Atlanta goes for '96 gold - Atlanta, Georgia

American Forests, Sept-Oct, 1993 by Nancy Anne Dawe

If they ever give a medal for Olympic Games preparation, this town's tree team is a shoo-in.

"The International Olympic Committee has awarded the 1996 Olympic Games to the City of . . . ATLANTA!"

With those words, International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced to the world on September 18, 1990, that Atlanta would host the July/August 1996 Games--Summer Games marking the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic movement. The excitement generated by that announcement reverberated through Atlanta. Expectant citizens who had gathered downtown cheered exuberantly. A colorful parade soon marched through a city bursting with pride. And when the Olympic flag was symbolically passed to Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson during closing ceremonies at the XXVth Olympiad in Barcelona, Spain, Atlanta's Olympic experience began in earnest.

But the euphoria soon vanished beneath the herculean challenge of preparing Atlanta for the international attention that would focus on it in 1996. Thousands of inevitable conflicts and questions arose: overlapping jurisdictional boundaries involving state and municipal committees and the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG); the need to secure project funding from the state legislature; the striking of a deal for an Olympic Stadium; and the readying of all the other sports venues.

But there was no conflict about the need for more trees--even in Atlanta, fabled as "The City in a Forest," or in a state that forestry officials say planted more trees in rural areas in the last 10 years than any other state in the nation or any other nation in the world.

Highly visible Olympic plantings were sorely needed--in downtown Atlanta and surrounding metro areas, around Olympic venues themselves, along main roads and pedestrian walkways to those venues, and along interstates in Atlanta, Savannah, and other Olympic sites. These plantings would ensure a positive impression of Georgia and America for thousands of visitors from around the globe.

For some entities--like nonprofit Trees Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT), and Atlanta's Parks Department--the news intensified traditional yearly planting efforts. An umbrella group, the Georgia Tree Coalition, was formed by Georgia Forestry Commission director John Mixon to coordinate groups actively involved in Olympic tree planting.

The Coalition--a broad-based partnership of municipal, state, and federal agencies; nonprofit-tree action groups; the Georgia Urban Forest Council; ACOG; and "green industry" representatives--serves as an information-sharing vehicle. At its monthly meetings, members donate expertise and update activities.

Members sometimes unite in planting projects. MARTA (the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) combined forces with Trees Atlanta and its volunteers to plant 2,000 crepe myrtles, 3,500 pine seedlings, and 500 dogwood and oak seedlings along its formerly barren rail lines. Nick Lawrence, MARTA'S landscape architect, developed an overview map so Coalition members could plot their projects upon completion.

The Georgia Power Company got involved, too, by "adopting" its neighbor, the Atlanta Civic Center, site of the Olympic weightlifting venue. "It needed more trees," says Mike Clay of Georgia Power's Land Department, "so we got a landscape plan from the city, bought 80 crepe myrtles, dogwoods, maples, Japanese cedars, and water oaks, and planted them with more company volunteers than we had trees! Our contract crews then mulched the trees, and shaped and removed dead limbs of already existing trees." Georgia Power also prints the Georgia Tree Coalition newsletter free of charge.

"Everywhere we turned, people wanted to help," Mixon says, "including the state's Department of Corrections. They said, 'Don't forget our manpower! We've got trustees just begging for something to do.'" Carol Wulff, a probation officer, adds that judges may opt to give sentences of community service time rather than jail time so that "probationers can put something back into the community. They enjoy making special efforts for trees."

A green mosaic has been taking shape, compounded of plantings large and small. The Coalition's kickoff tree planting was held at Atlanta's Bowen Homes housing project in February 1992. The city provided 1,100 crepe myrtle, sawtooth oak, and loblolly pine seedlings and 16 more mature trees that were planted by Georgia Forestry Commission foresters, 40 probationers, and other volunteers.

"Our goal is to plant 25,000 trees between now and the Olympics," says Mixon. "Barcelona planted weeks and months before their Olympics occurred, but we're doing it now."

By October 1992, Olympic planting had gone "international." Consuls stationed in Atlanta, ACOG officials, and other dignitaries attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the first International Tree Planting. Held at Wade Walker Park in Stone Mountain, Georgia, just east of the city, the project--a cooperative effort of the DeKalb Federation of Garden Clubs and the DeKalb County government--will result in the planting of more than 200 trees native to countries participating in the Games. The site--close to Olympic archery, canoeing, cycling, and tennis events in nearby Stone Mountain Park--is expected to become the South's largest and most impressive arboretum.