In a collaboration between the Trust for Public Land and the City of Atlanta, Rodney Cook Sr. Park, the 16-acre park located in the historic neighborhood near the Atlanta University Center Consortium provides green space, playgrounds, trails, an amphitheater, along with rain gardens and stormwater planters which contain heavy rainfall events and enhance water quality. The centerpiece pond and the surrounding greenspace can store up to 10 million gallons of stormwater, a critical need in the neighborhood.
“Rodney Cook Park is located at the low point of Vine City, so all water flows to where the park is,” said George Dusenbury, Georgia state director for The Trust for Public Land in a recent press release. “We have worked with the city to repurpose this land into a park that floods so that the surrounding communities do not.”
According to documents produced by the Atlanta Regional Commission, Vine City and English Avenue were vibrant middle-class in-town neighborhoods. It was a sought-after address for civil rights leaders in the 1960s. Soon after, the population dwindled. By the early 2000s, it was one of Atlanta’s most distressed communities.
The design firm HDR was hired to complete the new park project, which opened to the public this past summer and is also the winner of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s 2021 Regional Development Award for Great Places. “The new park will generate community benefits, provide healthy recreational pursuits, and become a hub around which renovation and new construction will take place,” said Robert Bryant of HDR.
