PROPERTY OVERVIEW
| Property address | 550 Thomasville Boulevard |
| Size | 12 acres |
| Current zoning | R-4: Single-Family Residential, minimum lot size 0.21 acres |
| Current land use | Medium-Density Residential |
| Appraised value | $71,000 |
Source: Fulton County Board of Assessors, 2019
PROPERTY USE RECOMMENDATION
The Honor Farm property is located in the Thomasville Heights neighborhood of south Atlanta, next to an existing park and active elementary school. Because of the property’s large area and proximity to existing school and park facilities, transforming the property into an outdoor learning environment would benefit the community without requiring considerable financial investment.
Property Selection Rationale
Compared to the rest of Atlanta, the area around the Honor Farm property is growing relatively slowly, and the nearby schools are not projected to be over capacity in the near future. This property is therefore unlikely to be used for traditional academic purposes. Instead, the District could better serve the surrounding community by leveraging the Honor Farm property for alternative purposes. The following sections describe the community in more detail.
Community need: The neighborhood containing the Honor Farm property has a high need across three of the four indicator categories – housing, economics, and transportation. According to the 1-year ACS for 2017, over 50% of renters in Thomasville Heights pay 30% or more of their income on rent, and 46.6% of housing units with a mortgage have monthly payments more than 30% of their incomes (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).
The economic statistics of the community also reflect high need. The median household income in the community is 70% lower than the City of Atlanta average, and 27.3% of residents are unemployed. 60.9% of families in Thomasville Heights live below the poverty line. Among all households, 52.2% are female householders with no husband present. Of these households, 100% live below the poverty line. Education outcomes have worsened between 2013 and 2017. The percentage of individuals without a high school diploma decreased by over 15% to 24.6% while those with bachelor’s degrees have increased only slightly by 4% to 6.1% of age-qualified neighborhood residents (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).
Transportation remains an area of concern for residents of Thomasville Heights as well. MARTA bus routes offer no direct service from the neighborhood to nearby amenities and poor access to the larger Metro. Still, a significant percentage of households, 23.5%, use public transportation. Across households, 37.1% have no vehicle, worsening access to jobs and important amenities.
Utilization/Population: The cluster elementary, middle, and high school utilization rates are all below the 80% APS high-capacity threshold. The expected population growth is very low. The low projected utilization rate and low expected population growth for nearby schools and neighborhood, respectively, informed our efforts to determine a new use for the property.
Current assets: Proximate to the property are sidewalks, a recreation center, and a local community space. An active neighborhood association, the Thomasville Heights Civic League, meets on a monthly basis to discuss issues affecting local residents. In addition, various partners are actively involved in the neighborhood. Purpose Built Schools serves as a partner to APS and operates Thomasville Elementary School. The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta is leading an effort known as THRIVE Thomasville Heights, a seven member, resident-led advisory committee that awards micro-grants to community-led projects. Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Association, with an office in Thomasville Heights Elementary School, offers families of students with legal support on eviction, accessing benefits, and negotiating other civil matters. Additional to these dedicated partners and active neighborhood efforts is the wealth of vacant green space within the community. Activating these spaces builds on the strengths of community engagement and partnership and offers an opportunity for improved public spaces.
How the Property Fits into Existing Plans
The site’s physical characteristics do not pose any major challenges to development. An ecological assessment based on the City of Atlanta’s Urban Ecology Framework showed that the Honor Farm property has no wetlands or old growth forests and is therefore not ecologically challenged. In addition, its close proximity to an elementary school and park could allow for easy continuous access between the three areas.
Honor Farm also lies within the South Atlanta attendance cluster, which has developed its own strategic plan to improve school performance and meet student needs. As part of this plan, the community highlighted the need for improved connections between students, families, and the overall community, including additional wraparound services. The plan also prioritized social and emotional learning (SEL) and restorative practices, especially at the elementary school level. This goal was echoed by the principal of Thomasville Heights Elementary School, who described how the teachers and faculty have put this strategy into practice. Providing an outdoor learning environment for the students of nearby schools in this cluster aligns well with this plan, as described below.
Recommendation
The community has expressed a desire for additional social and emotional learning opportunities and additional wraparound services for students. An outdoor learning environment can help meet this need without requiring high-intensity development of the property.
Justification
As described above, the community surrounding the Honor Farm property faces a range of challenges, including a high level of poverty and lack of affordable housing and transportation. However, the park next to the property already contains a large recreation center that could house services to address some of these needs. Constructing an additional facility in such close proximity would therefore be an unnecessary expense. We recommend that the property instead be used to address the community’s desire for increased cohesion with the local schools and additional social and emotional learning opportunities for students. Because the community has struggled with violent crime, students would benefit from a trauma-sensitive outdoor learning environment (OLE) that fits into the SEL practices already in place at nearby Thomasville Heights Elementary School.
