Lucinda Bunnen got arrested once for walking her dog off leash at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Rather than risk it again, she spent the better part of two decades building her own trail, a hilly two mile loop through the 30 acres of woods she'd assembled around her home on Randall Mill Road, so she and her dogs could walk however they pleased without anyone stopping them. She hiked it daily into her nineties. Her son Robb later called it a rite of passage: if you got invited to walk the property with his mother, you had arrived.
Bunnen died in 2022 at 92. This summer, the forest she built her trail through became the newest addition to Buckhead's public green space, and the way it got there says something about this neighborhood that most of the daily conversation around Chastain Park's tennis courts and trail loop never touches.
What Actually Closed
The City of Atlanta finalized its purchase of the Bunnen estate this summer, paying $15 million for 30 contiguous acres along Randall Mill Road, split evenly between the city's Tree Trust Fund and private donations. The path to that closing took about a year and a half. The Conservation Fund, a national nonprofit that buys and holds land until a city partner is ready, acquired the property for roughly $13.5 million in late 2024 and carried it while the funding gap closed. Council member Mary Norwood, who represents Buckhead's District 8 and knew Bunnen personally, has said the deal came together because the property represented one of the last chances to save something this size in a part of Atlanta under relentless development pressure.
The scale is worth sitting with. Thirty acres of unbroken forest, with a stretch of Nancy Creek running through it, is larger than downtown's Centennial Olympic Park and Woodruff Park combined. In Buckhead, where a wooded lot this size would typically become four or five estate homes within a year of hitting the market, that math almost never happens. This time it didn't.
The Rule That Keeps It From Ever Getting a Playground
Here is the part that surprises people who assume a new park means a new amenity. It won't get one. Norwood has been direct about this in recent interviews: the money came from the Tree Trust Fund, and Tree Trust Fund money cannot be used to remove trees. That single restriction rules out almost everything Buckhead residents associate with a park expansion. No ball fields. No playground structures. No graded lawns for programming.
The model the city is following instead is Cascade Springs Nature Preserve on Atlanta's southwest side, a wooded tract the parks department has managed for decades with walking trails, natural springs, and a secured perimeter, deliberately unprogrammed. Norwood has told the parks department to replicate that approach here: fence the perimeter, mark a clear way in and out, and otherwise leave the land alone. The first visible change on site won't be a sign or a shelter. It will be a fence, and by design a low key one.
| Chastain Park | Bunnen Forest Preserve | |
|---|---|---|
| Acreage | 268 acres | 30 acres |
| Amenities | Golf course, tennis center, pool, amphitheater, horse park, playground | None planned |
| Funding source | General parks budget, memberships, city recreation funds | Tree Trust Fund and private donations |
| Programming | Concerts, leagues, camps, classes | None permitted under funding terms |
| Trail character | Paved loop trail past the golf course and creek | Existing 2 mile forest trail, unpaved |
Trails are expected to open to the public as soon as next year. Long term, Norwood has said the plan is to bring in artists in residence to live in Bunnen's mid century home and eventually hold exhibitions there, a detail that fits a woman who co-founded Nexus, the photography cooperative that grew into Atlanta Contemporary, and who gave the High Museum more than 650 photographs before her death.
Where the Money Actually Comes From
The Tree Trust Fund is worth understanding on its own terms, because it is funded by exactly the kind of transaction that happens constantly in this neighborhood. Every time a property owner in Atlanta removes a healthy tree and cannot replant enough on site to offset it, they pay a recompense fee into the fund. Buckhead, with its dense tree canopy and its concentration of R-1, R-2, and R-3 zoned lots where teardown and rebuild projects are common, has been a steady contributor for years. Fund officials have noted that Buckhead puts in significantly more than it typically gets back in projects of this scale, simply because there hasn't been another parcel large enough to spend it on.
The city's tree protection ordinance, overhauled and put into effect this January, raised those recompense fees substantially, which means the fund Buckhead residents feed every time they clear a lot for a new build is now growing faster than it did even a year ago. The Bunnen purchase is the first time that accumulated Buckhead money has come back to Buckhead in a single project this size. The next resident who pays a tree removal fee on a renovation permit is, in a small way, continuing to fund the same pool of money that just protected 30 acres a short drive from their front door.
What This Adds to a Day Already Built Around Chastain Park
None of this replaces the rituals that already define life around here. The Chastain Park loop, paved by the PATH Foundation, still draws joggers, cyclists, and dog walkers past the golf course and over Nancy Creek every morning. The Chastain Park Tennis Center still runs its ALTA and USTA leagues out of nine courts on Wieuca Road. Sunday mornings still mean coffee and pastries at The Chastain, the Michelin-recommended restaurant just across the street from the park. Saturday mornings from March through December still belong to the Peachtree Road Farmers Market.
What changes is what sits just beyond that routine. Within a few years, the same residents who loop Chastain's paved trail before work will have a second option a short drive away, quieter and unpaved, running through a forest that Bunnen spent 50 years protecting from exactly the kind of development that shaped the rest of the neighborhood around it. It will not have a golf pro shop or a concert calendar. That is the point. Buckhead already has Chastain for the version of green space that comes with programming. What it didn't have, until this summer, was 30 acres that the city is legally barred from ever turning into more of the same.
What Comes Next
The near term work is unglamorous. A perimeter fence goes up first, sized to feel like a boundary rather than a barrier, according to Norwood. Trail access follows, targeted for as early as next year. The house Bunnen and her husband Bob commissioned from architect Cecil Alexander in the 1950s will likely become the eventual site for artist residencies, though the city has not finalized that timeline. For now, the forest stays exactly as Bunnen left it, and for the first time in its history, it is guaranteed to stay that way.
If you live near Chastain Park and want to talk through what a change like this means for the neighborhood you already call home, or you're weighing a move into the area and want a guide who tracks these details before they show up in a listing description, Erin Yabroudy & Associates is glad to help. Request a private market consultation whenever you're ready.