The Cobb County Commission on Tuesday approved a Los Angeles-based firm as the county’s top candidate to design and engineer a double-decker bridge over Interstate 285, linking the Galleria area with SunTrust Park and the Braves proposed mixed-use development.
Officials with the county’s Department of Transportation will now begin negotiations with AECOM over a final price for the work, which will include a cost estimate for construction. The county has budgeted $750,000 for the engineering work, but the final cost could exceed that.
The county has already spent in excess of $100,000 on consulting work related to the bridge.
Commissioners approved a ranking of the top four companies who submitted their qualifications for designing the bridge. If the county can’t reach agreement on the financial terms for the job, they will begin negotiating with the second-ranked firm, T.Y. Lin International based in San Francisco.
The county wants the bridge completed in time for the Braves first pitch in 2017. To that end, the county is offering a 2-percent bonus if the engineering firm has its work done in a time frame that allows construction bids to be opened by October.
Cobb County is asking engineering firms to design a double-decker bridge over Interstate 285 that would allow fans to come and go from the new Atlanta Braves stadium via a circulator bus on the top span and a pedestrian walkway on the bottom.
That’s the latest plan in the ever-evolving project — and the county still has no idea how much it will cost or how it will be funded.
The Request For Proposal was released just three months after Cobb transportation officials told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the circulator bus had been removed from the bridge design. Designing it to support a transit vehicle would be too expensive, the officials said.
At the time, the 1,100-foot bridge — spanning the interstate, Galleria Drive and Circle 75 Parkway — was going to be a single span.
The AJC first reported in November that the county will be responsible for funding at least half of the bridge’s cost, despite Commission Chairman Tim Lee’s repeated assurances that no local tax money would be used for its construction. That information was revealed in an application the county submitted for the project with the Atlanta Regional Commission. The newspaper reviewed hundreds of pages of emails, reports, artist renderings and conceptual drawings for that story.
Lee acknowledged during a Monday town hall meeting that local tax dollars will help fund the bridge.
When asked what had changed over the past three months that will now allow the county to afford a double span that supports transit, Cobb Department of Transportation Director Faye DiMassimo said earlier this month: “As part of the ongoing project development, and in looking at … the surrounding development and the various funding alternatives, we think this is a viable and best option to pursue.”
When asked how much the bridge would cost, DiMassimo said the county is sticking by its $9 million estimate — a figure they came up with more than a year ago — before officials decided that building a bridge to support the circulator bus would be too expensive.
Asked if the bridge construction cost could be higher, DiMassimo said, “potentially.”
The RFP document says that a variety of funding is anticipated to pay for the bridge, including federal transit funds, special purpose sales tax receipts, “and/or other local funding.”
The idea of the bridge linking the Galleria area — and thousands of parking spaces on the far side of I-285 — was rolled out by Lee the day after the Braves announced their intention move to Cobb County. At the time, Lee incorrectly said the bridge was included in the stadium budget.
The fact the bridge was not included in the ballpark budget became clear three weeks later, when a preliminary agreement between Cobb and the Braves made the county responsible for infrastructure improvements, and said the bridge would be subject to the county’s “best effort” to obtain funding.
In May, the project was put on hold because of concerns over its “feasibility,” according to project documents obtained by the AJC through Georgia’s Open Records Act.
And as late as July, Lee said no local tax money would be used to construct the bridge. When asked after a July 15 commission meeting if the bridge would be an additional expense for Cobb taxpayers, Lee responded: “Probably not. No. I doubt it. I doubt it seriously.”
Lee told the AJC in November that he made those statements because he was hopeful that outside funds would cover the entire cost.
The county’s Request For Proposals says: “Aesthetics will be an important aspect of the design,” the document says. “The aesthetic design elements that … will need to (be) considered are the overall structure type, planters, benches, lighting, decorative fencing, ATMs and security. These elements will need to be combined into an overall aesthetics package that will integrate into the Cumberland/Galleria area as well as the proposed SunTrust Park.”
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