This column was originally published on SaportaReport.
By John Ahmann, President & CEO, Westside Future Fund, and Michael Halicki, President & CEO, Park Pride
Prior to 2015, English Avenue didn’t have a single park. Not one. In a neighborhood nested in the historic Westside community that was once one of the most vital centers of Black intellectual and civic life in America — home to leaders of the civil rights movement, to generations of families who built community on its tree-lined streets — children had no safe place to play. There was no greenspace for a family cookout or a neighborhood gathering. What there was, instead, was flooding. Vacant lots choked with debris and blight. Blocks of abandoned homes. Decades of disinvestment had stripped this community of the most basic elements of a healthy neighborhood.
That was not an accident. It was a pattern repeated across American cities: a systematic withdrawal of investment from historically Black communities that left behind not just poverty, but the absence of public goods that other neighborhoods took for granted. Parks among them.
Today, English Avenue tells a different story. A case study example in the neighborhood is Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park — named for a beloved 92-year-old community matriarch whose tragic death in 2006 galvanized a renewed push for neighborhood improvement — which is one of several new parks that have transformed the historic Westside in recent years, from Lindsay Street Park and Mattie Freeland Park in English Avenue to the expanded Vine City Park (renamed for tireless community activist June Elois Mundy) and the landmark Rodney Cook Sr. Park.
Built on formerly vacant lots along Joseph E. Boone Boulevard, Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park gives children a playground, families an open field for gathering, and residents a fitness station and lighted pathways. Beneath the surface, it captures up to 3.5 million gallons of stormwater annually, helping solve a flooding crisis that destroyed homes for decades.
But the park alone isn’t the whole story. What happened around it is.
While Park Pride, The Conservation Fund, the City of Atlanta and a broad coalition of supporters were diligently building the park, Westside Future Fund was acquiring and cleaning up blighted properties on the surrounding blocks. The logic was simple: if you’re going to invest in a park, make sure the people who live nearby can stay and benefit. So WFF purchased vacant lots, demolished dangerous structures, and began developing high-quality, deeply affordable housing — right next to the greenspace.
Today, 839 Joseph E. Boone Boulevard sits directly next door to Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park: 33 new rental apartments and retail space, opened in January 2026. Around the corner, single-family homes on Proctor Street have been built and sold to legacy residents through the Home on the Westside program. A few blocks away, the 400 Paines Avenue complex provides affordable units within walking distance of the park. And more is coming.
This wasn’t a coincidence. Building near greenspace has been a key focus of WFF’s land acquisition and development strategy. And it’s a model that works — not just in English Avenue, but as a principle for how cities should think about restoring neighborhoods that have been left behind.
Here’s why. Parks and housing aren’t separate policy issues. They are deeply connected. A park makes the housing around it more valuable, economically and socially. Families who live near quality greenspace are healthier. Children who have a safe place to play, to run, to be kids, are less likely to find themselves in harmful situations. Neighbors who share a public space build the kind of trust and familiarity that makes a community feel like home. And when that greenspace also solves infrastructure problems, like the stormwater management built into Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, it makes the surrounding land viable for development in ways it wasn’t before.
The key is making sure the investment benefits the people who are already there. WFF’s Anti Displacement Tax Fund covers rising property taxes for legacy homeowners. Its Home on the Westside program prioritizes residents with existing connections to the community. Park Pride’s community-driven visioning process ensures that parks reflect what residents actually want, not what outside planners assume they need.
This is what restoration without displacement looks like in practice: lead with greenspace, build quality affordable housing around it, and protect the people who were there first.
English Avenue is proof that it works. But this model belongs to every neighborhood in Atlanta, and every city in America, that has been told for too long that disinvestment is permanent. It isn’t. Community can be recreated. One park and one home at a time.