The Union City Council Feb. 20 approved a $157,000 contract with Brentwood, Tennessee-based RPM Transportation Consultants, LLC Tuesday to develop the South Fulton Parkway Corridor Plan for the 6.5-mile portion of the parkway recently annexed by the city. The study will focus on land use and transportation in the 4,100-acre annexed corridor area. The three-part motion included hiring RPM, accepting business donations to help fund the study and allocating $25,000 from the city’s Capital Improvement budget to help address the balance of funding needed.

The scope of work outlined in the RPM proposal included three main tasks. Those include public involvement, study development and project deliverables preparation. The study has a July 27 deadline.

Open forum meetings with a free exchange of dialogue with community members will be held, the RPM proposal said. RPM staff will provide large-scale maps and computer enhanced photographs to illustrate planning and design concepts. RPM will also conduct meetings with team members and key stakeholders. Meeting dates have not been set.

The study development task will include items such as inventory and analysis of existing roadway and transportation conditions, intersection capacities, existing land use, land use and traffic volume forecasts, future traffic and land use projections, recommended transportation improvements and a financial plan. The project deliverables task includes preparing both a draft plan and final plan.

The city received eight responses to the RFP. A city-appointed committee reviewed the proposals and developed a list of companies to be interviewed. The review committee included city administrator Terrell Jacobs and community development director Ann Lippmann along with parkway property owners and developers Chris Doughtie with Hallmark Developers, Chris Erb with Developers Diversified Realty, Chris Miller with Weingarten Realty Investors and Matt Ornstein with Ornstein-Schuler Capital Partners. Ornstein is also president of the South Fulton Parkway Alliance.

The two firms eventually recommended by the committee were RPM and Atlanta-based Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates (TSW). Jacobs and Lippmann said RPM and TSW were recommended because the committee felt the firms would provide an unbiased opinion regarding the transportation element of the plan and would be free of Georgia Dept. of Transportation influence.

Prior to the motion, Councilwoman Angelette Mealing said she preferred the RPM proposal due to the company’s past accomplishments, their presentation to the council and their small town experience.

After the vote, Mayor Ralph Moore took the occasion to comment on the importance of the corridor study and to address critics of the city’s development strategies.

“I don’t know of any other plan as important in Union City or south Fulton as this one,” Moore said. “We’ve been accused of things not representative of Union City and of being lax on enforcing our policies. Staff has equitably and equally enforced those policies. I want to put those critics at ease. We’re going to move in the direction the voters have asked us to move.”