Barrett Parkway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barrett Parkway (officially Ernest W. Barrett Parkway, though nobody uses the full name) is a major thoroughfare between western and northern Cobb County, Georgia that runs from southwest of Marietta, north and then northeast near Kennesaw. The portion of Barrett Parkway between I-575 and U.S. 41 is designated State Route 5 Connector. The road is named afer Ernest W. Barrett, the first chairman of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners in the 1960s. The road went through what was the Barrett family land.
Much of the original Barrett Parkway was taken from the two-lane Roberts Road, which generally went from U.S. 41 to Interstate 75 and served an area that was rural in nature. During the 1980s, dramatically-increased land development, most notably the extension of I-75 in 1977 (which cut Roberts Road in half south of Barrett Parkway), the construction of I-575 in 1980, and the completion of the major regional Town Center at Cobb shopping mall in 1986, strained the road to capacity, and was subsequently widened to six lanes (three in each direction) with a median by the Cobb County Department of Transportation. Turn lanes were only at the numerous traffic lights. In the mid-1990s, Barrett Parkway was extended by a completely new median-divided highway west of U.S. 41 to S.R. 120, west of the City of Marietta.
Today, Barrett Parkway is densely packed east of U.S. 41 with major shopping centers and restaurants described by many residents as "strip-mall hell." West of U.S. 41, Barrett Parkway is mostly residential, but increasingly commercial near the intersection of S.R. 120 (Dallas Highway). The east side of the road is more affiliated with Marietta and the west more with Kennesaw. A large industrial park lies to the west. Stilesboro Road east from Barrett Parkway, and Old U.S. 41 south from it, meet at the historic Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, next to the visitor center.
When the road was extended, the county commission promised affected residents that it was simply a through-street, and that it would not be cluttered with additional traffic lights (except where crossing existing roads) or cross-traffic. It seems that this promise has been at least partly ignored, especially just west of U.S. 41 with the huge new Ridenour development, which has its own traffic light and was forested at the time the road was built.
Barrett Parkway is also unique in that even though it is a major area route, it remains under local control and was built entirely with county funds (with exception to the State Route 5 Connector portion). Combined with the East-West Connector and Cumberland Parkway, the route doubly serves as a western by-pass of Marietta and connects the two major malls of the county, Cumberland Mall and Town Center Mall. The route could perceivably also carry a by-passed State Route 5 in the near future as the city of Marietta has been planning to have State Route 5 moved away from downtown Marietta entirely, though no action has yet been taken on that measure.
[edit] Renaming
In 2003, the county commission extended the name of the parkway southward along other roads. This included the short Ridgeway Road (to which the parkway itself was extended) which originally ran only from Burnt Hickory Road in the north, about one mile south to S.R. 120. Villa Rica Road, which was realigned westward at S.R. 120 to meet Ridgeway to complete the loop, also had its parkway-widened portion renamed. Where a new highway was built to replace Villa Rica Road, what became "Old Villa Rica Road" at the time was then returned to being just "Villa Rica Road" again. The very short Villa Rica Way at S.R. 120 still retains that name, but was the original northern terminus for Villa Rica Road before its realignment to meet Ridgeway.
As a result of these changes, the Barrett Parkway name now ends at the East-West Connector near Austell. Its northeastern end is at Bells Ferry Road, east of which it continues as Piedmont Road (not to be confused with the Piedmont Road in Atlanta). That road curves down around to the south, meeting S.R. 120 again on the other side of Marietta; here S.R. 120 is called Roswell Road.
[edit] Widening
Despie being only a few years old, the newer section of Barrett Parkway is already slated to be widened. After a small minority of residents approved a sales tax increase in a little-known referendum in September 2005, one of the projects to be funded is making it a six-lane highway from U.S. 41 to S.R. 120. [1] This would give it as many lanes as some much busier roads in the county, and would contradict promises made to residents before initial 1990s construction. This will cost nearly 50 million tax dollars, including 38 million from the SPLOST.
[edit] Interchanges
The road was exit 116 and is now mile 269 on I-75. It was exit 1 and is still mile 1 on I-575, which originally had no northbound exit to or southbound entrance from Barrett Parkway. Those ramps were not built until the late 1980s or early 1990s, a few years after the mall opened.
