A big shakeup is coming to the Big Creek Parkway project. In a unanimous decision, Roswell’s City Council approved going back to the original Big Creek Parkway project design approved by voters in the 2016 TSPLOST referendum.
“This is a momentous occasion for the City of Roswell,” said Roswell Mayor Kurt Wilson. “A lot of work has been done to make this happen for the benefit of our residents, improving east-west connections, and making great improvements to our City.”
Big Creek Parkway is Roswell’s major tier 1 project in the 2016 Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST) referendum. The project includes a new roadway connection from Warsaw Road in the west to Old Alabama Road in the east, and crosses over GA 400 north of Holcomb Bridge Road. The goal of the project is to relieve congestion on Holcomb Bridge Road near the GA 400 interchange, and also to improve east-west connectivity in Roswell. Currently, Holcomb Bridge Road and Riverside Road are the only options to travel east and west in Roswell.
“A lot of work has been done to make this happen for the benefit of our residents, improving east-west connections, and making great improvements to our City”
Roswell Mayor Kurt Wilson
In 2018, the Big Creek Parkway project was put on hold by the City Council to investigate cost savings. In early 2019, Roswell entered into a partnership with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to redesign and replace the interchange at Holcomb Bridge Road and GA 400 as part of GDOT’s proposed GA 400 Express Lane project.
In an effort to take advantage of the opportunity to improve the Holcomb Bridge Road/GA 400 interchange, Roswell’s Mayor and City Council then pledged to assist GDOT with the costs of the project and looked for ways to help GDOT fund the interchange. To accomplish that, in 2019, the Mayor and Council changed the design of the Big Creek Parkway project to divert portions of the roadway leading to the new bridge on the west side to instead follow Old Holcomb Bridge Road over to Warsaw Road. At the time, using an existing roadway instead of creating a new one would save an estimated $15 million, which would assist in paying for reconstructing the interchange at Holcomb Bridge Road and GA 400.
Now, Roswell’s current Mayor and Council have entered into another agreement with GDOT for the construction of the Big Creek Parkway Bridge. GDOT will now construct the Big Creek Parkway Bridge over GA 400 in conjunction with its GA 400 Express Lane project, resulting in construction savings that Roswell otherwise couldn’t tap into. The City will revert to the original proposed design of the project that voters approved in 2016.
To assist in paying for the inflationary increases in construction costs that have occurred in the last several years, the City Council also approved at their Dec. 11, 2023, meeting a request for $40 million from the State Legislature to help fund portions of the Big Creek Parkway project.
Read More: TSPLOST Projects