Slowly, the city of Atlanta is piecing together lots in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood to create a new public park to complement the planned BeltLine. 

In one of the city’s latest real estate transactions, the Trust for Public Land acquired a 3-acre parcel along Freedom Parkway from Cox Enterprises Inc. The Trust for Public Land then deeded the parcel over to the city.

Dow Lohnes partner David Lester advised Cox Enterprises on the $3.85 million land sale. The Trust for Public Land was represented by staff attorneys Richard Tucker and Sireesha C. Ghanta.

The parcel is bounded by Willoughby Way on the south, Freedom Parkway to the east and south and the BeltLine corridor to the east. But the most distinctive aspect of the parcel is its location next to a WSB television antenna and the concrete structure that spans Freedom Parkway, protecting motorists from ice that might fall from the antenna’s guy wires. The parcel that Cox sold is an empty lot, Lester said. The antenna and accompanying brick WSB-TV building sit on the adjacent lot; Cox isn’t selling that property, he said.

From the city's perspective, the biggest lure of the Cox parcel is its location directly on the BeltLine. The BeltLine is the city’s ambitious plan for a streetcar line, walking paths and greenspace that will encircle the city's core. Along with its designs for the BeltLine, the city also is planning the addition of several new park s

The city will plant trees and grass on its new parcel, said Paul Taylor, director of Atlanta’s office of park design. Also planned are a new facility for skateboarders and a multiuse athletic field.

The Cox lot will be part of a larger aggregation of greenspace, featuring a large stormwater-retention pond, that the city plans to call Historic Fourth Ward Park. The largest element of the planned 16-acre park is property that's bounded by the former Sears Building [photo, right] on North Avenue (now City Hall East and scheduled for conversion to residential and retail space) and Ralph McGill Boulevard. The Cox parcel will be detached from the largest segment, connected by a tree-lined sidewalk or walkway along Ensley Street and crossing Ralph McGill Boulevard.

Cox Enterprises Inc. and Cox Radio Inc.—two companies that own some of Atlanta’s flagship media outlets—are looking to make their connections airtight. Cox Enterprises is offering to buy the remaining shares of Cox Radio that it doesn’t already own for about $69 million.

Cox Enterprises owns the rapidly shrinking Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, while Cox Radio owns the Atlanta radio station WSB-AM. Although the two Cox companies are Atlanta institutions, they’re being advised by a cluster of attorneys in the nation’s capital.

Cox Enterprises is taking counsel from two attorneys at its longtime law firm: Dow Lohnes partners Stuart Sheldon and Thomas Twedt in Washington. Meanwhile, eight attorneys from DLA Piper’s Washington office are advising a two-person special independent committee of Cox Radio’s board of directors. The DLA Piper team is led by partner Jay Tannon.

The two Cox companies also own media properties outside Atlanta. Last year, Cox Enterprises put some of those properties up for sale, putting about 20 smaller newspapers on the auction block. Cox Enterprises also owns TV stations, like WSB in Atlanta; cable-television company Cox Communications; and automobile auctioneer Manheim.

Reflecting the broad financial problems in the U.S. newspaper industry, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week announced last month it planned to cut 90 jobs from the newsroom.

Headlines about the newspaper industry of late have been filled with nothing but gloom and doom: Internet sites like Craigslist are peddling classified ads for free, obliterating a key source of newspapers’ revenue. Sales of help-wanted ads are collapsing like a house cards. Newspapers are offering buyouts to scores of journalists.

In one of the most extreme examples, the owners of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., told newsroom employees that if enough didn’t accept their buyout offers, the paper would be sold.

But what about the daily newspaper in the Daily Report’s hometown, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? The AJC, as the paper is known by locals, isn’t for sale, but most of the other papers owned by its parent company are. Cox Enterprises, the company controlled by Anne Cox Chambers and the children of her late sister, Barbara Cox Anthony, last week said it would auction off more than 20 of its smaller papers.

In a story in Monday's edition of the Daily Report, I report on what corporate lawyers, newspaper industry observers and Wall Street stock analysts believe are the chances that the Cox family might one day put the AJC up for sale. You can read about it here.