I do enjoy expansive city parks.  Ones where you can easily get lost amidst miles of rock and tree.  But sometimes it’s even more enjoyable to turn a corner or peak around a building and come upon a small park, hidden from the raging world around it.

Paris has a good number of these sorts of parks.

And while Portland does have an array of  “lose yourself in nature” type parks, it was the variation of the smaller, neighborhood parks that has really attracted my attention.

Take the admittedly experimental Tanner Springs Park in the pic above.  It was designed to recall the wetlands that formerly existed in this newly developed area of Portland.  As you can see in the pic below, residents can sit on the steps surrounding the park and on the small patch of green on the park’s northern boundary.   The park’s greatest current threat are the neighborhood dogs, who could easily over pollute the park’s waters, allowing algae to take over.

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In a memo to the Decatur school board, Superintendent Phyllis Edwards responds to the recent AJC article written about the use of portable classrooms in Decatur this year.

She introduces it in her regular note to the board thusly…

I have also attached a response to the article that appeared in the AJC; at the prompting of a few of our own parents. It rehashed the portable controversy even though individual time and board time has been used repeatedly to explain the reasoning. Just for the record, there are no extravagant furnishings. No office has black leather; most of the chairs are some type of vinyl. I do think it is a shame that of all the things we could talk about in CSD, which have been real wins for the system and would have made a great opening day story, which, by the way, no one covered; the newspaper chooses to run a weak story to make us look bad to the general public. I was not interviewed at all for this piece.

Ah, I’ve been wondering how this story originated.  And now I wonder, if the parents did push it, what was the purpose?   As I’ve stated previously, we’re going to need to redistrict this year anyway, so why push a story about trailers now?

What was the endgame?  Because in terms of coming to any sort of reconciliation, this article instead seems to have divided folks further.  And sure that makes for a great story, but heck if it’s good for the community.

As Mr. Wheatley mentions in his Fresh Loaf post, we’ve been chatting about what’s going on with all the construction at Deepdene Park – the eastern end of the Ponce Olmstead parks – for a while now; speculating whether its a bike path or a new park or just utility work.

Obviously if this was a city of Decatur project, lord knows we would have known about it years ago and already talked the thing to death. But since we’re wondering about a construction out in “the County”, the time-tested approach of contacting the proper officials doesn’t always bear much fruit.

But Wheatley’s got the mad journalistic skills of a beat-reporting ninja, so he was able to unearth a few details about this project.  Check it…

Is it a PATH trail, perhaps one that will offer Decaturites and Druid Hills and Fernbank residents a connection to Candler Park and the Freedom Park trail? The nonprofit trailbuilder tells CL no. We found a few details on this Olmstead Linear Park Alliance website, but were still left curious.

According to the county, the construction is part of a streetscape improvement that will — ta da! — result in an eight-foot-wide sidewalk similar to those winding through the other greenspaces along Ponce.

And the Olmstead Linear Parks website now has this blurb…

The proposed $4 million rehabilitation of Deepdene will be done in stages. Priorities include remediation of severe erosion and storm water problems, burial of utilities and construction of curbing. To make the park safer and more accessible, appropriate lighting and signage will be installed and a sidewalk and row of trees will be added along Ponce de Leon Avenue. In the interior, the path system will be realigned and expanded, and the proliferation of non-native invasive plants will be controlled.

So, is that the long and short of it?  Questions still remain unanswered.  Like, what will happen to the soccer field area?  Anyone know?

Responding to my email about a rumor that the various city commissions and boards wouldn’t take up the proposed variances for a 315 West Ponce de Leon Ave retail building until next month, the Decatur’s planning director Amanda Thompson writes…

The applicant requested a 30 day deferral to be able to complete architectural elevations for the project. That is all the information I have at this time. Signs with the next round of meetings dates will be posted in a couple of weeks. The meeting dates are ZBA Sept. 13, Planning Commission Sept. 14 and City Commission Sept. 20th.