City Completes Final Phase of $22 Million Fairground Street Facelift

MARIETTA — The city has completed the final phase of its $22 million makeover of the Fairground Street Corridor, a project that began almost 20 years ago.

The fourth and final phase of the project, which cost $4.5 million, includes new sidewalks, street lighting, medians, traffic signals and improved drainage along a half-mile stretch from South Marietta Parkway to Roswell Street.

The city began work on the corridor, from Allgood Road to South Marietta Parkway, a distance of about one mile, in the early 2000s, with the first phase funded by the 1995 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, according to Mark Rice, the city’s public works director.

While the makeover aimed to improve traffic flow and the appearance of the corridor, Rice said the No 1. goal of this last phase, funded by the 2011 SPLOST, was to improve safety for both drivers and pedestrians.

“It was an adventure coming through here at times,” Rice said.

Marietta Councilman Grif Chalfant said he knew several people were looking forward to the road being repaved.

“It was a horrible road to get through and (you’d) almost tear your car up going through the area,” Chalfant said. “The street and the neighborhood were in the process of going downhill, and I think (the project) will help that area.”

Rice added that there were many car wrecks that occurred, especially at the intersection of Fairground and Frasier streets.

In order to limit the number of people making dangerous turns from Fairground onto Frasier Street, Rice said the city decided to add a traffic signal and reverse the direction on the one-way street, changing the flow of traffic from east to west.

“We felt like that was a better flow of traffic,” Rice said. “(We wanted) to get all the traffic that needs to make a left-hand turn and get them to the signal.”

In addition to improvements at the Frasier intersection, the city added additional crosswalks and lighting along the street to make it safer for pedestrians.

Rice said while they have not yet looked into new traffic data, he has noticed that there haven’t been as many calls about wrecks along the roadway.

Other additions to Fairground Street include wider sidewalks, with a six-foot-wide sidewalk on the west side that expands to eight feet closer to Roswell Street and a new, five-foot-wide sidewalk along the east side of the street.

Down toward Roswell Street, in front of the various auto repair shops, the city also improved the underground drainage pipes to prevent water ponding in the road.

Other improvements include planted and brick medians, decorative lighting, signage and new retaining walls.

The city tried to match the color, brick, stone and capping of these retaining walls to the previously built improvements around Roswell Street.

The city’s parks department will return in late winter, early spring to landscape the planted median, Rice said.

The Fairground streetscape project is the second of its kind completed in the past few months. In June, the city completed a three-year long makeover of Powder Springs Street, after a number of delays.

Rice said the city learned from the Powder Springs project, and anticipated the Fairground project to take longer due to material delays and other factors.

The Fairground Street project, which started in late January of 2023, was anticipated to last 16 to 18 months.

According to Rice, their contractor finished up with the final phase of Fairground Street in April, but the city had a few loose ends to tie up, like street lighting issues, before calling the project complete.

Not only was the final phase completed under the anticipated 18 months, it came under the original $4.8 million budget, said Rice.

The city has two more projects scheduled for the near future: the Rottenwood Creek Trail and a Roswell Street widening project.

Construction to widen Roswell Street, in front of Cobb Hardware, from two to four lanes is set to begin toward the end of this year or at the beginning of 2025. Rice said the project is scheduled to last about two to three months.

The second project, the Rottenwood Creek Trail, will create an east-west connection between Kennesaw Mountain and the Chattahoochee River. Rice said the city is currently going through bids for the project and hopes to have a contract in place by the middle or end of September.

The final trail, which will be split into two phases, will run from Alumni Drive on the Kennesaw State University Marietta Campus, east to Franklin Gateway, across Interstate 75 and tie into the Bob Callan trailhead at Terrell Mill Road. Rice said phase one will be an 18-month to two-year project.

“With any construction project, we’ll have traffic tie-ups, delays, ... and we appreciate everyone’s patience when we’re working through these (projects),” Rice said.

“Once we get done, we think the end product is worth the wait. Bear with us.”