After years of inaction, Macon's Log Cabin Drive sidewalk project closer to fruition

Andre Wooten walks a stretch of Log Cabin Drive twice a day, six days a week.

It's a short walk. Just off the bus and past the caution light, then down a hill to his apartment. Along the way he is forced to walk through shin-high grass, then in a red clay ditch, to avoid being hit by speeding cars on the two-lane road.

The walk isn't even as long as a football field.

"That's as far as I'm going to walk, though," Wooten said. "I would not walk this street."

Just past the parking lot of his apartment complex is the two-lane bridge across Rocky Creek.

"I would not walk on that bridge. I do not walk that way," Wooten said.

Up the next hill is a drug store, and a little further lies Eisenhower Crossing, with a pair of grocery stores and a large shopping center. Wooten isn't getting to any of that without wheels.

"They do need sidewalks, just to let you know," he said.

Now a renewed effort is underway to make that happen.

SIDEWALKS CONSIDERED DECADES AGO

A plan for sidewalks for this almost mile-long stretch of road isn't new.

At the Bibb County Engineering Department, Bill Causey leafs through hanging folios of old blueprints looking for such a plan. When he finds it, he hoists it to a drafting table with a grunt.

He reads off the project description, "Northwest Parkway. Project Number 10. From Vineville to Log Cabin. Four lanes divided, curb and gutter sidewalks, storm drainage ..."

In the 1990s, Causey managed the city of Macon's Engineering Department. The Northwest Parkway project was one of a number of massive Georgia Department of Transportation projects he kept track of.

The Northwest Parkway was meant to speed people from the affluent north end of Bibb County to the southern tip and out toward Robins Air Force Base, the region's largest employer. With four lanes and a turn lane in the middle, the Northwest Parkway would have obliterated an old school now used as a Head Start center as the road cut through old neighborhoods. However, much of the opposition to the project came from outside those affected neighborhoods.

Here on Log Cabin Drive, people were ready for it.

"I don't recall any controversy about it," Causey said. "Everyone that lived on Log Cabin at the time was told you'll get sidewalks when the Northwest Parkway is built through here."

While the state promised a $300 million project with sidewalks on Log Cabin Drive, Causey pushed a smaller, locally funded plan for sidewalks for nearby Tucker Road. There, amid subdivisions and Idle Hour Country Club, he met resistance. Causey said residents were afraid sidewalks would encourage outsiders to roam the neighborhoods and bring crime.

Even given the pushback, the Tucker Road project had one feature working in its favor that the Log Cabin Project didn't.

"Some projects didn't have GDOT funding, so we had a little more flexibility," Causey said.

With the flexibility to deviate from the Georgia DOT massive multi-lane template and get by with what they had, locals got the Tucker Road project done. Today the path is popular with joggers and walkers.

Meanwhile, the political momentum for huge road projects like the Northwest Parkway stopped cold. Once Georgia took back its millions, the Log Cabin Drive piece of the project bounced from office to office in what would be a long, slow death.

That left the sidewalks on Log Cabin Drive about a mile short and about 1,000 feet from the caution light where Wooten starts his daily walk.

So why didn't the local government swing in and at least finish the sidewalks?

"I can't answer that," Causey said. "It just wasn't on anybody's radar."

'WE ARE CLOSER THAN WE HAVE EVER BEEN'

Bibb County Commissioner Al Tillman, whose district includes Log Cabin Drive, doesn't begrudge the people on Tucker Road their sidewalks.

"Not at all. I think sidewalks are needed," Tillman said. "You know people get hit on bicycles and so forth. And so you can't just have people walking in the middle of the street."

Tillman, who was elected in 2014, said Log Cabin Drive residents are justifiably eager to finally see something done after 20 some odd years of waiting. He has good news.

"Believe it or not, we are closer than we have ever been to completing this project. Or starting this project," he said.

Plans for what is now a retrofit of sidewalks and a pedestrian bridge around the narrow two-lane road are almost finalized. Tillman points to $1.5 million in special purpose local option sales tax money dedicated to it.

Though the plans are new, the money isn't. It was set aside back in 2011. Turns out this version of the Log Cabin project could have started a few years ago. Why the delay?

"I think it's leadership. You have to be honest; it's leadership," Tillman said. "What happens is the money that becomes available through SPLOST projects, you've got to have the administration and a city council and commissioners that's willing to make sure these projects go through. And that's not been happening."

Tillman points to the obvious progress on the renovation of Second Street in Macon's downtown as a SPLOST project that took political precedence.

"We get sidetracked. Or they've gotten sidetracked," he says.

Macon-Bibb County Mayor Robert Reichert could not be reached for comment about the Log Cabin Drive project. His spokesman, Chris Floore, said the sidewalk project went out for bid this week.

WAITING FOR PROGRESS

Jessie Green has lived at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Log Cabin Drive for almost 50 years.

When she came here, Fourth Avenue was dirt. Her son, Bernard, was a babe in her arms.

The caution light where Wooten starts his walk home is just outside her front door.

"That caution light was not here when I moved here," she said. "And I talked with someone about that. And they soon put up the caution light."

Green worries about the speed on the road outside as well as about the walkers. She said that over the years she has talked with politicians about making the street safe.

She would love to know what the SPLOST sidewalk project might mean for her. She knows a nearby house will be demolished.

"I don't really have a fear of losing (my) house," she said. "But I don't really want to walk out my front door and into the road either."

At this point, she just wants to see some progress. But she has doubts.

"I feel like at the rate it's been going, I might not even be alive when this is done," she said.

This story was originally published October 20, 2015 at 6:11 PM with the headline "After years of inaction, Macon's Log Cabin Drive sidewalk project closer to fruition ."