Don't expect a decision on Alpharetta's downtown parking deck anytime soon.
City officials are postponing any votes on the proposed deck until they can correct recent mistakes found in traffic projections made by their consultant, Kimley-Horn and Associates, said assistant city administrator James Drinkard.
The city council was originally scheduled to vote on a deck location at their Monday meeting.
"We got to take a deep breath," Drinkard said. "We've been so rush, rush, rush, rush. As a result of that, you end up with errors.
The consultants made "critical assumptions" in traffic estimates of the deck location preferred by council members, Drinkard said.
That location, "Site A" — which is located around Milton Avenue, Old Roswell and Roswell Street — is deemed ideal because of its closeness to a now-thriving downtown.
The initial traffic estimate shared at the city council's Oct. 3 meeting was designed to examine a worst case scenario for the intersections near Site A, said Eric Bosman, a project manager from Kimley-Horn Associates. That scenario was based on all vehicles entering the Site A parking lot from Roswell Street, he said.
City officials have asked Bosman's team to run a second traffic study that considers a more typical situation where traffic accesses Site A from different directions, he said.
City council members mulled for months whether to build the parking deck on "Site A," or at a location further down on Milton Avenue next to Rest Haven Cemetery, "Site D".
Residents have said they would rather have the parking deck away from downtown to preserve popular gathering spots.
The consultant will absorb any additional costs to redo the plans.
When asked how soon council members could revisit the parking deck vote, Drinkard said, "Not a clue."
"We already put bad data out there once. We can't afford to do it twice," he said.
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