Tanyard Creek Update

Since I posted a "Friday Night Video" a day early this week, today I'll return instead to the saga of Tanyard Creek Park. As I previously noted, some positive progress is finally being made. The multi-use trail will get built, but we now have verbal agreements with the City including major changes in construction access and methods to minimize impacts to the trees and reduce tree removal. Until the agreements are in writing and signed by all parties so that they are legally enforceable, we hesitant to celebrate, but the pendulum now seems to be swinging back toward reason again.

After reporting on the story last week, John Schaffner, editor of The Buckhead Reporter, stated in an editorial:

The second story on page 1 of our last edition dealt with the PATH Foundation, Atlanta BeltLine Inc. and, yes, the city's Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs attempting to totally ignore negotiated plans for the path and construction of the Tanyard Creek-Atlanta Memorial Trail.

What was being ignored by PATH was a compromise that was agreed to last year after years of negotiations between those three entities and the Friends of Tanyard Creek Park, the Atlanta Battlefield Association and neighborhoods surrounding Tanyard Creek and Atlanta Memorial parks.

Literally, hundreds of hours of meetings between the parties, numerous walk-throughs at the parks, designing and re-designing of the trail routes and construction were spent coming to the compromise agreement of last year.

But, in the end, PATH has a tradition of building its trails just the way it wants to, regardless of any agreements it might make with neighborhoods. Ask many who have negotiated in vain with PATH for something better than a cold ribbon of concrete through their backyards and parklands and they will say that PATH's Executive Director Ed McBrayer is the king of arrogance.

Add to the one camp the equally arrogant leadership of Atlanta BeltLine Inc. and the city's Parks Department, which will bow to the wishes to get just about anything accomplished in the city's parks so long as it doesn't cost that department any money, and those Tanyard Creek Park neighbors and friends may have years more of fighting in front of them to preserve the beauty of a historic Civil War battlefield where 6,500 Confederate and Union soldiers lost their lives in part of the Battle of Peachtree Creek.

We can only hope that Parks Department Commissioner Diane Harnell-Cohen can stop messaging and twittering on her cell phone long enough during these new rounds of negotiations to recall she is paid by the taxpaying residents who live around the park and want the trail done right, not by PATH or Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.

One can only hope there is still time for an Atlanta victory on this historic battlefield from the Battle for Atlanta.

This strongly-worded editorial has been making the e-mail rounds. One neighbor forwarded it on to City Councilwoman Clair Muller, currently running for City Council President. In response, Ms. Muller said,

I have definitely involved myself in working to save trees in this fabulous park and was waiting to respond to all the letters when we get to agreement. Dozens of emails about the trail have been going back and forth for three weeks.

Your neighborhood leaders, along with an independent arborist appointed by the neighborhood, have been working very hard to get agreements to save trees and get issues resolved.

On August 10th, your neighborhood leaders and I walked the route again for three hours with the independent arborist who presented construction techniques to Path and we’ve been working all this past week to memorialize the agreements.

Please know that we all are working to get the best for this historic park.

I can personally vouch for Ms. Muller's support of our efforts. Hopefully, the product at the end of this long process will be a well-designed and environmentally sensitive trail, sharing the park with the other users and neighbors who are enjoying it now.