Put Your Stamp on Main Street in Alpharetta

Want to design the future look of Alpharetta's Main Street in its downtown to Windward Parkway corridor? The city has created Envision Main Street Alpharetta to engage residents and property owners in creating a vision and design for its future.

Two design charrettes will held at the Devore House on Church Street in the downtown Alpharetta area.

Design Time
The Devore House
34 Church Street
5-9 p.m.
Wednesday, March 13
Tuesday, March 26

"These sessions are designed to allow you to drop-in and participate for as long as your schedule allows, so we hope that you will make a special effort to join in," said the city's spokesman, James Drinkard.

He said Main Street (GA 9) plays an important role in the daily life of the city.

"Yet, little has been intentional as this once quiet street has developed into a highway.  The process has been more a product of evolution by necessity than long-range planning.  Nevertheless, it has stumbled into being one of those special streets that now helps define us as a community," Drinkard said in his news release.

As the city's works to enhance its downtown to embrace deeper community, walkability and vibrancy, some tough decisions have to be made.

"How do we design Main Street in such a way as to best serve our hometown goals while not neglecting our transportation needs?," he asked.

Eric Graves, traffic planner for the Community Development Department, told the Alpharetta Planning Commission on Thursday night, March 7, that the Georgia Department of Transportation has had GA 9 on the planning books through the Atlanta Regional Commission and regional transportation plans, and had advanced to a concept design. That initial concept was designed to show the worst impact.

"We want to get the feedback from the community similar to what we did on Rucker Road," Graves said.

The city has made improvements to the South Main Street-Old Milton Parkway intersection, and north to Marietta Street. But the work was stopped at that spot so the rest of the section that reaches Academy Street-Milton Avenue will be finished as part of the City Center project.

Graves said the city wants to come up with a design that the community wants and also accommodate some of the state needs with its transportation guidelines. Alpharetta wants to accomplish this before GDOT puts real money into it, he said.

Additional information on this effort can be found on the Envision Main Street Alpharetta website.