City officials and residents are split over a redevelopment plan of 295 E. Dougherty Street, where supporters expressed excitement for new parking, student housing and urbanization while others warned the project may disrupt community services, limit access to Lay Park Community Center and overlook housing needs.
Lay Park Community Center has given the downtown Athens community a place to learn and play, since opening in 1975. Today, the center supports children through programs including summer camp, youth sports and holiday events.
Stephanie Johnson, District 6 Commissioner, expressed her concerns about the transparency and effectiveness of the new development in a Mayor and Commission meeting held on Nov. 4, 2025.
Johnson questioned the transparency of the development process by asking whether the developers ever met with the mayor and or county staff after submitting their initial plan to discuss expanding the project. Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz said they did not.
Following the response, she then referenced an alleged conversation with a developer who said his group had been invited into an Athens-Clarke County official office to present plans, raising further questions about whether some discussions occurred outside public view.
Johnson also criticized the county’s progress on affordable housing and where its priorities should lie.
“And when it comes to housing, affordable housing, we don’t have anything appreciable to show for it,” Johnson said. “So yes, we need housing, but there are poor people that live in Athens too,” she added.
Officials Acknowledge Benefits Despite Challenges
The surrounding area of Lay Park Community Center is set for redevelopment if approved by the mayor and commission of Athens in the coming weeks. According to the plans, the development will provide new housing for 1,400 university students, with the addition of a parking deck built to ease downtown parking overflow.
According to the development agreement, Core must “relocate or replace the playground on the ACC Property to a location approved by the Unified Government at Core’s expense.” As of today, Core will provide $275,000 to ACCGov, which will not fully cover Leisure Services’ plans to integrate an upgraded playground. The current estimated cost of the new playground will cost “at least twice the provided $275,000,” according to the development agreement.
The development agreement would remove the existing playground, with the private contractor, CS Acquisitions Vehicle, LLC, aka Core, supplementing in a smaller playground in its development.
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Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz said that even with potential negatives of the project, the positives would outweigh them.
“Certainly it’s true that when people have gotten accustomed to a certain aesthetic views and something is going to be different … That’s just difficult for members of the public at times,” Girtz said.
Alex Bond, assistant director of Athens-Clarke County government, spoke about how the effects of construction will impact the community center and its visitors.
“Construction will be impactful for sure,” Bond said.
Bond said during the year and a half of construction, they plan to rebuild the park and parking for the center. However, during that period of time the park will be less accessible as it currently is for guests. He included that the greatest impact will be the ability for guests to to play at the park, pull up to the front of the center for carpool and park across the street.
He said the 1,400 new residents will have an impact on how many visitors come to use the facilities, including the pickleball and basketball courts.
A benefit of the redevelopment will be the new location of the park.
“The playground will be more nested into Lay Park,” Bond said. “Moving the playground will benefit the users of the park.”
Temporary Playground Loss and Traffic Changes at Lay Park
For Kelly Thomas, the facility supervisor at Lay Park Community Center, the redevelopment raises practical concerns about daily operations and access for families who rely on the center’s programs.
Thomas said losing the current playground will limit daily activities and the center will be without a playground for an unknown amount of time. He also said parking access will shrink, adding that the plan guarantees roughly 50 spots in the new parking structure, which is less than the current parking situation.
Resident raises concerns about loss of community space
Normaltown resident Jordan Croy said the redevelopment threatens one of the neighborhood’s few accessible gathering spaces. He said the Lay Park playground plays an important social role for families, including his 6-month-old daughter.
He said his daughter already benefits from the park due to her constantly meeting new kids on the playground.
“I don’t know, close by, there’s a few areas near Normaltown, but it’s, you know, it’s kind of fun to meet people from different walks of life because different people show up to different parks,” Croy said when discussing the park’s diversity.
“So, spaces like this are super valuable,” Croy said. “If you don’t have enough of them close by, you can feel really isolated.”
He added that the park carries racial relevance.
“The families that I’ve seen here tend to be Black,” Croy said. “And I don’t know, it’s hard to ignore the like, sort of the racial component of the story.”
The redevelopment has not yet been approved by Athens-Clarke County officials, and it remains unclear when the project will move forward.
Ziggy Moon, Laney Spevacek and Skylar Smith are journalism majors in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
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