ATLANTA — Atlanta's oldest public park and cemetery will welcome a new visitor center in 2025.
Oakland Cemetery, the final resting place of many of the city's most noted figures, will kick off construction for its 10,000-square-foot visitor center Tuesday.
The Historic Oakland Foundation will be joined by city officials, including Mayor Andre Dickens, outside the cemetery's main gate as both groups celebrate the kick-off.
Historic Oakland Foundation partners with the City of Atlanta to preserve, restore and enhance the 172-year-old cemetery.
The visitor center will be located outside the cemetery's main gate, allowing the foundation to expand the historic site's programs. The indoor facility will also provide a weatherproof option to visitors.
View renderings of the visitor center in the gallery below.
Oakland Cemetery renderings of future visitor center | PHOTOS
The historic 48-acre cemetery welcomes over 125,000 visitors annually, Richard Harker, executive director of the Historic Oakland Foundation, pointed out.
"We want to expand that number," Harker said. "As we have facilities that allow us to design and develop new programming, we're excited to be able to share this special, unique, beautiful place with more and more Atlantans."
Once built, the center will mark a milestone for the Historic Oakland Foundation. From land acquisition to the earliest ideas of what the visitor center would be, this building has been in the works for over 20 years.
"It's really a remarkable moment to have reached this point, this moment in the life of Oakland Cemetery," Harker said. "For a place that's over 170 years old to be able to build a facility that will carry us into the next decades of the cemetery's life and allow us to share it in new and diverse ways - it is really exciting."
Harker said the center will cost over $6 million to build. He credits the visitor center being possible to the support given by Invest Atlanta and to the locally-based company Coca-Cola.
Construction on the new visitor center is expected to be completed in mid-2025.