Less than a mile from the heart of Historic Cascade Heights along South Utoy Creek, the Cascade Springs Nature Preserve is one of our most prized greenspaces. In fact, its 120 acres of surviving forest and its waterfall, driven by small springs that feed Utoy Creek, make Cascade Springs Nature Preserve a truly one-of-a-kind nature spaces in the city that is completely open to the public.
Our goal in the design for Cascade Springs Nature Preserve isn’t necessarily in the design of the preserve itself but rather improving its presence and connection to our community. This work starts with the Walk in the Park event, Elevate SWATS performances, and other similar activities geared toward inviting our residents to experience and a gain better awareness of what this unique park has to offer.
Building on these community engagement activities, our goal is to combine improvements of the design of Cascade Road with physical improvements to the preserve’s main entry and primary access trails.
The images on these pages shows a vision for how these improvements could look and work. We feel this work can be done in a way that improves the presence of the preserve but minimizes the physical impact to the preserve itself. We’re also continuing our work with the Atlanta City Studio and the Department of Parks and Recreation to study and construct low-impact trails that will also serve this purpose.
These infrastructure pieces are crucial to improving the preserve’s connectedness to our commercial district and residential neighborhoods. They create a district defined by its network of urban greenspaces.
