Brook Run Neighbors Seek Answers

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by Cathy Cobbs
Tuesday, 12 June 2007

Whose park is it anyway? Stonewalled by DeKalb County parks officials and unable to get answers, residents near Brook Run Park are asking the community to come out firing today with their questions and concerns about the nearly completed skate park at the 102-acre facility. (Reprinted with permission from the Dunwoody Crier)

The DeKalb Parks and Greenspace committee changed its regular meeting time and location to a tour of the Brook Run and the Chestnut Donaldson sites in Dunwoody. The committee is an advisory body appointed by the county commission. The tour will start at Brook Run Park at 5:30 p.m., (June 13) near the Children’s Adventure Garden and conclude at the Chestnut Donaldson site about a mile away.

Residents of Dunwoody North, across the street from the North Peachtree Road park, are asking citizens to come armed with questions on placards. They say the questions have gone unanswered by county officials. “After years of slow development, Brook Run Park in Dunwoody is currently at a crossroads, moving away from being a quiet 102 acres of forested property to a regional entertainment attraction operating seven days a week, until 10:30 pm.,” said Dunwoody North Civic Association President John Heneghan. “The skate park is in the final stages of construction and the county has tentatively informed the skate community that the hours of operation will be from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., seven days per week.”

Heneghan said the renovations at the park were funded by the $230 million bond referendum, and that county officials said that $11.5 million of that money was to be spent on Brook Run. It was further promised that public meetings would be held soon after the referendum passed to allow for community input about the park. However, despite pressure from residents, and in particular state Rep. Fran Millar (R-Dunwoody), who has been in contact several times with officials asking for a public forum about the park’s future, the county has been stingy with information and has yet to schedule a meeting. “These meetings never happened and the county decided on their own that the best item for the county to install was the skate park which would be ‘revenue producing’ for other parks in other parts of the county,” Heneghan said. “After paying for a bond referendum, why should our children have to pay to use a park which our taxes already paid for?”

Residents were startled and concerned last December when five acres adjacent to the Children’s Adventure Playground was cleared to prepare for a 25,000-square-foot skate park. Some neighbors have continued to voice concerns about the clear-cutting, including Paul Lowry, who believes that the scope of the project has gone beyond the original master plan for the park. “A mistake and lack of representation for the public support has occurred,” he said in an e-mail to The Crier. “This has been taken in a direction by DeKalb County that we did not want and is not needed.

A vote for parks and green space and bonds has been wrongly used.” Lowry claimed that the skate park will become a revenue-producing facility, be brightly lit and stay open after dusk, and those concerns appear to be validated. “The skate park was supposed to be sculpted to fit into the existing topography and wooded areas,” Heneghan said. “This clearly didn’t happen when five acres of trees were cleared overnight.”

Heneghan urged residents to turn out at the park with concerns in writing, specifically ones written on large posters. “Please come (along with your children and grandchildren) to the Brook Run playground by 5 p.m. Wednesday so that the county is able to see the use it gets and they will be able to read the poster or sign that you created with your thoughts of how Brook Run should operate,” he said in an email to The Crier and others. “During the meeting or ‘tour’ of Brook Run, I will be holding a large poster asking for more seating at the playground,” Heneghan said. Marvin Billups, the deputy director of parks, didn’t return the Crier’s phone call prior to deadline. He has said in the past that the park’s hours and operations are still being determined.