City of Dunwoody Receives Technical Grant
MillionMile Greenway awarded the city of Dunwoody the Community Technical Grant to assist the city with its planning of greenways and trails.
The grant includes geospatial consulting, an estimated $4,000 value, and access to MMG’s Greenway Analyst planning technology.
With the resources from this grant, Dunwoody will receive assistance in planning for and designing trails throughout its district.Ryan Jenkins, an Atlanta landscape architect, donates his time to MMG as the chair of the technical team. In the beginning of October, Jenkins and Brent Walker, the Parks and Recreation Manager of Dunwoody, began discussing plans for the new course of the city.
“The city is currently doing a comprehensive park and recreational master plan,” Jenkins explained.
There are essentially two options for the city of Dunwoody, or any city or organization receiving MMG’s Technical Grant, to enhance and expand their current green spaces.
The first is through a site-specific conceptual design. This model creates individually defined areas in a community. It may include facilities like restrooms, parking, information kiosks and a comparatively smaller but equally enjoyable area of trails. Its completion can be expected within two or three years.
The second, a longer-term option, is a community-wide comprehensive plan. Trails would connect neighborhoods, parks and schools to other neighborhoods, parks and schools throughout the district. However, this project could take two to three decades to implement.
Dunwoody desires to connect the city’s parks to parks in Dekalb County, along with surrounding cities’ parks and greenways.
Brent Walker, parks and recreation manager of Dunwoody, sees that these greenways will provide citizens an alternative mode of transportation through the city and promote a healthy lifestyle by adding recreational facilities.
“There’s a large population here that’s interested in seeing pedestrian mobility, bike paths and people out of their cars,” Walker said. “MillionMile Greenway is definitely helping us move the process forward. We didn’t have the funding initially earmarked to do this type of study, so it’s helped us get a jump-start on the process.”
Anne Hicks, one of the key citizens that helped Dunwoody earn the grant, looks forward to the possibility of a trail-connected city.
“There are people in Dunwoody who have been trying to get this idea launched for 10 years,” Hicks stated. “It’s what the residents are all asking for; this is important to the citizens.”
Technical grants are only awarded periodically by MMG. The board bestows the awards after evaluating the grant requests and consulting the technical and marketing committees for approval.
There are two major distinctions that MMG looks for when choosing a grant recipient. The first is a short-term project option, such as a demonstration trail that can be quickly accomplished, adding value to the project and showing the community that the addition of trails is a good idea.
The second distinction is a willingness on the applicant’s part to engage the community to participate in the thinking and planning process. The city of Dunwoody incorporates both elements in its plan.
“It’s perfect that we’re now working with them on greenway and trail planning,” Jenkins said. “It’s really a good complementary piece to what they’re doing in terms of park and recreation. They’re looking at ways to enhance the park and recreational system to better serve the community, and we’re going to be helping them figure out how to make a better connected park and recreation system.”
Jenkins’s technical team needs about three months to complete the grant project. Upon its entire construction, the project will create alternatives to transportation and add recreational opportunities, including 12-foot wide multi-use trails for both pedestrians and cyclists.
