The opening of East Cobb Park in 2003 was the culmination of five years of planning, persistence, community involvement and commitment.
What began as a dream for a passive park in the heart of a bustling suburban community turned into a full-throttle campaign that made its reality even more gratifying for those behind it.
Several founding members of the Friends for the East Cobb Park discussed that history this week before the East Cobb Area Council of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, where the park idea was incubated.
“It was a big idea, and it was Sunny’s idea,” said Mary Karras, the first president of the Friends for the East Cobb Park, referring to Sunny Walker.
She was a co-owner of the Frameworks Gallery in East Cobb and a leading arts and community advocate who was the guiding force behind the creation of the park.
“She said, ‘I think we need a passive park in East Cobb,’ ” Karras recalls. “I said, ‘What’s a passive park?’ ”
Walker had a vision, but that’s all the Friends group, formed as a non-profit in 1998, had to go on.
Identifying a possible location, purchasing it and then turning it over to Cobb County for development as a park were all formidable tasks.
Finding land that was close to the Merchants Walk area, that was affordable and suitable for passive park was a tall order.
When a member of the Bowles family came to the bank where Karras worked and offered to sell 13 acres of what had been farmland on Roswell Road, he told her he also had done an environmental study.
That’s when Karras turned to Tom Bills, a resident of the adjacent Mitsy Forest subdivision, and an engineer by training.
“The land was clean and good and ready for us to purchase,” said Bills, a former Friends treasurer and president.
Fundraising was the next step, and it was a comprehensive approach. Cobb County offered a match, but Karras and other Friends advocates had to hustle to get the interest of businesses, foundations and everyday citizens.
Then-U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson helped the Friends gain access to foundation and business leaders in Atlanta, and the group held events and meetings and wrote letters seeking financial support.
“We were scrambling for every hundred dollars we could find,” Karras said. “We did it because we saw it was an opportunity to create a legacy in this community.”
Without the larger community of everyday citizens contributing their share, the vision of East Cobb Park may not have gone much further.
Scout troops, school groups, families, civic organizations and others chipped in as they could. They included kids turned over big bags of change they solicited from golfers on the Indian Hills driving range.
“That meant as much to us” as the bigger checks, Bills said, “because it showed the support of the community.”
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Citizens also could purchase park cobblestones and pickets for the fence around the children’s playground bearing their names. Other contributors had their names, or the names of loved ones, inscribed on park benches.
With all of that support, and most of the money, the Friends group found itself $100,000 short at closing. That’s when Riverside Bank, which had been vital in securing financing during the fundraising drive, agreed to make a loan.
When asked if she or the Friends group ever had any doubts, Karras said no, but understood how their task may come across to some: “Raising $1 million to buy land that we were going to give to the county?”
Yet the laborious fundraising campaign contained the seeds of what the Friends group also had envisioned.
“We started off slow and then we gained momentum,” Karras said. “That gave everybody ownership.”
“There was no giving up,” said Kim Paris, another former Friends president.
“Sunny dreamed big,” Karras said, “and we bought into it.”
Johnny Johnson is the owner of Edward Johns Jewelers and a longtime civic leader who serves as Santa Claus at park’s Holiday Lights festivities: “East Cobb Park became the center of our community.”
East Cobb Area Council president Dan Byers said “East Cobb Park was the crown jewel of this community before we ever moved here.”
More community support followed after the park was built and opened. A second “all-abilities” playground was built with a $75,000 grant from the Resurgens Foundation.
The Friends group continues as an active partner with the county, staging year-round events including concerts and the Holiday Lights tree lighting, which starts at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Last year, a secondary vision of expanding the park became a reality when Cobb County purchased 22 acres of adjacent property belonging to Wylene Tritt, who donated 7.7 acres of what had been the 54-acre Tritt farm.
The Friends group helped the county round out the costs at closing with a $102,000 contribution from its endowment, most of which has been paid back.
For now, the new land will remain as greenspace, but there are longer-term visions of purchasing what’s left of the Tritt land for park purposes.
“History is important, because there is a future for the park,” said Lee O’Neal, the current Friends president. “There are plenty of opportunities to develop that property and purchase more to extend East Cobb Park.”
(More East Cobb Park background here.)
The Cobb Board of Commissioners voted this fall to name the first bridge connecting the current park to its newer space after Walker, who died in September. A piano was donated in her name in 2017 and sits in the park gazebo.
Karras, now the manager of investor relations for the Cobb Chamber, said Walker also talked about the park one day having an arts center, and would like to see that come to fruition.
For Paris, who’s going to be a grandmother in the spring, her thoughts about the park’s future are more immediate.
“That’s why we did this,” she said, referencing the legacy mission of the park founders, “as the park continues to grow and that our community continues to support.”
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