Park Over Ga. 400 leaders announced

As plans for Buckhead’s community centerpiece continue, the Buckhead Community Improvement District recently announced the formation of the Atlanta’s Park Over Ga. 400 volunteer steering committee, designed to serve as an advisory group to project leadership during the proposed park’s planning phase. The nine-member committee will eventually advise a soon-to-be launched nonprofit entity that will manage next-stage planning, fundraising, permitting, relationship building and construction of the park.

The Steering Committee members represent a variety of corporate, nonprofit and education heavy-hitters, including:

■Paul Brown, CEO of Arby’s

■David D. Cummings, CEO of Atlanta Tech Village

■Raj Deshpande, CEO of Pulseworks, LLC

■ Lane Moore, managing partner of QuarterMoore and co-founder of Rubicon Global

■Keith Parker, CEO of Goodwill of North Georgia

■Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine

■Robert Sheft, CEO of Installation Made Easy Inc.

■Larry Smith, former general counsel of The Home Depot

■Carol Tomé, CFO and executive vice president of Corporate Services for The Home Depot

Since July, BCID has worked with its project partners, ROGERS PARTNERS Architects + Urban Designers and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, to develop a detailed plan to name the park, create a nonprofit entity to manage construction and operations, and prepare for the design, engineering and permitting phase, which is planned to begin in January 2018. The goal is to have community involvement throughout the process. “Ground-making” for the project is planned for 2020, and the park is projected to open by 2022 and be fully operational by 2023, significantly reducing previous timelines by 12 to 24 months.

The yet-to-be-named park will create nine acres of elevated green space in Buckhead, which currently has the least amount of public park space per capita in the city of Atlanta. The new park will be a crucial link and destination on the soon-to-be-completed PATH400, a 5.2-mile greenway currently under construction.