The Historic Oakland Foundation will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Oakland Cemetery’s new visitor center on Sept. 5, 2023. The ceremony will take place at 374 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SE, the site of the future visitor center, just outside Oakland Cemetery’s main gate.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will preside over the ceremony. City of Atlanta Department of Parks and Recreation Commissioner Justin Cutler, Invest Atlanta President and CEO Eloisa Klementich, Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari and Historic Oakland Foundation Executive Director Dr. Richard Harker will deliver remarks before the ceremony.
“We are thrilled to be breaking ground on the Oakland Cemetery Visitor Center, which we know will transform our ability to share historic Oakland Cemetery,” Harker said in the press release. “The new Visitor Center’s park land, event lawn and plaza, alongside its indoor programmatic space, will allow us to truly serve the community in new and creative ways as we continue to work toward making Oakland Cemetery a community resource for all Atlantans.”
The new 10,000-square-foot building will include a museum store, a double-height atrium, multipurpose classroom and event space, rentable meeting space, and offices for Historic Oakland Foundation, according to the press release.
It will also serve as an amenity to the Memorial Drive Greenway, the linear park that begins at Oakland’s main gate and extends along Memorial Drive all the way to the Georgia State Capitol. Significant lead support for this project has come from Invest Atlanta.
Historic Oakland Foundation has worked with Southface Institute to have the building EarthCraft certified upon completion and to make the building “net zero” (producing more energy than it consumes). In partnering with the Lifecycle Building Center, significant salvaged materials, including tiles from the recently shuttered historic Nabisco Factory in Sylvan Hills, will be used in the project.
Additionally, support from the Coca-Cola Foundation is making possible the creation of bioretention gardens that are anticipated to navigate more than one million gallons of the site’s stormwater out of the municipal system per year.
“Oakland Cemetery is a treasure for our city not only as a park and place of recreation but also as a historic site that allows us to acknowledge our history as we work to chart a more equitable future,” Cutler said in the press release. “The partnership between Historic Oakland Foundation and the Department of Parks and Recreation is a model public-private partnership, and we are delighted that this much-needed project is now under construction.”
The new Oakland Cemetery Visitor Center was designed by Smith Dalia Architects. Construction is expected to take 18 to 24 months. Plans for the new visitor center were first announced in 2022.
Since its founding in 1976, the Historic Oakland Foundation has restored more than 20 of Oakland Cemetery’s 48 acres. The historic cemetery welcomes more than 105,000 visitors per year.
