Rome wasn’t built in a day, thank goodness
As I look at some of the grand plans for Rome that have surfaced in the last 12 to 18 months, I am reminded that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Ancient Rome, Italy, or modern Rome, Georgia.
But unless I’m involved in wildlife photography, patience is absolutely not one of my virtues and I am extremely anxious to see how all of the local plans are going to pan out.
To begin with, plans for between 3,000 and 4,000 new residential units are on the books. From West Third Avenue to the triangle at North Fifth Avenue and Martha Berry Boulevard, to the developments off Chulio Road and all points in between — somewhere north of 3,000 new residential units seems like a massive number.
Just this week, the Rome-Floyd County Planning Commission gave its blessing to a pair of projects within the city limits that could add another 1,400 units. One of those projects is at the corner of the bypass and U.S. 411 and the other is off Dodd Boulevard.
I hope it’s not a situation where Rome gets overbuilt.
I am one who has always taken a regional approach to just about everything and I am mindful that, while things are beginning to mushroom in Rome and Floyd County, similar development is happening in adjacent communities. I can point to five fairly large residential developments that are ALREADY underway in nearby Adairsville. Cartersville and Calhoun have a bunch of projects in the works. I will confess that I don’t get up to Summerville or down to Cedartown much, so I am not as aware of what might be happening in those communities.
Suffice to say, though, that the RomeCartersville-Calhoun triangle is rapidly approaching massive growth mode.
I still wonder where all the people are going to be coming from, but I welcome them to our beautiful city.
I know that a mass migration from the north and west has taken place over the course of the last two decades and there is every indication that will continue. The South is definitely the place to be. Job growth in Rome has been steady if not spectacular. It has been incremental, but with two good-sized speculative industrial buildings going up in the Shannon area, we could see some significant numbers of new jobs added to the inventory soon.
The availability of the old Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital property offers a chance for a large company to find a home in Rome that has both good road and rail access. The planning commission gave its blessing to the rezoning of the hospital property earlier this week.
But none of this is happening overnight, which is good, because the growth that is coming is going to spur additional challenges relative primarily to transportation.
Between 3,000 and 5,000 new homes means that between 3,000 and 10,000 new automobiles are going to be on our roads every day. They are going to be trying to make left turns across Martha Berry, Shorter and Turner McCall, which are virtually impossible right now.
We’re going to be seeing work on Second Avenue and the Turner McCall bridge over the Etowah River in the not to distant future. Imagine if you will the challenges those projects will represent. And if the work doesn’t get done any quicker than the Ga. 140 widening north of Rome, none of us will live to see it.
Broad Street has been the heart of Rome and, yes, Floyd County for a long time. As I have moved around in my life, I’ve witnessed cities grow around their bypass system. We haven’t really seen that in Rome.
There’s been some growth along Ga. 1 Loop between Ga. 53 and Martha Berry Boulevard, but everything west of that is simply related to the fact that somebody decided to funnel our bypass into and through the heart of West Rome and Garden Lakes. West of Martha Berry it is a misnomer to refer to the highway as a bypass, or even a loop.
The bypass east of Ga. 53 is a lot of rolling hills until you get to Grizzard Park near the Etowah River. Any effort to develop that land will require an awful lot of earth moving.
I’m sure most of you readers are familiar with the phrase “growing pains.” I suspect that Rome and Floyd County are likely to experience some of those pains over the next decade. Yes, it’s going to take close to a decade for many of these proposed developments to be built out, but let’s hope that city and county leaders can work with the developers who are showing renewed interest in our city.
When I first moved to Rome in 1984, it was considered the hub of Northwest Georgia. In recent years, much of the growth has shifted to the east, along the I-75 corridor, and that is completely understandable.
If we can get all of this new stuff right, Rome can easily regain its rightful position of prominence across the region.