap" that would grant the conservancy direct access to three acres of Storza Woods in exchange for the one-acre site proposed for the parking garage. But here's the catch: The Storza Woods already belong to the city; the conservancy is merely leasing it. What the Botanical Garden has in mind is akin to a tenant offering to sublet an apartment back to the landlord who owns it.

Besides, Piedmont Park's biggest problem isn't parking -- it's money. The park is a popular regional attraction, and the rising costs of administration and programming exert huge financial pressures on the conservancy. That's why Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin supported the creation of a "parks district" to address the ongoing funding challenges at Piedmont Park and elsewhere that would pool donations from philanthropists and private foundations.

The Atlanta City Council, which must ultimately approve any changes at Piedmont Park, ought to reconsider its shortsighted opposition to establishing a parks district. That way, the Piedmont Park Conservancy might continue its otherwise fine work without scheming to build a parking garage where it obviously doesn't belong.