May Mobility Awareness Month: On the Road to Making Atlanta Parks Accessible to All

By Michael Halicki, Executive Director of Park Pride and Isabel González Whitaker, Founder of Sara J. González Memorial Park

Great parks aren’t “great” if they aren’t welcoming and accessible. Parks should not discriminate, and certainly not intentionally. As the park’s founder and at Park Pride, where we work to ensure parks reach their full potential, we believe everyone should have access to a quality park, regardless of race, age, income , its postal code or its capacities. Today we’re going to focus on capacity, because how you get there and what you can do once you’re there matters when it comes to parks.

May is National Mobility Awareness Month. This gives us an opportunity to think about opportunities to make Atlanta’s parks accessible to everyone. In an inclusive space, not every element will necessarily be accessible to everyone, but the combination of experiences should provide something equally great for each visitor.

Earlier this year, through an outside donation, Park Pride awarded a grant to increase accessibility to Sara J. González Memorial Park (SJG). SJG Park is a small triangular green space nestled on the Westside of Atlanta. The park was named in memory of González, a changemaker in Atlanta who advocated at all levels for diversity and inclusion, and the park is Georgia’s first memorial to a Latinx individual and the first park to bear his name.

The Friends of SJG Park group is dedicated to making the park a welcoming space for all visitors. The park currently includes a playscape for all abilities, an outdoor learning space, a community learning garden and a youth soccer field.

Now, with this new funding from Park Pride, SJG Park is set to benefit from a series of significant accessibility improvements, including:

• One parking space reserved for disabled people with access to the park
• Paved paths through the park that access the soccer fields, the Latin Ethnobotanical Learning Garden, and all existing sidewalks around the park
• Inclusive fitness stations with accessible surface (artificial turf)
• Music station to involve all park users

These improvements, which will begin later this summer, are made possible through a multi-year commitment to Park Pride from the Wheels in the Woods Foundation, a national organization that promotes and supports wheelchair accessibility in nature. SJG Park is the first urban green space in the country to benefit from this funding.

The Foundation was created by Donald and Elisabeth Chiboucas, who noticed how inaccessible outdoor spaces can be to visitors in wheelchairs.

“We were taking Don’s parents on a trail around a lake and his mother was in a wheelchair. We lost control and narrowly escaped an accident,” said Elisabeth Chiboucas, president of the Wheels in the Woods Foundation. “Don saw a need and decided to create Wheels in the Woods to build handicapped accessible trails to give people more and more efficient ways to get outside.”

Park Pride is proud to be a resource for crucial efforts like these to ensure everyone has a welcoming green space to gather, play or simply relax outdoors. Accessibility efforts are underway in parks across the country, including new ranger-led programs in Great Smoky Mountains National Park that give visitors with disabilities the opportunity to kayak, mountain bike, explore trails and camping overnight.

“For anyone with a disability (parks and urban green spaces) it is very important to have access to play with their children on the playground and, like everyone else, to be included in all aspects of space,” said Kelly Edens, recreational therapist. Manager of the Shepard Center.

The center, the largest specialty care hospital of its kind in the United States, is less than five miles from SJG Park and Edens hopes to use it as a training and rehabilitation space for the hundreds of families he works with in Georgia and throughout the country.

Edens added: “There are many different elements that make a space accessible, diverse and accepting for everyone. This allows people to build confidence, have a sense of accomplishment and (take advantage of) new opportunities.

This project is part of an ongoing effort at Park Pride across the Parks for everyone Campaign to make local parks accessible to all Atlantans.

“Having a park near you isn’t enough if you don’t feel welcome or can’t use the space,” said Kayla Altland, director of grantmaking at Park Pride. “That’s why our team intends to help communities create parks that are inclusive, safe and welcoming for everyone who visits them.

This is sponsored content.

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