Cobb to consider Walton HS sports complex sidewalk project

Funding for a sidewalk connecting the Walton High School campus with a new sports complex for the school will be requested Tuesday by Cobb DOT.

The Cobb Board of Commissioners will be asked to spend $720,897 for the one-tenth of a mile sidewalk along the southern side of Bill Murdock Road, between Old College Way and Pine Road (see map below).

In an agenda item for Tuesday night’s meeting (you can read it here), Cobb DOT said $359,762 would come from the 2022 Cobb SPLOST School Zone Improvements component. Another $384,762 in Cobb DOT water system funding would be needed to relocate water lines.

The low bidder was Advanced Sports Construction, LLC of Woodstock.

The sidewalk would extend to a $1 million pedestrian bridge that the Cobb Board of Education approved in April to the sports complex, traversing a creek located in a flood plain area near the Bill Murdock-Pine Road intersection.

The sports complex is located on property on Pine Road and Providence Road that the Cobb County School District has purchased to construct a $6.738 million sports complex, housing the Walton varsity tennis and baseball teams.

Walton’s tennis teams played home matches there this spring, but the baseball portion of the complex is still under construction.

Safe access to the complex from the school campus to the complex, which will have 80 parking spaces, is necessary for practices as well as competitions.

The Cobb school district tried to get Cobb DOT to increase pedestrian crosswalks, but to no avail. Cobb DOT also was looking at realigning Bill Murdock Road and Pine Road to straighten out a curve near the intersection, but that also will not be happening.

Traffic at the intersection is regulated by a three-way stop sign.

The Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday will take place starting at 7 p.m. in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building (100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta).

On the agenda will be a recognition of two students at Hightower Trail Middle School and another at Dickerson Middle School who have attained the Girl Scout Silver Award.

Another agenda item includes confirming the appointment of Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Michael Register as Cobb Public Safety Director. Register would be returning to a position he briefly held in 2018-19.

You can read through the full agenda by clicking here.

The meeting will be live-streamed on the county’s website, cable TV channel (Channel 24 on Comcast) and Youtube page. Visit cobbcounty.org/CobbTV for other streaming options.

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