Rodney Cook Sr. Park in Historic Vine City
Root-to-Fruit story in progress
Falcons owner Arthur Blank and the City of Atlanta have committed to investing in neighborhoods surrounding the new Mercedes-Benz stadium to stimulate jobs, reinvest and improve infrastructure in neighborhoods that were once home to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and top lieutenants in the equal rights movement.
The Rodney Cook Sr. 16-acre park, scheduled to open summer 2019, will serve a number of key roles including: a community gathering place, a monument to peace and the city’s place in the Civil Rights Movement and a stormwater retention pod to fix vexing flooding issues that have plagued Vine City. The park will also become part of a network of parks and trails connected to the Beltline.
(above photo is rendering)
Partners in the project include the city, Trust for Public Land, National Monuments Foundation and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
The project team for the park development engaged Eutree to help recycle trees that were slated for necessary removal. Eutree coordinated with local tree service to transport the timber from the trees to Eutree’s lumberyard just outside the city.
Once the logs arrived at Eutree’s lumberyard, each log was evaluated to determine optimal use of its timber.
Eutree’s lumber specialists are able to provide detailed recommendations and estimated board feet each log will yield for live edge slabs, flooring, paneling, beams or dimensional lumber.
The park development project team chose to have each log milled into slabs. Slabs have many versatile uses and can be used for products such as furniture items, tables, benches, charcuterie boards and other hardwood products and accents.
Logs are taken from the lumberyard and loaded onto the Wood-Mizer 1000 to begin the milling process.
Each log is carefully inspected for nails, metal and other debris prior to sawing.
Logs are sawed into slabs on the Wood-Mizer 1000 mill. Fun fact: Eutree has one of the largest capacity sawmills in the Southeast sawing logs up to 68” diameter.
Once each logged is slabbed, it then gets labeled and stacked in the lumberyard to air dry for several months.
Stickers are inserted between each slab to ensure proper airflow - critical for stability of the wood.
Unique tree species that were salvaged from the park area include: Mulberry, Pecan, Hickory, Osage Orange, White Oak among others.
Eutree will continue to monitor moisture levels in the slabs over the coming months. Once dried to lumberyard standards, each slab will go to the kilns for 30 days to complete the drying process.
Over the coming months, the project team will work to develop plans for desired use of the slabs.
Stay tuned for the next phase of the project coming Spring 2019!