Where East Meets West in Roswell

publication date: Jun 2, 2008

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author/source: John Fredericks / STAFF

By John Fredericks / STAFF

Warsaw Road (above) and the Kimberly-Clark Corporation on Holcomb Bridge Road will be key milestones in the proposed bridge connecting east and west Roswell.

After five months of relative inactivity, the 2008 Roswell City Council finally took some pro-active preliminary action. The Council gave the potential go-ahead during a public work session last week to find the money for a new northern bridge over Ga. 400 designed to alleviate local congestion along Holcomb Bridge Road at the Ga. 400 interchange.

Mayor Jere Wood, up for re-election to a fourth term in 2009 and facing serious opposition, wasted no time in immediately putting $400,000 in the city’s fiscal year 2008-09 budget to fund an extended study of the proposed bridge. It will be formally voted on over the next several weeks during Rowell’s budget hearings.

Up to this point, the Roswell City Council, after pummeling the vaunted Charlie Brown towers project in 2007, has made little headway toward solving the most daunting challenges facing the city such as illegal immigration, redevelopment, crime and transportation. The Council has passed legislation regulating used car lots and they’ve also banned smoking on all city property. Some might say this is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The northern bridge project changes all that.

“The project came up at a work session and there appeared to be a consensus on Council to move forward,” Wood said. “That gave me confidence to call Kay Love (Roswell City Administrator) and request she add $400,000 to this year’s budget. I got a warm and fuzzy feeling from Council. I was very pleased that the Council was supportive in taking it to the next step.”

“We have come a long way in the last two years with this project,” he continued. “We have gone from a feeling on Council that [transportation] wasn’t their responsibility to now they are accepting the fact that if the city does not take the lead nobody will.”

The city originally had approved $15,000 for a study on the topic, and transportation-consulting firm Gresham Smith and Partners delivered the results of that contract to the Council on May 28.

The $400,000 that Wood is asking for in the Roswell budget would not go towards financing the project itself. It is designated to develop a proposal for the project that could be submitted to GDOT (Georgia Department of Transportation) and the Federal Transportation Authority. Essentially, the money would be spent to make the case to get the money to build the new bridge. Wood estimated the first phase of the construction would cost upwards of $25 million and all three phases would come with a $100 million price tag.

The best-case timeline, if all went well, is estimated by Wood to be seven to eight years.

“It will take two to three years to get the money and another five years to build it,” he said. “The key will hinge on whether or not the Georgia State Legislature passes the regional transportation bill in the next session.”

Wood added, “This is a project which is needed and one we will get funding for.”

Clarifying the process, Vasilios Andreou, Roswell Transportation Director, said, “What the mayor and the council agreed to do is to include the first phase of an analysis for determining a project in the upcoming capital improvement program budget. That is something that they will review and approve for the next fiscal year. It is currently in the fiscal year 08-09 add/delete lists. It is not something that they have approved funding for as of yet.  It is going to be part of the budget that will be voted on in the upcoming fiscal year.”

Andreou added that Gresham Smith and Partners is the primary company that will be considered to complete the formal proposal if the funding becomes available.
 
Bridge to Somewhere a Unifying Force
The transportation initiative, known as the “Northern Bridge Project,” preliminarily calls for implementation over three distinct phases. It is specifically designed to alleviate congestion at the Holcomb Bridge Road and Ga. 400 interchange by easing local traffic onto an alternative route.

It is not a bridge to allow cars to get on and off Ga. 400, but rather to go over Ga. 400.

The project’s first phase would start at Old Alabama Road, go in front of the Bell Court Apartments, wind behind the Kimberly Clark office complex, connect to a new bridge over Ga. 400, cut through several apartment complexes and end up at Old Holcomb Bridge Road.

The second phase would extend the bridge across Foe Killer Creek and connect it to Warsaw Road.

And the third and final phase calls for a new access road running along the east side of Ga. 400 where there is a power line cut on city property that connects the phase one road to North Point Parkway.

The proposed bridge would pass in front of the Belcourt Apartments.

Wood maintained there are additional benefits to the new roads. “This is critical for both transportation and to keep Roswell as a unified city. Right now we have two Roswell’s: east and west. This road is equally important to attract redevelopment dollars for those old apartment complexes. This will surely open up investment opportunity in the northwest corner.”

Councilwoman Lori Henry weighed in. “This will help alleviate the chokehold we have in the city,” she said. “It will attract redevelopment and help inter-city connectivity. It will help regional traffic just by taking local traffic off of Holcomb Bridge Road.”

Henry said she supports the $400,000 budget allocation.

Councilman Jerry Orlans, a one-time proponent of the Brown towers, indicated strong support for the new bridge and said, “I am in favor of going forward with it [the study]. Once GDOT lays out their funding criteria, we will be in a strong position for serious consideration.”

Becky Wynn, elected in November and the Council’s liason to transportation, also voiced strong support for funding the project to the next step.

Commenting on the new Council, Orlans summed it up this way, “Along with this initiative we also set a direction to move forward on the Riverside and South Atlanta Street intersection. I think we are starting to move in the right direction on some of our key issues.”

Time will tell.