ATLANTA — On March 31, the newly revamped Charlie Loudermilk Park in the heart of Buckhead officially reopened to the public.
“We were examining why we thought that people didn’t use the park. And we came to a decision that it was the design of the park,” WABE-FM quoted Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID) as saying. “So we put all the elements in it to attract people to come use this public space.”
The overhaul was funded by $2.5 million in private donations. The upgraded green space features a 50-foot-tall clock tower and a statue of Charlie Loudermilk, a prominent Atlanta businessman who founded Aaron’s.
“I love it,” Atlanta INtown quoted Loudermilk as saying in March. “It turned out better than I thought it might. … I think they did pretty well.”
The park is located on roughly the same spot where Henry Irby established a general store in the area during the 1830s. After he prominently displayed the head of a deer in the area (possibly in front of his tavern), the community earned the nickname Buck’s Head, which stuck and morphed into Buckhead.
The park was originally named Triangle Park and apparently first opened in the 1970s. The Atlanta City Council in 2009 voted to change the park’s name to Charlie Loudermilk Park.
