Ormond-Grant Park, just south of Memorial Drive on Atlanta’s East side, was once a very different and scary place. But donors and park enthusiasts, like you, helped change that.
Neighbors remember the park as a bleak corner of the neighborhood. Every time it rained, the park flooded, creating an impassible muddy swamp bordering the playground. The play equipment itself was rusting, and unsafe areas were blocked off. The park had become a place of illicit activities, frequented most often by suspicious characters. It was not a space where the community could gather or children could safely play.
“It was a ghost town… [The park] was unused and uncared for,” explained Katie Roberts of the Friends of Ormond-Grant Park. “Why even have a park if no one’s going to use it?”
Residents dreamed of something better. They contacted their city council member to ask what to do. She directed them to Park Pride. The community immediately began making use of a range of Park Pride’s programs and services:
- They created a neighborhood group through Park Pride’s Friends of the Park program to work together to solve park issues.
- They participated in Park Pride educational workshops to learn about raising park funds, grant writing, and organizing park volunteer days, working to replace the park’s battered play equipment.
- Additionally, with support of a Park Pride Legacy Grant, they added an access path into the park and fixed flooding issues by building an interactive rain garden and bioswale. The garden creates opportunities to educate children and promote urban biodiversity.
- Members of the “Friends” group also attend Park Pride’s monthly Park Meetings to discuss current greenspace issues and exchange ideas with other Friends of the Park groups from across Atlanta.
Ormond-Grant Park has been dramatically transformed due to the dedication of the local community and to people like you who donate to Park Pride. Today, the park is filled with children, laughing and playing on the vibrant, new playground. Dog obedience classes take place on the other side of the park, and adults sit and read on the newly installed bench swings and seating walls. The rain garden captures stormwater in a beautifully landscaped area of the park next to the playground—kids now beg to visit “the green park.”
Kim Kleiber, another Friends of Ormond-Grant Park leader, says the renaissance of the park has invigorated the community: “I have met more neighbors in the last few weeks than I have in the past six years I’ve lived here. [The park] really, truly has become a community meeting point.”
Ormond-Grant Park is just one example of how the power of parks is alive and growing in Atlanta. Your gift to Park Pride is vital to parks and Friends of the Park groups across the city.
The power of parks starts with you. Step in now to help Atlanta’s parks grow and thrive, to give children safe places to play and learn outdoors, to steward our local public lands.
Please give now for the greener good.