Most members of the board of the Buckhead
Community Improvement District got their first look Tuesday at proposed changes
to the intersection of Peachtree and Roswell roads in the Village area of
Buckhead and decided there was too little data and too many questions to
present the plans to the public at a meeting that had been planned for May 17.
The consensus of the board members was that
they have not had the opportunity to review the traffic study data that had
been used to prepare the proposals presented to them at their April meeting
Tuesday, much less any data from a second consulting firm the BCID hired at its
March meeting.
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| Hunter Richardson |
Hunter Richardson, OliverMcMillan’s project
manager on Buckhead Atlanta, was the first to object to the May 17 date for a
public meeting, saying he thought it was “putting the cart before the
horse…pretty pictures without the data” and there remained too many questions
about the impact of the various proposals.
Board vice chair John Lundeen, principal of
Coro Realty Advisors, said he thought the BCID was “opening up a Pandora’s box”
by holding the meeting before the BCID had all of the traffic data in hand, had
time to review it all, and could determine as a body if the proposals were
ready to be presented to the public.
Richardson told the board, “We are within a month
or two of having the data in hand from two sources.” He suggested the public
meeting could easily wait until all of that data was in hand and had been fully
vetted.
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| Area of the Buckhead Village Transportation Study proposals |
Notice of the meeting had been sent out by the
BCID staff earlier in the week with and had been published briefly by
BuckheadView, as well emails of the meeting notice having been sent out by
community leaders to their constituents.
BCID board chairman David Allman said the May
17 meeting could be cancelled and rescheduled at a later date—two or months in
the future.
The BCID sent out the following official
statement regarding cancellation of the meeting today to explain the board’s
cancellation of the public meeting:
“The Buckhead
Community Improvement District’s May 17 meeting to obtain public input on
Buckhead Village Transportation Study proposals has been postponed until later
in the year. BCID recently hired Parsons Brinckerhoff, one of the
world's leading planning, engineering, and program and construction management organizations,
which will run additional modeling on the proposed transportation
concepts. This will ultimately provide a clearer picture of traffic
implications. BCID looks forward to completing this additional analysis
and presenting it to the public for feedback in the coming months.”
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| Brian McHugh |
BCID project
manager Brian McHugh pointed out that the data used by Kimerly Horn to produce
the proposed changes to the five-way intersection and the triangle Charlie
Loudermilk Park was presently available and could be sent to the board members
for review.
However, Allman and
other board members pointed out that Parsons Brinckerhoff had just been hired
to do an analysis of the traffic patterns in that area of Buckhead, as well as
other areas, and that information might suggest major changes in the proposals
introduced on Tuesday.
In fact, the
financial aspects of the Parsons Brinckerhoff contract were just approved at
Tuesday’s meeting. It was said that the firm could complete its initial
analysis of the area in a month.
In addition to the
analysis of traffic data related to the Phase I proposal, it was also pointed
out that the BCID also approved Tuesday $5,000 for Plexis R&D, an
architectural/engineering firm, to study the impact on the commercial
properties on the northwest corner of the intersection of Peachtree, Roswell
and West Paces Ferry roads.
The proposed plan
would essentially move back from the road the facade of the two-story retail
and commercial building owned by George Rohrig, in order to create a better
right turn onto West Paces Ferry from southbound Roswell Road and to straighten
the shift of alignment of lanes of Peachtree Road with Roswell Road at that
intersection.
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| John Lundeen |
Lundeen said he would not support at this time
even Phase I of the proposed projects—primarily a streetscape proposal and
adding a median and bike lanes to Peachtree Road—in preparation for Buckhead
Atlanta because it would reduce Peachtree Road by one lane of traffic.
McHugh pointed out that the Phase I proposal,
which begin almost immediately upon approval, would reduce Peachtree Road by
one lane from Bolling Way/Sardis Drive to Pharr Road. The one lane lost
southbound would be between Bolling/Sardis and Paces Ferry Road.
McHugh said Peachtree Road would be reduced to
five lanes in order to provide bike lanes on both sides of the road and to
provide space for a median and left-turn lanes.
Lundeen said he had not seen any traffic study
data that tells him how that would impact traffic flow on Peachtree Road and
the traffic stacking area and back-up between Bolling Way/Sardis Drive and
Paces Ferry Road.
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| David Allman |
Both Allman and Lundeen agreed that is a major
“pinch point” to look at with the traffic analysis.
McHugh suggested that if the traffic analysis
proved that this plan would not work between Bolling Way and Pharr Road, then
the bike lanes would have to be moved off of Peachtree onto a parallel route
through the Village, such as Paces Ferry.
The other long-term Phase II proposals
presented by McHugh to the board Tuesday are considered for five years down the
road or beyond and would have far greater impact on properties around the major
intersection.
Among the changes shown in those proposals
would be the elimination of the present Bank of America office at the corner of
Roswell Road and Sardis Drive, the elimination of a whole block of property
along Bolling Way, where the former Hi-Fi Buys store is located, to realign the
road to connect to Fulton Avenue instead of dead ending into East Paces Ferry
Road.
One option would move the Charlie Loudermilk
Park up against the fronts of the commercial buildings along Roswell Road
(including the Buckhead Theatre), which would create a four-way intersection at
Peachtree and Paces Ferry and a four-way intersection at Roswell and Peachtree
roads.
McHugh told the board, “It works best for cars,
the least for pedestrians.” He said the stakeholders did not like that plan.
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| Robin Loudermilk |
Robin Loudermilk, who owns several of the properties
that would be involved with the Phase II options, told his colleagues on the
PCID board that he objects to all of the options.
“I am a property owner on all four sides of
this and I know not only how it impacts property owners, but I also know
financially this is one big project when you start taking that much land,
Loudermilk told the board.
“We are
not talking about inconsequential pieces of land,” said Loudermilk. “I have one
piece I would love to put trees on but you can’t open up. It is a brown field.”
He said dealing with remediating a brown field is very expensive.
Loudermilk said he had been in three meetings
and has said “these don’t work.” He said he was referring to the Phase II
options. “I’m good with Phase I” he said. But in terms of Phase II options,
Loudermilk said, “I don’t think it has been vetted with the property owners yet.”
He suggested some of it would cost millions of dollars.
But Lundeen told the board he was not even
convinced about Phase I, because of not having the necessary traffic data to
review on the proposal. “I am just saying that, with what I know right now, I
would vote no, because I don’t have enough data.”
With that, the board voted to put off the
public meeting until later—possibly September when school is back in session
and people are in town to attend the meeting—when the board has had time to
analyze the data on traffic and property impacts.
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