Athens-Clarke County is likely to lose a $25 million federal grant for North Avenue, and now the commission faces a choice of whether to cut bait or change the plan to try to meet a looming deadline.
The deadline to spend the federal RAISE (Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) grant awarded by the Biden administration was always going to be tight, but as the project evolved, it moved further and further away from the original proposal, stretching the timeline even more. The original grant application proposed a three-lane configuration for North Avenue with separated walking and biking paths. Engineers added back a northbound lane after institutions like UGA and the Classic Center raised concerns about traffic jams for people leaving events. Then commissioners Ovita Thornton and Tiffany Taylor pushed through a plan in November to leave the current five-lane configuration in place, forcing designers to start over again. In addition, the Georgia Department of Transportation delayed the planned replacement of a bridge over the Loop where pedestrians are forced to walk along an 18-inch curb.
The grant requires ACC to sign a construction contract by September 2026, and the chances of finishing the design by then are virtually nil, county staff told commissioners at a May 13 work session. The Taylor/Thornton commission-defined option would require obtaining parts of 49 land parcels. Street lights and shade trees would have to be eliminated to stay within the road’s current width. And a wall around the Advantage Behavioral Health day shelter included in the CDO probably doesn’t meet federal standards. “That’s not a typical transportation project element… and from a safety standpoint, it’s not something the design team would recommend,” said Stephen Bailey, director of the Transportation and Public Works Department.
That’s not the only reason, though. County officials had been seeking a two-year extension from the U.S. DOT, which looked promising until the Trump administration took over. “The shift at the federal level from ‘extensions are an opportunity’ to ‘don’t even think about it’ happened after the CDO was done, which put us in a different position than we were before,” interim county manager Brad Griffin said.
Taylor and Thornton complained about criticism in the press and “phone calls from spouses of staff,” Taylor said, as well as “misinformation” and “lies and confusion,” as Thornton put it. She accused staff of not telling her that the grant was in jeopardy. “We couldn’t meet the deadline in 2023. And you knew it. And you didn’t tell us,” Thornton said.
“The trust level is none for some staff people, and they know who they are,” she added.
But Mayor Kelly Girtz said commissioners were informed years ago that missing the deadline was a possibility. “Staff did inform the full body that there was some risk in 2023, and that’s why I wrote a letter that was distributed to the whole body at that point,” he said.
Bailey said the commission has three options: The first is to give up the grant and reimburse the federal government the approximately $400,000 already spent on design. The second is to ask the Federal Highway Administration to convert the grant from a construction grant to a planning grant, allowing ACC to continue the design process and seek other sources of funding to build it, but potentially racking up more design costs if the FHWA refuses. The third is to go back to the four-lane design proposed by staff, eliminating the need to acquire right-of-way, but the odds of success are only 50/50, according to Bailey.
Taylor asked if removing bike lanes from the CDO would allow it to move forward. “At that point we’ve gotten so far away from the original plan, we’re dead in the water,” Griffin responded. Safety—particularly for cyclists and pedestrians but also for drivers—was the point of seeking the grant in the first place.
With $8 million from TSPLOST 2023, the 1% sales tax for transportation, designated for North Athens, the commission discussed using $2 million to design a new pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly North Avenue bridge over the Loop, then seeking outside grant funding to build it. Other money goes toward traffic calming and roadway lighting in the area.
And on the west side of the corridor—Prince Avenue outside Sunset Drive and Jefferson Road—a user group has recommended spending $8.7 million allocated in TSPLOST on new sidewalks, signalized crosswalks and bus shelters.
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