Winning Design Chosen for Woodruff Park Playground

November 15,2010

ATLANTA, GA Coming soon to Woodruff Park in Downtown Atlanta: a playground. Playable 10 in partnership with ATOP, Atlanta’s Taskforce on Play and the Georgia Institute of Technology, has sponsored an international design competition for an extraordinarily accessible and inventive playground design for Woodruff Park. Charitably, Bank of America will support the construction of the design challenge winner, providing a family-friendly improvement for the park nestled in the heart of Downtown.

The international design competition drew entries from all over the world including competitors from Krakow, Australia, Italy, Singapore, and Estonia. A large number of submissions for the design competition were from the University of Georgia School of Environmental Design which made the competition a school project.

The winner of the international design competition is Jeff Santos of Coquitiam, British Columbia in Canada.The winning design was selected from more than 40 designs that had been submitted from around the world. Santos has been designing video games for the past eight years, but this is his first foray into designing playgrounds.

“Bank of America is proud to provide funding to help enhance Woodruff Park as an increasingly vibrant neighborhood resource and deepen our support of the downtown community.” said Geri P. Thomas, Georgia market president for Bank of America. 

The new playground is in good company with the other improvements that have been made in the park over the last few years. Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADID), since taking on operations of the park, have set their sights on making Woodruff Park the Downtown destination for healthy activity. Best known of these improvements is the Woodruff Park Recreation and Reading Room and the recently installed music system. But other new amenities like exercise and recreation equipment and Walk For Lunch programming have increased the active offerings of this urban oasis.

“Woodruff Park aims to be an amenity for visitors, employees, children and families and no park is complete without a dedicated place to play,” said A.J. Robinson, president of CAP and ADID. “By connecting with Bank of America and Playable 10, we’re bringing great international talent and a ground-breaking design to serve Downtown.”

The judges in the competition rated each entry on the following criteria: playable, original, sustainable, feasible, multi-generational, accessible, and inspires movement.

ABOUT THE WOODRUFF PARK MASTER PLAN: The Woodruff Park Master Plan presents a detailed vision of the future of Downtown’s most distinctive green space. The authority for the Master Plan is the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of Atlanta Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs (DPRCA) and Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, Inc. (ADID), as approved by the City Council and Mayor in 2007. Woodruff Park’s designer, Nimrod Long and Associates, was hired by CAP/ADID to spearhead all redesign and repair projects. The Master Plan will be executed in two phases, and will be funded largely through a comprehensive fund-raising program, developed by CAP, targeting support from private sources.

ABOUT CENTRAL ATLANTA PROGRESS/ATLANTA DOWNTOWN IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT:Central Atlanta Progress, Inc., is a Downtown business association with approximately 200 members. Its mission is to build a vibrant community with strong leadership and sustainable infrastructure that is safe, livable, diverse, economically viable, accessible, clean, hospitable and entertaining.. The Atlanta Downtown Improvement District is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, charitable corporation created by CAP to make Downtown safer, cleaner and more hospitable.

ABOUT BANK OF AMERICA: Bank of America is one of the world's largest financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small- and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 57 million consumer and small business relationships with approximately 5,900 retail banking offices and approximately 18,000 ATMs and award-winning online banking with 29 million active users. Bank of America is among the world's leading wealth management companies and is a global leader in corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 4 million small business owners through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations in more than 40 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

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