Motorists in East Cobb have already begun grumbling about occasional lane closures that have been taking place for a few weeks now as the long-planned Lower Roswell Road project gets underway.
The first phase of the $7 million improvement project includes redoing the intersection of Lower Roswell at Woodlawn Drive, where construction equipment is parked when it’s not being used to conduct preliminary utility relocation work there.
At a Cobb Board of Commissioners work session last week, Cobb DOT director Drew Raessler mentioned those developments in a summary of transportation projects funded through SPLOST (Special-Option Local Sales Tax) revenues.
Cobb DOT has said the improvements are necessary to reduce crashes and improve traffic flows along a busy set of intersections.
The Lower Roswell Road project (final fact sheet here) is being funded with revenues from the 2011 SPLOST. Raessler said that the anticipated timetable for completion is more than two years away, in November of 2026.
The approval of the Lower Roswell Road project last June came with plenty of controversy, as it was passed by Cobb commissioners on a 3-2 vote after former commissioner Jerica Richardson made the motion for the work to move ahead.
That was after a redesign in 2022 and a few delays early in 2024, and in spite of vigorous community protests, including some business owners in the corridor.
Opposing the project was commissioner JoAnn Birrell, whose district includes the Lower Roswell Road area that Richardson, whose office was declared vacant in January, formerly represented.
That approval came more than a decade after it was first proposed, and a couple of years after renewed concerns about the impact on local businesses in the area.
The most controversial part of the project will be completed later on. That’s a raised median along Lower Roswell, between Johnson Ferry Road and Davidson Road, that business owners have protested would be “a bad idea.”
As she tried to broker a compromise, Richardson said that “what I do not want is to yet again kick the can down the road, and the situation will continue to get worse.
“Someone will be seriously hurt, and that point we will all be wondering why something wasn’t done sooner.”
Her former District 2 no longer includes East Cobb, and her successor will be decided in a special election on Tuesday.
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