Huge Park on Atlanta’s Westside Is Inching Towards Reality
Eventually Bellwood Quarry will be big. Right now, it’s 300 acres of woods and trash, plus the quarry itself. But the plan is for it to be a huge new park on Atlanta’s Westside, and the committee dedicated to redeveloping the site will start meeting next year.
City councilman Michael Julian Bond formed the committee. He said the park will be a place to hold big concerts and festivals. There’s a creek running through it, forests and great views.
“I run into people every day that ask me what’s going on at that site,” Bond said. “They’re ready for a new park.”
The quarry will become a reservoir for drinking water. And Bond said that figuring out the balance between Atlanta’s Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Watershed Management is part of what’s going on now, because Watershed needs space for water treatment facilities and for security.
“A lot of the land they need, or might want to use, Parks owns, and vice versa,” he said. “So they’re just looking internally about how to work out some of those issues.”
The city of Atlanta bought the 300-plus acres around Bellwood Quarry in 2006. Even if you’ve never been there, you may have seen it on TV in The Walking Dead, or in a couple movies.
Beyond the bureaucracy, Bond said there’s a lot of cleanup needed before the park can open. There’s been dumping there for years, including concrete chunks of Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.
Bond said he hopes at least a portion of the park could open within three years.
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