College Park: Atlanta’s Best Kept Secret – The Champion Newspaper | 404-373-7779

College Park, Maryland is a well-kept suburb of Washington, D.C., home to the University of Maryland, in Prince George’s County, and about four miles from the District of Columbia. Chances are you’ve been to College Park, Georgia, one of the most visited places in our state. Maybe you just didn’t know you were there.

Just under half of the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, its main terminal, Delta’s Concourse A and the southern half of Concourse B, as well as the MARTA transit station and adjacent SkyTrain to the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) are all within the College Park city limits.

But this charming town of nearly 14,000 has much more to offer. College Park is home to the nation’s largest private K-12 school, Woodward Academy, which serves students from across the region and around the world, and sports facilities that rival most NCAA Division II campuses. Chick-fil-A’s headquarters are in College Park, just as Chick-fil-A’s original Dwarf House, the neighboring Delta Air Lines World Headquarters, and Porsche North America’s headquarters are all in nearby Hapeville, Georgia.

College Park is led by a progressive mayor, a four-member city council, and a city manager system. Under the charter, the city has a weak mayoral structure (led by Mayor Bianca Motley Brown), with policies and budgets determined by a majority vote of the council and then implemented by interim city manager Emmanuel Adediran. For the first time in its long history, College Park’s mayor, city council, and city manager are all black.

College Park was established by land grant in 1846 and was originally called Manchester. Renamed College Park in 1896, the municipality is home to the fourth-largest urban historic district in the United States. The district contains 867 structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including monuments, homes, schools, churches, parks, a cemetery, and a railroad depot, primarily along Main Street (U.S. Highway 29) and around the Woodward Academy campus.

The name change is partly due to the fact that many streets in the historic district pay homage to prominent institutions of higher education in the United States, including Harvard Avenue, Princeton Avenue, Cambridge Avenue, Yale Avenue and even Mercer Avenue in Georgia. City leaders recently voted to add the names of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to the new Six West development. Six West is a $1.5 billion project in pre-development that will be built on 311 acres of College Park, adjacent to Hartsfield and the city’s historic district, similar to Atlantic Station in Midtown Atlanta or Avalon in northern Fulton County.

College Park is 86 percent African American, and 78 percent of residents are renters, not homeowners. Between small-town charm and urban amenities, and sometimes overwhelmed by the burgeoning “aero-tropolis” next door, you may have inadvertently overlooked College Park in your rush to catch your next flight, just as you didn’t know that LaGuardia Airport is in East Elmhurst and Queens, New York, or that LAX straddles the cities of Inglewood and El Segundo, California.

I recently had a pleasant meeting with two members of the City Council, Joe Carn (Ward 2) and Jamelle McKenzie (Ward 1). Carn is the longest-serving member of the council and a former Fulton County commissioner and vice mayor. He is responsible for reclassifying and funding millions of dollars in federal aid for airport noise abatement improvements for the city’s apartments and multifamily housing. McKenzie, a skilled nonprofit leader and trained chaplain with careers at Macy’s and Federated Department Stores, joined the council earlier this year. McKenzie established the chaplain corps for the College Park Police and Fire Departments in 2017, shortly after moving to the city. Mayor pro tempore Roderick Gay and Councilwoman Tracie Arnold round out the council.

A rising star in the metro area’s Southern Crescent, College Park is a city on the move. For the many families who spend part of their fall and spring traveling the country helping their kids choose their college campus of choice, College Park is certainly worth an afternoon stroll, a brunch stop, or a pre-trip overnight stay to make your departure from the airport—and your return—that much smoother. Regular readers and visitors to this space know that I love sharing Georgia’s best-kept secrets and places. College Park easily ranks among my list of diamonds in the rough, and it won’t take much more than a little polishing to really make this one shine. Watch out, Decatur.

Bill Crane is a political analyst and commentator in metro Atlanta, as well as a columnist for The Champion, DeKalb Free Press and Georgia Trend. Crane is a DeKalb native and business owner living in Scottdale. You can contact him or comment on a column at [email protected].