Images: Refined Memorial Drive Greenway, skatepark vision emerge

Just east of downtown Atlanta, a linear park concept that’s lumbered through discussions and planning phases for 25 years is looking more real than ever this summer. 

Three public open houses for the Memorial Drive Greenway concept, held between October and June, provided direction for detailed sets of new designs the City of Atlanta’s Department of Parks and Recreation recently released.

Designs may be tentative, but refined visuals vividly show how a system of walking paths, plazas, versatile lawns, a dog park, playgrounds, and a block-sized skatepark drawn up by experienced firm New Lines Skateparks could be slotted along Memorial Drive, a key east-west corridor for the city. 

Pond & Company and Atlanta-based Goode Van Slyke Architecture are also on board to design.

The Greenway is adhering to a “Rooted in Community” overall design theme that will pay homage to Atlanta’s forested canopy and the unique identity of nearby neighborhoods, per Department of Parks and Recreation officials. 

The land in question totals 8 and ½ acres and stretches for half a mile between Oakland Cemetery and the downtown Connector, sandwiched by Memorial Drive (the southern border) and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive (northern border). City officials announced last year the Greenway will include a skatepark spanning more than 2 and ½ acres, crediting a partnership between an unnamed business leader and local property owner with making that happen. 

The Greenway's preferred concept plan, including 3D renderings, was unveiled during the final open house last month. 

The project’s first phase will create and finalize a schematic design for all 8 and ½ acres of the park—in addition to design, permitting, and construction across one city block, per officials. Project leaders say community feedback will continue to shape Greenway plans as they move into another phase of development. 

Priorities highlighted in recent feedback include: increasing shade, especially around the playgrounds and skatepark; preserving the protected bike network; expanding restroom access and more public art; and evaluating “pedestrian bridge locations alongside improved at-grade crossings,” per city officials.

The Greenway’s design phase is being funded by $560,037 in discretionary funds from Atlanta City Council District 5, as part of the Moving Atlanta Forward bond; and $500,000 from the Department of Parks and Recreation’s fiscal-year Park Improvement Fund, per city officials. 

Other partners in the project include The Conservation Fund, Park Pride, Mailchimp cofounder Dan Kurzius (a former competitive skateboarder), The Integral Group, and the Friends of Memorial Drive Greenway. 

Invest Atlanta officials have noted they are also both a project funder and partner, utilizing about $11 million in Eastside Tax Allocation District funding to purchase numerous parcels of land over the past 15 years for the Greenway. 

Parcels set to become part of the park include the former Daddy D’z BBQ Joynt property, which had operated for more than 30 years at 261 Memorial Drive. As we reported in January, The Conservation Fund paid $1.3 million for the now boarded-up Daddy D’z property in an off-market transaction. 

Pond & Company, a Peachtree Corners-based planning and landscape design firm, is also behind the Beltline’s under-construction Enota Park project, large-scale pedestrian upgrades in Buckhead, and a flood-solving, 5-acre park underway in Peoplestown, among other projects. 

Plans for the Greenway date back to initial studies and land acquisitions in 2001. Fifteen years later, the 2016 Memorial Drive Vision Plan was finalized, promising a beautified linear greenspace that would complement billions of dollars in private investments flooding into the corridor during that era. Following that, the initiative went mostly quiet; but that changed in August, when Department of Parks and Recreation officials launched a fresh Greenway design phase in partnership with Pond & Company. 

Swing up to the gallery for a thorough look at the latest Memorial Drive Greenway designs, for both the near and long term. 

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