There's no doubt about it for Commissioner Jared Bailey. Downtown Athens is at a crossroads. Planners, politicians and the public all wanted an increase in the density of downtown, to make it easier for residents to leave their cars behind and for the government to provide services.
But when he looks at what's coming on Thomas and Oconee streets, "I'm really concerned about the number of cars and people. There's going to be an increase in traffic problems, that's obvious. There's going to be some negative impacts."
What's coming--or at least proposed--are three multi-story residential complexes aimed at affluent UGA students, that, taken together will provide thousands of bedroom and even more parking spaces on the eastern edge of downtown.
Bailey was the only commissioner at UGA professor Jack Crowley's Tuesday presentation of the Downtown Athens Master Plan for the group People for a Better Athens. The plan inventories what's in downtown and offers various scenarios of what could be there, based on input from now, 4,000 people.
Crowley is advocating that GDOT purchase a 38-mile railroad track from Norfolk and Southern that runs from Center, through downtown and the UGA campus, to Madison. He envisions it as a way to run light rail and lay bike paths--and to connect to a proposed high-speed rail that could stop near Nicholson on its way north.
The attached PDF shows what's proposed in the plan.
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