ATLANTA — Cobb County commissioners approved a measure Tuesday to start spending taxpayer money on a new bridge for the Braves stadium. The bridge would cross I-285.
The vote authorizes the county to hire a firm to design the bridge. That cost would exceed $800,000. It raises some nagging questions about the proposed bridge, which has no funding mechanism as yet.
In Cobb County, where the new Braves stadium is taking shape, the question of how to get Braves fans to the ballpark remains a work in progress. One answer: a new bridge that would cross I-285, connecting the Braves stadium with the parking lot of the Galleria shopping center. The bridge would cross eleven or twelve lanes of traffic. Cobb County says it will cost six to nine million dollars to build. The Braves bridge would carry pedestrians and what the county calls circulator vehicles.
But a pedestrian bridge, built by MARTA last year, suggests otherwise. It crosses ten lanes of Georgia 400 traffic plus a MARTA rail line. It cost $32 million for engineering and construction. It’s a pedestrian-only bridge.
Asked about the comparison, Cobb county board chairman Tim Lee’s office referred us to an interview he did last week with 11Alive’s Matt Pearl in early March.
Pearl asked if there was “any chance this bridge costs $20 or 30 million?”
Lee’s answer: “Well first of all – we don’t even have enough information to make that conclusive. But I don’t see it getting anywhere near that.”
Ben Williams, a critic of Cobb County’s handling of the taxpayer funding of the Braves project, says the comparison suggests Cobb County is vastly underestimating the cost of the 285 bridge. He says it’s “very troubling…. the level of confidence has continued to decline” in the cost estimates of the project.”
Lee’s office says it’s unclear how the bridge would be funded, but that the county hopes to partner with state and federal government entities to fund the project.
Once the county commission hires a design firm, Lee expects to get a firmer estimate on the construction costs upon the conclusion of its design work. He says he hopes to have that estimate sometime this summer.
WXIA
