Aviator’s Family Donates Money to Conservation Effort

The 135-acre Cornelia Fort Airpark in East Nashville is already set to be conserved as green space. Now, friends and family members of the airfield’s history-making namesake are donating money so that the city can preserve even more land.

A group of Cornelia Fort’s loved ones donated 200-thousand dollars to the Open Spaces fund yesterday.
Mayor Karl Dean began the Open Spaces plan with the goal of conserving 22-thousand acres over the next quarter century. Most of the land is intended to simply serve as green buffer zones between developed areas, although the plan calls for some of it, about three-thousand acres, to be developed as city parks. That would increase the overall amount of parkland in Nashville by thirty percent.

The wheels are turning on a second purchase, this time in Hermitage. The mayor’s office is asking Metro Council to approve a deal to buy the Ravenwood Country Club for 2.8 million dollars. If the sale goes through, most of the club’s 180 acres would likely be converted into walking and hiking trails.