With a little design work left to finish and grass to grow — so two golf holes can be relocated — there’s little left to stand in the way of construction beginning for the extension of TDK Boulevard from the Peachtree City industrial park into undeveloped sections of eastern Coweta County.

But recently revealed plans to build more than 3,950 homes and 900,000 square feet of retail on the Coweta side of the planned road have at least one former TDK proponent wanting the road to be reevaluated.

“When I saw 10,000 (cars), I said ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” said Fayetteville attorney Mike Hofrichter, who as a member of the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce lobbied strongly several years ago for the road to be built as another way for employees to reach Peachtree City’s industrial park.

When the Chamber was looking into the matter four years ago, the group was told that the undeveloped land in Coweta couldn’t be used for “a gigantic development,” Hofrichter said.

“The information that we were presented at the time led us to support it,” Hofrichter said.

Now that Ga. Highway 54 is widened to four lanes, workers coming from Coweta to the industrial park have a much easier commute “without the bottlenecking and congestion we once had,” Hofrichter said.

Hofrichter said the proposal for development to generate about 10,000 more cars on the road on the Coweta side of the TDK extension stopped him in his tracks.

“I think this does need to be reconsidered,” Hofrichter said of plans to build TDK, but that’s completely left up to government officials, he added.

Jim Pace, president and CEO of Group VI Construction in Peachtree City and a former Chamber president, also lobbied strongly for the TDK extension. He said Monday that he thinks the project still will be helpful for employees to drive to and from the industrial park.

“I still think it’s going to be a vital east-west connector,” said Pace, who previously served on the Peachtree City Council.

Pace said neither he nor his company have any properties or interests in any parcels along the proposed TDK extension route.

“It has been on the county’s transportation plan for at least 10 years, maybe 15,” Pace said. “... It’s a matter of having a good transportation grid.”

Noting that traffic has significantly improved on Ga. Highway 54, Pace said Fayette County has one person specifically to thank for that: state Senator Mitch Seabaugh, who helped speed the project up from its initial completion date of 2020. The road, now with four lanes and wider bridges, opened in late July.

“We owe Mitch a huge debt of gratitude,” Pace said.

Former Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown is calling for the TDK Extension to be halted, though he voted to spend city funds on the project while in office despite waging a political battle to expend no further city money for the new road.

The design phase of the TDK Extension is nearly complete, and state funds are expected to help with construction, which will be performed by Fayette County. A $2 million grant to purchase land on the northern end of the runway at Falcon Field is in place so the airport’s runway safety area can be extended.

Securing that property has been the most recent significant holdup on the project, forcing a redesign of the road path and negotiations to purchase two nearby parcels so several holes at the nearby Planterra Ridge Golf Course could be relocated.

Hofrichter said hopes that the TDK Extension would improve business at the struggling Braelinn Village shopping center “were secondary at best.” With more than 900,000 square feet proposed for the McIntosh development in Coweta, extending TDK might instead bring more competition for the south Peachtree City stores.

Hofrichter, who has clashed with former Mayor Steve Brown in the past, said he didn’t care for Brown’s comments last week that he knew a big development plan would be in the works for undeveloped Coweta land thanks to the TDK extension.

“I don’t appreciate an in-your-face ‘I told you so’ from someone who voted for it,” Hofrichter added.

Click here for larger maps.

login to post comments