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Community Corner

Druid Hills Ready For 'Visioning' on Newly Acquired Parcels

Playground, habitat likely on Ridgewood and Vickers drives

Druid Hills is not resting on its laurels – especially not the invasive cherry laurel -- when it comes to parks and green space but is moving forward to develop two new community spaces on Ridgewood and Vickers drives.

Since DeKalb County voters’ approval of bonds for green space acquisition 2001 and 2006, Druid Hills Civic Association (DHCA) has been working to help the county identify, acquire and now develop new playground and parks.

Their labors are bearing fruits, said Druid Hills Civic Association president Bruce MacGregor. In the past few months, the county has purchased property on Vickers and Ridgewood drives and cleared the buildings from the property.

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“Our goal is to explore all options for new playgrounds and parks,” said Becky Evans, chair of the newly formed Parks & Playgrounds subcommittee of DHCA’s Parks & Greenspace committee. “We want to call a neighborhood meeting and work with the local nonprofit Park Pride to have a ‘visioning meeting’ for the new parks.” She estimated the meeting would be in August or September.

The Vickers Drive property alongside Peavine Creek and might be incorporated into the proposed South Fork Conservancy creek trail, Evans said, and would probably not be suitable for a playground because the space is small and entirely in the. Evans said the Ridgewood parcel would be suitable for a walk-in playground area on the footprint of the house that used to be on the site and for a small trail could be built around the wooded area.

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MacGregor, whose expertise is in city planning, has agreed to chair the development of 1812 Ridgewood Drive, which is a 1.8-acre, forested site that backs up to many houses along Ridgewood Drive and Burlington Road and is bisected by a creek tributary but is thick with invasive plants including bamboo and a variety of vines and shrubs.

Taken together, he said, these interior spaces allow an unbroken hardwood canopy in the area that ultimately tie in with Fernbank Forest so that, although the area is built up and urban, it offers a relatively natural environment with wildlife, flora and fauna.

The parcel on Ridgewood was purchased for approximately $400,000, while the Vickers site was about $250,000, MacGregor said, noting that District 2 in DeKalb, which includes Druid Hills, has the least amount of park space of any area of the county. A portion of the bond money was designated to be spent by district, but it has been difficult to acquire land in Druid Hills because little land is available and prices are high.

Now, the program may be under threat because, according to MacGregor, there has been a movement to divert some of the parks money away from acquisition in our area into maintenance, countywide.

“I think maintenance is important and is commonly overlooked, but having said that, it is so difficult to buy open space in central DeKalb,” MacGregor said. “I was told by an advisory group to the parks department that a letter has been prepared – not adopted or signed -- that says we have bought all the land we need and we need to stop buying land and use the bond money for maintenance of the land we have already bought.”

The Ridgewood property is the last of several interior block parcels originally platted as “reserved.”

“I presume it would mean reserved for open space. I don’t know what else it would mean,” MacGregor said.

Other examples he cited of interior spaces in the neighborhood are on the interior of Princeton Way, Westminster Way, Edinburgh Drive and behind Hummingbird Lane in Chelsea Heights.

“This was a common way to develop property 80 years ago, I think, to have green space in the interior, so that everyone would have green space, rather than just backing up to your neighbor’s house,” MacGregor said. “So your front yard is public -- and we are fortunate to have sidewalks -- and the backyard is private. You have the best of both worlds, in my view.”

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