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On the crest of a hill overlooking an old train track and a sunset view of downtown Atlanta’s skyscrapers, 2 acres of possibility await in Reynoldstown.

A padlocked fence with barbed wire protects the city-owned lot. Inside, the only visible assets are a covered vehicle and a storage shed.

But there’s so much more.

A 141-page report released last month by the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group, sees the overgrown lot turning into Holtzclaw Park, one of four parks proposed along 22 miles of train tracks looping Atlanta and called the Beltline.

The site could become a beautiful neighborhood park at minimal cost, according to the report, written by the design team of Alex Garvin & Associates of New York.

“Due to its small size, an organized group of neighborhood residents might even spend a Saturday turning this abandoned lot into a spectacular gem,” the report suggests.

Atlanta’s proposed Beltline has been dominated by visions of a trolley or train line encircling the city, accelerating redevelopment for lofts and funky urban businesses in formerly abandoned industrial centers and blighted neighborhoods. But the first plan to hit the streets is not about transit-oriented development. It’s a proposal to create a connected series of new and expanded parks.

The Trust for Public Land’s grand, green vision, as laid out by one of the country’s top urban planners, would add 1,400 acres of parkland, increasing the city’s existing park acreage by more than 40 percent. Atlanta would no longer be a basement dweller among big cities when it comes to public parks.

The vision includes joggers running around the Atlanta Waterworks reservoirs on Howell Mill Road, a la New York’s Central Park; boaters sailing on a quarry-turned-lake west of downtown; and horseback riders cantering along a Georgia Power easement in southeast Atlanta.
“All this is speculation,” said Jim Langford, the land trust’s Georgia director. “What do people want to see happen? What does the city want to see happen? We’re laying this out as a possibility.”

A 21st-century model
The problems are as numerous as the possibilities.

They are specific. The potential lake is now Bellwood Quarry, owned by Fulton County but under lease to Vulcan Materials Co. through 2034. If converted to a park, it would become the city’s largest at 579 acres --- nearly three times larger than the current title holder, Freedom Park.

The problems are also comprehensive. Acquiring just the parkland could take 10 to 20 years and cost several hundred million dollars. On the upside, though, most of the properties identified in the report as potential parkland are already owned by a public entity: the city, Fulton County, MARTA or the state Department of Transportation. Langford said fewer than 150 landowners control the rest.

A public-private effort would be needed, much like the trust-led Chattahoochee Land Protection Campaign.

Since the mid-1990s, that effort has raised $141 million in government grants and private donations to create a protected greenway along the Chattahoochee River from its source near Helen downstream to Columbus, on the Alabama border. About 70 miles of river frontage and 14,000 acres have been acquired.

While the Chattahoochee campaign will continue, Langford said, “We are evaluating now how and whether to do a similar campaign for the Beltline. Atlanta has done it for Symphony Hall, for the Arts Center. People have come together, and it may be time to do that for the Beltline. It can become a model: the 21st-century model of park systems in the country.”

On the public side, the Atlanta Development Authority, which focuses on economic development, is looking at whether a special tax district could be used to pay for the Beltline, from land acquisition to construction to maintenance.

‘City-altering experience’
The first large private donation for Beltline parkland was made last month by the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, which has decided to focus its donations for green space aquisition along the Beltline. The foundation gave the Trust for Public Land $2.5 million—some of it set aside as a challenge grant for others. Elise Eplan, the foundation’s vice president for special initiatives, said the Beltline “would be an immediate, city-altering kind of experience.”

Another likely donor is the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, which already has given $200,000 to the PATH Foundation for Beltline work, said foundation President Pete McTier. But first, that venerable Atlanta foundation will need to see more coordinated leadership behind the Beltline. “The various parts have to come together,” McTier said.
In addition to the Trust for Public Land’s report, MARTA and the Atlanta Development Authority are completing their own studies. And Gwinnett County investor Wayne Mason is trying to figure out what to do with the 4.6 miles of track he recently bought in northeast Atlanta, through some of the city’s priciest neighborhoods.

“It is a most worthy ambition for our city, but one that is completely fragmented and very expensive, particularly if it is to unfold as a unified project,” McTier said.

A history of neglect
If the city, and Mayor Shirley Franklin, take charge of the Beltline project, and if it comes to fruition, the next question will be how the city maintains the public spaces. Atlanta has done a poor job of maintaining its parks in the past, and not every park can generate a group like the privately funded Piedmont Park Conservancy to take care of it.

A 2002 report by Franklin’s Parks and Green Spaces Task Force found that the city spent far less to maintain its parks than cities recognized for their park systems. In 2000, Atlanta spent $58 per resident on park maintenance, while Seattle spent $160, Minneapolis $144 and Chicago $128.

As Garvin & Associates put it in its report, “There is no point in spending millions of dollars to create a great public realm if it starts to deteriorate from the moment it opens.”

Both the mayor’s task force and the Trust for Public Land report recommended setting up an independent city agency to run the parks. The Atlanta City Council, though, has opposed that concept, in part because members worry that it could open the door for a state takeover of city-owned Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Ryan Gravel, whose Georgia Tech thesis launched the Beltline vision, is trying to engage the help of the people of Atlanta. He helped start Friends of the Belt Line, a nonprofit group, to give people a way to stay informed and take part in discussions.

“The Beltline is for the people, for the city of Atlanta,” Gravel said. “It will contribute to citizens’ quality of life both by offering parks and green space—which includes public health and other concerns—and also transit, getting people to work and where they need to go. And redevelopment in areas that haven’t seen development in decades. . . . It’s not just about developers, and it’s not just about the city. It’s about the people who live in the communties along the way.”

Trees for health
The Beltline would pass through 46 neighborhoods, within walking distance of more than 137,000 people.

Peggy Harper, a neighborhood leader in Mechanicsville, in south Atlanta, and president of the Atlanta Planning Advisory Board, which advises the city on zoning decisions and other planning issues, said that whether or not a train ever loops the city, adding the parks and connecting them with a trail will make a huge difference.

“If nothing else, this NPU-V has the highest incidence of childhood asthma in the city of Atlanta,’’ Harper said. ‘‘If buying the Beltline keeps my children from having asthma, I’m all for it. And that’s exactly what happens when you put in a park and plant trees. The health of an individual goes up.”