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Chastain Park Conservancy Gets A Hand From Cousins
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:10 PM EST

By Jessica Thomas
Northside Neighbor Staff Writer

Thanks to the efforts of Cousins Properties, Chastain Park will soon be home to 70 new holly and magnolia trees.

The Chastain Park Conservancy was founded in November 2003 as a nonprofit agency with the mission to restore, enhance, maintain and preserve Chastain Park.

Ray Mock, executive director of the Chastain Park Conservancy, said he is excited about the project.

"This is part of the effort to protect pedestrians from golf balls when they are walking on the path around the golf course," said Mock, "The trees create a vegetative screen around the park."

Cousins is paying for the removal and transportation of trees from the corner of Peachtee and Piedmont Roads to Chastain Park.

John Goff, a Cousins representative said the trees are valued at $40,000 and the total cost for moving the trees is $125,000.

Mock said the removal of the trees from the site started Thursday, March 10 and that the company has started preparing the site for construction, which will start this summer.

The conservancy has not yet put together a tree replacement program for the park, so they were grateful for the trees they received from Cousins and the 40 hardwood trees recently received from Trees Atlanta.

Coupled with the effort to have more trees in the park to protect people from golf balls, the city will donate $30,000 for putting up nets in areas where it is difficult to put trees.

The founders of the Chastain Park Conservancy said that they began the group as a response to the 2003 Master Plan Park update, which stated that the city needed financial help funding parks and because they saw that the Piedmont Park Conservancy was doing so well in cleaning up the park.

"We have over 800 members," said Mock, who worked for Park Pride prior to becoming the executive director at the conservancy, "I have been a lifelong patron of Chastain Park."