The Fayetteville City Council voted unanimously Jan. 19 to acquire the two pivotal pieces of property needed to construct a new road system on the city’s north side that will link Ga. Highway 92 and Hood Avenue on the west to Kathi Avenue and North Jeff Davis Drive to the east.
One of the properties includes the southernmost portion of one of Fayetteville’s oldest shopping centers, the Hudson Plaza center situated directly across North Glynn (Ga. Highway 85 North) from Hood Avenue. The center’s largest tenant currently is Michael’s craft and hobby store. The other parcel is situated directly behind the south side of Hudson Plaza.
The project carries an estimated price tag of $9.1 million, with $7.8 million coming from previously collected local 1-cent sales tax revenues.
The project is designed to help ease the flow of traffic through the downtown area a few blocks away and provide a simplified routing of traffic in and around the immediate downtown area. That will be accomplished by a host of measures on either side of North Glynn Street.
On the east side of North Glynn, motorists on North Jeff Davis will be able to go west as usual on Kathi Avenue. A new roundabout will be located a short distance away.
The roundabout will also connect to Church Street that will be extended from its current dead-end at Georgia Avenue.
And in what will amount to a new street, Kathi Avenue will extend west from the roundabout past where the southernmost stores at Hudson Plaza are located and on to the new traffic signal at North Glynn Street at its intersection with Hood Avenue.
On the west side of North Glynn, the current traffic signal will be moved one block to the south and located at Hood Avenue. Proceeding west on Hood, motorists will find a new roundabout that will handle traffic on Hood Avenue to the west, the reconfigured Hwy. 92 to the northwest and the Habersham Avenue Extension to the northeast.
The reconfigured Hwy. 92 extension of Habersham will provide residential and office users easier access to the north/south flow of traffic on North Glynn Street than is currently available.
Still undecided is whether the existing Hwy. 92 at North Glynn will continue to intersect with Glynn once the roundabout is open and the project completed. If not, the road will still continue far enough to be available to service existing businesses on the west side of the intersection.
The overall project has been a topic of discussion for nearly two years. More recently, said city Facilities Manager Don Easterbrook, the process pertaining to the Hudson Plaza property, owned by Hudson II, LLC, began in January 2011 when an appraisal was commissioned and initial engineering was performed. A verbal agreement with the owner was received in the fall and the final draft is now complete, Easterbrook told council members.
Easterbrook said it was decided that it would be most beneficial to all parties to proceed with a friendly condemnation.
The Thursday night vote also approved the purchase of a rectangular-shaped 1.05-acre property at the rear of Hudson Plaza. The property is owned by BBWJ, LLC. The property is situated between Kathi Avenue and the south portion of Hudson Plaza that would be removed to make way for Kathi Avenue to be extended to North Glynn and intersect with Hood Avenue. The east side of the property would be the location of the new road that will extend to the northeast to the new roundabout at the existing Kathi Avenue.
Similar to the situation with Hudson II, LLC, the city has reached an agreement with BBWJ to purchase the property through the method of friendly condemnation.
A recent traffic study noted by Dan Davis of Integrated Science and Engineering showed that the Hwy. 92/Hood Avenue/North Glynn intersection currently carries a “Declining C” service level and that the intersection is projected to carry an “F” service level by 2032 with no improvements. Based on current annual growth projections of 1.5 percent the intersection would carry a “C” rating in 2032, Davis said.
Davis said meetings with area property owners had occurred during the past nine months. Those meetings followed letters sent out in March 2011, Davis added.
The project still has a way to go since there are a number of small tracts that must be acquired. Easterbrook said conversations are occurring with other affected property owners.
The project could potentially go out for bid in January 2013 and be completed by mid-2014, Easterbrook said.
Funding for the Hood Avenue/Kathi Avenue/Jeff Davis project will come from $7.8 million in previously collected county SPLOST revenues along with city funds if the project exceeds the SPLOST amount. The project’s current cost estimate is $9.1 million.
An intergovernmental agreement for the project was signed in late 2010. The Georgia Dept. of Transportation issued a concept approval letter in November.
