The Peachtree City Council will soon be deciding whether to proceed with building a “gateway” cart path bridge that would span Ga. Highway 54 West near the city limits and Wynnmeade Parkway.

The bridge will need another $822,000 to become reality, with another $600,000 coming from the county’s transportation SPLOST and another $480,000 coming from a grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Centers Initiative program.

Some of the balance can be filled with transportation SPLOST funds because the city has money hanging out there tied to projects that ultimately won’t be built, officials told the City Council at a workshop meeting Wednesday night.

The plan would use the bridge to link to a city-owned parcel east of Wynnmeade Parkway, and it would land on the other side of Hwy. 54 on property currently being developed as The Shoppes at Village Piazza, a shopping center, explained City Planner David Rast.

Because of the significant changes in grade, the approach paths to both sides of the bridge will have to meander around instead of taking a direct straight path. The path approach to the north of the bridge will ultimately lead to a golf cart path tunnel under MacDuff Parkway that is already in use.

The consensus decision from the meeting was for city staff to approach ARC for perhaps more grant money for the project and also will evaluate pending SPLOST projects to determine how much is feasible to take from that fund.

City Manager Bernie McMullen said the project might not be completed until late 2009 at the earliest, but the funding question will need to be answered before it can proceed.

Rast noted that many of the required documents for approval from the Georgia Department of Transportation have already been submitted including environmental and archeological surveys. The city just needs to have construction drawings made and then approved by DOT so the city can proceed with right of way acquisition, which it basically already has on the north leg since it owns that parcel, Rast said.