Key points:
• The Sandy Springs City Council approved two construction contracts on Sept. 1 for sidewalks, one highly anticipated one along Lake Forrest Drive and the other in one of the city’s most trafficked areas just south of I-285.
• Council Member Andrew Chinsky said he is working with his counterparts in Atlanta to see if one sidewalk can be extended another couple hundred feet to the Sandy Springs border at the Lake Forrest Dam.
• The completion of the phase two project, expected in about 11 months, would nearly connect Mount Paran Road to Chastain park via sidewalk along Lake Forrest Drive.
The Sandy Springs City Council approved a $1.5 million construction contract for about 3,000 feet of sidewalk along the west side of Lake Forrest Drive, coming close to connecting Mount Paran Road to Chastain Park.
Wesley Waters, manager of the city’s capital improvement program, said completion of the phase two project could take up to a year. He said a groundbreaking is expected after the contract award is signed and a notice to proceed is given, in about 60 days.
“The performance period for this one, being a larger sidewalk with some utility relocations, is, I believe, around nine months,” Waters said. “So, a couple of months from now, and then about nine months of project construction.”
Working on connectivity
The gap shown on the project map represents an existing sidewalk segment constructed as part of phase one. The 6-foot-wide sidewalk with a 2-foot-wide grass buffer currently extends south from Mount Paran Road to just before Long Island Drive, where phase two picks up.
Because of Sandy Springs’ zig-zagging southern border, Council Member Andrew Chinsky said he’s working with the Chastain Park Conservancy and his counterparts in Atlanta to ensure the sidewalk connects.
“There’s a strip in the city of Atlanta that partially has sidewalk, but there’s about four or five properties and the Lake Forest Dam that do not have sidewalk there,” Chinsky said. “If we are able to get that stuff resolved in the next six or nine months, it might be helpful for the contractor to be going north to south to the extent we can leverage that work.”
Atlanta’s existing sidewalk along Lake Forrest Drive extends north from Chastain Park to Barbara Lane, a point along its border with Sandy Springs. From 4515 Lake Forrest Drive north, the homes on the east side of the road are in Sandy Springs, and the ones on the west are in Atlanta up to the Lake Forrest Dam.
Making other sidewalk connections
Lake Forrest Drive’s speed limit decreases from 35 mph to 30 mph heading south toward Atlanta and Chastain Park. Because of steep hills, blind driveways, and frequent speeding, the roadway shoulder is rarely used by pedestrians.
Residential developers are constructing two multi-million-dollar homes at the top of the first hill heading north into Sandy Springs from Chastain Park. A sidewalk in front of the five homes in Atlanta near the historic Lake Forrest Dam would connect Sandy Springs’ sidewalk project to Chastain Park.
Atlanta and Sandy Springs had an agreement to make state-required repairs to the dam, which was classified as high risk before it was drained about a decade ago.
The Sandy Springs City Council also approved another sidewalk construction contract, including new curb cuts and two mid-block pedestrian crossings along Northwood Drive, for about $480,000.
While the city used $600,000 in additional county sales tax funding to pay for phase two of the Lake Forrest Drive sidewalk, the new facilities just south of I-285 are being built with grant money from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department.
HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program is primarily used to design and build new sidewalks, including planned ones along Hope Road and at Long Island Drive and Roswell Road. Earlier in the meeting, council members approved two resolutions allowing the projects to progress through the federal approval process.
