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Senoia wants Rockaway relief

By JOHN THOMPSON
jthompson@TheCitizenNews.com
and JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

For commuters in Senoia, Rockaway Road has rapidly turned into a traffic nightmare. In the mornings and afternoons, traffic on the road backs up for more than a mile while drivers try to make a left turn on Ga. Highway 74.

The Senoia City Council decided Monday night to get proactive and attempt to do something about the troublesome traffic spot.

“I’d like to see a three-way stop placed at that intersection as a temporary measure,” said Councilman Bill Wood.

Mayor Bob Hannah agreed thats something needed to be done and said he had heard the Georgia Department of Transportation was once again talking about realigning the road with Holly Grove Road in Peachtree City.

But since the stop signs would have to placed in Peachtree City in Fayette County, the council decided to send letters to both governments and ask for their help on the issue.

Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown said he was sympathetic with the problem facing Senoia residents at the Rockaway-Hwy. 74 intersection, but “a three-way stop is not the solution.”

“It is legitimate and we have to do something about it,” Brown said Wednesday. “Within the next five or six years, the problem is going to be beyond significant: it will be extreme.”

Peachtree City staff is aware of the problem and working on the issue, Brown said. Ultimately, however, any solution will take Brown’s support and at least two more of the city’s five City Council members, he added.

The Stephens family, which owns the tract needed for the road realignment, has been “very cooperative” in working with the city on a possible solution for the undeveloped property that would allow the road realignment to occur, Brown said. The site is zoned for industrial use, but a residential rezoning sought by the Stephens family was ultimately denied by the Peachtree City Council.

A new proposal in the works would have no residential use whatsoever, focusing instead on commercial and office-institutional uses, Brown said. In addition to getting the road realignment, the city would also get the recycling center relocated and keep using the Meade baseball/softball complex.

Brown said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to “push” the concept with the city council given the cool reception his West Village annexation idea has received from fellow council members.

“I’m the only one who’s pushing the ideas,” from a land-planning perspective,” Brown said. Those types of ideas will be discussed in further detail at the city’s upcoming retreat, the mayor added.

“The question is, what are we going to do in the future?” Brown said.