City officials are asking residents and homeowners groups to express their opinions on a proposed 20-plus-acre riverfront park after several residents in the area began questioning the plan.
Several dozen residents met with city officials at the site off Old Riverside Drive last month to discuss concerns about the plan to turn the property, the location of a Fulton County pump station, into a public park. Another meeting is planned in May.
City Councilman William “Chip” Collins said he has received about 100 emails discussing the plan and estimated that 90 percent supported the park. Two homeowners groups also have endorsed the park, he said, but a third wanted more information about what would go in the park before it would agree to back the plan.
“People want a park. People want more parks,” he said. “The people of Sandy Springs have always told us, from the time we became a city, to bring more parks and green space to Sandy Springs.”
But Susan Zweig, who lives next to the property, said she and some of her neighbors worry that the city’s plans may draw crowds that their neighborhood can’t handle. Zweig organized the March meeting with city officials.
“I’m not opposed to a park. Who could oppose a park?” she asked. “But what I’m opposed to is asking us to vote when they don’t know what it is they’re going to put there.”
She said a recent visit to Morgan Falls Overlook Park, another city park, on a weekend convinced her that parks draw significant crowds. “There were cars everywhere,” she said.
She questions the city’s planning for the Old Riverside Park.
“What we’re asking is the city have an adequate plan for the traffic, the parking,” she said. “Chip has said it will be a neighborhood park. I want a commitment they’re going to do that.”
Zweig said she and other residents were concerned about the city’s plans for fencing the property, handling parking and overflow parking, and similar issues.
“They’ve got to be sensitive to the people around them,” she said. “That’s not unreasonable.”
But Collins said the city’s plans are preliminary. If Fulton County agrees to let the city take control of the property and build a park there, then city officials will prepare more detailed plans, he said.
“I think it will be a positive thing,” he said. “Parks should be something everybody can be enthusiastic about. I know this can be done where it will be much more a boon to the neighborhood than a detriment.”
