Atlanta goes for '96 gold - Atlanta, Georgia

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

Trees Atlanta devised a way to inventory every single tree-planting space in the downtown area. It created an inventory form that analyzed all the street details: what kind of utility-line problems existed, awning problems, and different sidewalk situations, including widths.

Then it gathered a volunteer team of committed landscape architects, landscape contractors, and city planners who donated time on the street every Tuesday and Thursday for a solid year. They compiled a professional inventory, painting a green stripe on each place designated for a tree planting. "We could come back two years later and know exactly where we intended to plant a tree," says Bansley. "Much how-to was based on our prior tree-planting experience. We're probably the most technically involved tree-planting organization in Atlanta."

With the inventory completed, Trees Atlanta next computerized the information, street by street, block by block--exactly how many and what kind of trees needed to be planted, what caliper, and whether they would be planted in the sidewalk or in planters if there was no dirt under the sidewalk.

"We then figured out the $5-million cost, without overhead, to tree the important 2.3-mile Olympic Ring area," Bansley says. "It's a crucial area in the center of downtown where most Olympic venues will be--the Georgia Dome, the World Congress Center, the Civic Center, and the Olympic Stadium."

It also encompasses CNN Center, the headquarters for some 16,000 U.S. and foreign media representatives. Without some planting, the view outside their door would be of asphalt parking lots. "This is where people walk from hotels to the World Congress Center--a $2.5-billion economic hub for the city," Bansley says. "We were building not only for the Olympics but also for the long-term viability of the whole state."

With the planting plan in hand, Mayor Jackson designated Trees Atlanta as the coordinator of all volunteer planting in the Olympic Ring. ACOG soon after bestowed its "blessing."

To accomplish the sizable goals it had set for the city, Trees Atlanta sought sponsors. Its first big contribution came from Georgia Pacific, which offered to grow 1,000 maple, willow oak, and sycamore hardwoods in its south Georgia nursery. "They won't be big enough to be street trees, so we'll plant them in people's front yards in Olympic neighborhoods," says Bansley.

Other tree-project fundings came through sheer hard work--notifying congressmen, holding discussions with the Woodruff Foundation, seeking corporate donations from utility companies. "With Georgia's then-Senator Wyche Fowler's help," Bansley says, "we got a $500,000 Forest Service grant specifically for trees in the Olympic Ring, because Congress realized that the image of the entire United States was at stake here."

It was a start, but strings were attached: Funding couldn't be used for overhead or maintenance, and couldn't be spent until there was a matching grant.

"About a month later, when the Woodruff Foundation said they'd match it, we went all weak in the knees," says Bansley. "Part of this funding allowed us to hire a landscape architect with a Master's degree and 20 years' experience in the development field." (The year before, an America the Beautiful grant had enabled Trees Atlanta to hire a computer-whiz administrative assistant.)