Don’t hate the messenger, the real estate agent in the Instagram reel said, but Freedom Park’s 207 acres are for sale.
The incorrect post from earlier this month identified Freedom Park land as surplus property that will soon be auctioned off by the Georgia Department of Transportation. More than a thousand people have liked, shared or commented on the video, many with alarm over the fate of the city’s longest linear park.
But fear not (and don’t believe everything you see on Insta), a GDOT spokesperson says. The land is not for sale, and there are no plans to put it up for auction.
“They appear on our excess property maps for identification purposes only and are not being offered to the public,” said a letter sent to people who have inquired with the state about the potential sale.
GDOT acquired the land that’s now Freedom Park beginning in the 1960s. A park wasn’t part of the plan. Two new highways were, including one that would have connected downtown Atlanta with Stone Mountain.
The department bought some houses and took others through eminent domain to clear the land for the interstate. But residents waged intense opposition to those plans, which morphed over the years until the highway designs were dropped.
Some of the land was ultimately used to build what’s now the John Lewis Freedom Parkway.
The rest became Freedom Park, which stretches from the King Center to Ponce de Leon Avenue in the north and Candler Park on the east.
GDOT continues to own the land but signed a 99-year lease with the city of Atlanta in 1998 that establishes the property can only serve as a “roadside park,” according to a master plan developed by the Freedom Park Conservancy, the group created to preserve and protect the park.
The various tracts that GDOT owns are listed in the department’s surplus property database but tagged as “nonmarketable.”
GDOT has 5,127 surplus properties total, many of which are small tracts less than an acre large. But only about 300 are up for sale currently.
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