The Natural Learning Initiative at North Carolina State University has highlighted some of the benefits of providing children with natural play spaces and outdoor learning environments. These benefits include stress reduction, increased creativity, and improved academic performance (Effects of Outdoor Education Programs for Children in California, 2005; Kellert, 2005; Wells & Evans, 2003). Such outcomes align well with the cluster-specific and district goal of increasing opportunities for SEL as well as the recommendations for trauma-sensitive learning environments developed by Futures Without Violence (2016).
In addition to meeting community and school district needs, an OLE offers a cost-effective option for the development of vacant APS property. For example, the Natural Learning Initiative suggests repurposing old tires as planters or logs as benches (North Carolina State University, 2012). Implementing these low-cost solutions could also offer the opportunity to teach students about the importance of recycling and reusing materials. The principal of Thomasville Heights Elementary noted that such ecological learning opportunities are of interest to the students and teachers there, as they have recently started integrating a school garden with their science curriculum. Transforming the vacant property into an OLE would thus build on current initiatives at the nearby school while meeting needs identified by the surrounding community.
Potential Partnerships
There are already a number of partnerships to build upon including Purpose Built Schools, the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, and the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation. We have consulted with members of Park Pride and have identified additional potential partnerships that may serve APS’s efforts to create an Outdoor Learning Environment (OLE). These organizations include West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, Play Atlanta, the Children and Nature Network, and Chris180.
The Bush Mountain Outdoor Activity Center by the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance is a community facility offered 5 miles south of downtown. Already a partner to the Atlanta Public Schools, this facility connects students to nature and educates students on environmental issues including conservation and ecology. Visiting this site would be a great way to identify potential ideas for implementation on the Honor Farm property. Cynthia Gentry of Play Atlanta, an organization that provides an interactive map of Atlanta’s local play areas, could offer design ideas to new play facilities. An interview with Cynthia may provide insight on potential new fixtures and furnishings for the site.
The Children and Nature Network, a new organization to Atlanta, is planning to complete place-based projects that promote play and engagement with nature. Beginning a conversation with Jaime Zaplatosh of the Network may also offer insights on potential ideas for the site.
Finally, an existing partner of APS, Chris 180, embraces a trauma-informed approach to the formation of school communities by developing strategies to recognize and respond to trauma. A specific effort, Project 180, focuses on integrating these mechanisms into the school environment and may serve as a helpful partner in the development of the Outdoor Learning Environment.
Additional Considerations
Our first and foremost consideration is ensuring that an Outdoor Learning Environment aligns with the goals and priorities of residents of Thomasville Heights. Meeting and building a relationship with the Thomasville Heights Civic League to get their feedback is the first consideration we recommend in the process of determining the best use for this property.
Our recommendation is to create an OLE for community members, youth, and children of Thomasville Heights. However, in making our recommendation, we consider the risk that these new places may be susceptible to crime. Overall crime in the neighborhood decreased between 2009 and 2018; however, property and violent crime remains above in-town levels. Reviewing research on the relationship between greenspace and crime, we learned that greenspace, defined as grass, plants, or tree canopy cover over a landscape, is associated with a lower risk of crime across a study area of 300 cities: “burglaries, larceny, auto theft and other property crimes occur less often in greener neighborhoods in every city in [the] sample. Violent crimes like murder, assault and armed robbery were also less common in greener neighborhoods in nearly all the cities studied” (Kimpton, Corcoran, & Wickes, 2017).
In contrast, violent and property crime increased in areas closer to parks, which are defined as “designated open spaces managed by a public agency” and considered a subset of greenspace (Kimpton et al., 2017). Considering this trend, it is important for APS to consider ways to be proactive in preventing crime on parks. According to Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces, parks and greenspace that are consistently utilized by community members and contain ongoing programming are effective in deterring crime (“What Role can Design Play in Creating Safer Parks?,” 2008). In creating this new space, it is recommended that APS make sure community members buy into the idea and are engaged in the effort to maintain the park space.
Another consideration is the costs associated with the upkeep of the greenspace. While ongoing investment in programming and maintenance could be costly overtime, Atlanta Public Schools could offset some of this cost by working with partner organizations. In our research of Outdoor Learning Environments, the costs associated with the maintenance of these properties range and depend on the amount of initial investment in the creation of the greenspace. For this reason, we recommend determining the maintenance budget of this property at the front end of the planning process.