Clarkesville City Manager Keith Dickerson gave the City Council updates on the progress of the GA 115/ Monroe Street bridge and a hotel study he received during Monday’s council meeting.
According to documents from Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), the bridge replacement was slated to begin in 2032. However, according to Dickerson, the project is being fast tracked. “This bridge is supposed to be on a fast track program, even though its not showing up on their website as being on the fast track,” he said.
Dickerson informed the council that the studies that GDOT does for such a project normally takes a couple of years to complete. However, those studies have already been completed. He states that he suspects that the project may begin as early as next year.
He explains that GDOT believes the bridge is currently wide enough to close one side and leave the other portion open for traffic and work their way across the bridge to replace it. GDOT had looked at creating a detour route to bypass the bridge during construction. However, it would cause significant traffic delays for the elementary school, the technical school, and the jail.
He stated that all of the utilities have been addressed allowing for the project to begin.
Dickerson tells the council that the bridge won’t look much different from the topside. However, underneath will be different with fewer supports exposed. The new configuration is due to the change in the flood zone in the area. He adds that the bridge will be raised approximately a foot and will be narrowed slightly.
Hotel study
Dickerson gave the results of a hotel study conducted by University of Georgia’s Archway Partnership. He explained that the class that he and a few council members attended was very informative as it relates to having a hotel in Clarkesville.
He told the council that the class of about 30 students were broken up into five independent teams to perform the study for the city.
Dickerson said that it was amazing how the students did the research. They utilized data that is only available to universities. They studied the whole Blue Ridge Mountain area of northeast Georgia. The students also utilized Amazon’s artificial intelligence in the study. He told the council from the data available to the students, “They know more about our restaurants than we do,” he said.
Study conclusions
After utilizing their data and the Smith Travel Index, all five teams concluded that Habersham County exceeds demand for hotels compared to all of the other counties in the Blue Ridge Mountain area.
Dickerson told the council that the studies also claimed that full service restaurants were in demand in Habersham County, particularly in Clarkesville. The studies claim that the restaurants need to be nice, sit down type restaurants that have wait staff, not necessarily fast food restaurants.
All five studies concluded that a hotel, more particularly a “boutique hotel” with 20 to 50 rooms was viable in the city of Clarkesville. To add to the viability of the hotel, it needs to have a full service restaurant and a bar.
The study included travel data for attractions in the area as well as events. What it didn’t include was the impact of recreational tournaments that take place in and around the county. Dickerson told the council that they are aware of soccer and baseball tournaments in the area but did not have enough data to use that information in the studies.
Next steps
Council member Don Nix asked about the conclusions from the studies. “This is enough that we could take to an investor possibly? What’s the next step?” He asked.
Dickerson stated that there were investors that had connections with developers that built hotels, more specifically boutique hotels. The next step would be identifying properties near the downtown area that were just over an acre that would be suitable for this type of development.
He told the council that if the city found someone interested in this type of development, the information in the studies would definitely be beneficial.
