Architect: Proposed Ga. 400 Park Major Step For Atlanta

April 6th, 2016

Imagine if the interstates crisscrossing Atlanta were topped with greenspace.

With its proposed nine-acre park over Georgia-400, the Buckhead Community Improvement District could make that happen in Atlanta’s affluent but park-deficient neighborhood. The group has already put out a call for design proposals and will decide whether to advance the Buckhead park idea as early as this month.

Curbed Atlanta editor and Rosser International architect Michael Kahn, who regularly shares architectural commentary on WABE’s ”City Lights,” spoke about the project’s feasibility and significance in an interview. He said the idea could make city leaders rethink spaces in other parts of the city that are currently taken up by highways.

“It’s been on the minds of Atlantans and designers in the city for years that the infrastructural space in the core of our city — that is already depressed like the connector is in some areas, physically from the surrounding land — would be a prime candidate for utilizing as park space or programmed space in the city,” Kahn said.

The Georgia-400 park idea, Kahn continued, “is the first tangible effort that has traction, that could gain funding and could move forward. And regardless of whether the Buckhead project moves forward or not, I would expect to see more proposals, more serious proposals and potentially, eventually, more investment that will allow for the construction of projects like this in not just Buckhead, but Midtown and downtown.”