Special Event Sites
Current Conditions
No park in the City is adequately equipped to hold major outdoor special events. In parks that regularly host events, temporary structures and facilities such as stages, lighting posts and electrical supply outlets must be rebuilt and disassembled for every event. Parks not originally designed or planned for holding special events attract thousands of visitors. These events sometimes have had a major detrimental impact on the environmental health of the parks and have increased park maintenance costs.
Some special facilities such as the Chastain Park Amphitheater, the Cyclorama, Lakewood Amphitheater and the Civic Center draw visitors from the greater Atlanta area, thus providing service to the region as well as the City. In turn, metropolitan Atlanta provides regional parks that the City of Atlanta cannot provide because of limited land availability. This symbiotic relationship between regional and City facilities is important to ensure equity of recreation services expenditures by various jurisdictions.
A few neighborhood parks have neighborhood facilities such as picnic shelters and gazebos. Both local residents and residents of neighborhoods Citywide use these facilities heavily.
In 2002, a mayoral-appointed Special Events Task Force made significant changes to the City’s Outdoor Festival ordinance. The new ordinance was adopted by City Council in 2002. The ordinance revised the rules and raised fees for festival organizers. The Task Force is made up of representatives from various City departments, neighborhoods, other agencies, and event organizers, and meets weekly to review festival applications.
Commercial District Events
Commercial areas have a need for the staging of special events during lunchtime, evenings and weekends. The population of the City more than doubles each day when commuters arrive to work. When these temporary residents are encouraged to explore the City during the day, they tend to linger in the evenings or return on weekends to enjoy places and events nearby. These are crucial to the economic vitality of retail shopping and entertainment districts.
Anticipated Future Conditions
Special events offer both social and economic benefits to the City. If the City does not provide places to adequately host these outdoor special events, we will not be able to maximize these benefits. Additionally, our park land will suffer from the outdoor events that do take place.
Current Policies
- Provide places for family and neighborhood events in neighborhood parks.
- Provide places for community events and festivals in community parks and commercial areas.
- Designate new special event parks for regional special events and festivals that efficiently accommodate the needs of performers, exhibitors and large crowds.
- Require event sponsors and promoters to pay for the additional public services, such as park maintenance and police services, which are necessary for the staging and cleanup of special events.
- Protect all park open space from overuse due to special events. Continue City policy of not allowing community events in neighborhood parks and removing regional events from community parks and from community space in regional parks.
- Support development of the former Circle Line rail corridor around Downtown and Midtown as a Cultural Ring greenway, providing a corridor for holding cultural festivals, with a commuter train that will link historic and cultural sites.
Current Projects
Lakewood Special Events Park
Lakewood Park, Lakewood Stadium and South Bend Park could be developed into a visually and functionally unified park. It would function as a community park for the surrounding neighborhood as well as a regional park for families that may spend an entire day attending several events.