The city’s $18 million project to construct sidewalks and multi-use paths along Mount Vernon Highway is complete, with final landscaping and plantings expected before the end of the year.
Another nearby $27 million intersection project around Veterans Park is nearly complete, pending an aerial-to-underground utility relocation that will bolster the aesthetics of Sandy Springs Veterans Park and the Performing Arts Center at City Springs. Motorists can travel, but streetscape conditions are holding up pedestrians across the state route from City Springs.
Sandy Springs officials are pitching more corridor and intersection improvements to voters as part of the city’s proposed project list for Fulton County’s upcoming TSPLOST renewal referendum. The Nov. 3 vote would renew the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, collected by Fulton County cities outside of Atlanta, for another five years.
Project status, murky timeline
One of the city’s two largest transportation projects in its 2016 TSPLOST program are the pedestrian facilities along Mount Vernon Highway (TS192) from the Sandy Springs Library to the MARTA station at Abernathy Road and Perimeter Center West. The other is an intersection reconfiguration at Johnson Ferry Road, Mount Vernon Highway, and Roswell Road (TS191).
While two-way traffic around the reconfigured, triangle-shaped intersection at State Route 9 fully opened in early June, there’s aerial-to-underground utility work holding up some sidewalk, street paving, and landscaping before the intersection improvements are complete.
Sandy Springs Communications Director Carter Long said the gaps in the sidewalks and multi-use paths between Roswell Road and Spruill Lane will remain pending the completion of utility relocations by Georgia Power, Comcast, and AT&T. Long said staff is currently working with the utility providers on plan for aerial-to-underground relocations, but does not have a definitive timeline.
“Once these relocations are complete, the poles between Roswell Road and the library, including transmission poles, can be removed, sidewalk gaps filled in, and paving can be finished, fully completing the project,” Long said. “Landscaping for the project from the library to the east will be in conjunction with the plantings for TS192.”
A larger gap on the north side of Mount Vernon Highway, east of Ga. 400, between Crestline Parkway and Peachtree Dunwoody Road, is outside the scope of the TS192 project. Long said there are no existing sidewalk extension plans for that section.
Looking ahead in Sandy Springs
If voters extend the .75% sales tax for transportation projects, Sandy Springs will move forward with its 2021 program and the Hammond Drive widening project, another major east-west corridor, connecting City Springs to the Central Perimeter business district.
Phase one stretches between Boylston Drive and Glenridge Road and involves shifting the roadway north, adding one lane in each direction with a median barrier, and putting in two roundabouts. Public works staff have indicated that construction along Hammond Drive will begin shortly after the completion of TS191 and TS192.
The first phase has an approved budget of $35 million, including right-of-way acquisition and construction. So far, the city has spent $12.6 million. Staff is currently reviewing construction bids.
Of the city’s $129.1 million budget for the 2026 TSPLOST renewal, $44.6 million, or about a third of its sales tax revenue, is slated for the second phase of the Hammond Drive widening project. Phase two, several years away from construction, will widen two segments along Hammond Drive from Boylston Drive to Roswell Road and from Glenridge Drive to Barfield Road.
