Roswell to Construct New Roundabout

Though Roswell just officially opened the first roundabout in North Fulton, the city is already diving into its second roundabout at the intersection of Houze and Hembree roads.

Thanks to an approval to by the Roswell City Council at Monday’s meeting, the city is teaming up with the Georgia Department of Transportation on this latest roundabout at zero cost to the city. The project is set to cost an estimated $1.6 million for design, right-of-way-acquisition, construction and a multi-use trail along Hembree Road that connects to it, but federal money will cover 100 percent of the costs, according to David Low, deputy transportation director for Roswell.

Low told the council that GDOT had approached the city about utilizing federal funds for a second roundabout.

“They asked if [the Hembree/Houze intersection] was a suitable location for roundabout,” he said.

In conjunction with the roundabout project approval, the council also approved a $300,000 expenditure of those federal funds to hire URS, an engineering services consultants team. URS will begin the design phase of the project immediately.

But don’t expect to be careening around the curves of the roundabout or biking the multi-use trail anytime soon. The city will hold meetings to gather public input on the project sometime around to January 2012. And staff expects the entire design process to take roughly one year from now, meaning it could be mid-to-late 2012 before any construction actually begins.

The new project will join the roundabout at the intersection of Grimes Bridge and Norcross roads, which opened June 30.

The council unanimously approved both the GDOT agreement and the design contract.

"We wanted to make sure first [roundabout] was successful before we launched into any other [projects]; and it was wildly successful," said Mayor Jere Wood, who joked that because they had already completed one roundabout project, the city was getting the second for free.