Georgia 4, February 21, 2024

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Each span took approximately eight hours to slide into place.

Construction crews from C.W. Matthews and Infrastructure Consulting & Engineering PLLC reached a crucial milestone on one of the more significant construction projects in the state.

During the first week of February, crews began executing the beginning of a new deck for the new Kimball Bridge Road bridge, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Each span took approximately eight hours to slide into place.

This work is part of the GDOT’s $55 million SR 400 Bridge Replacements project — taking place in Fulton County — where the Kimball Bridge Road, Pitts Road and Roberts Drive bridges over SR 400 are being replaced.

Contractors were awarded the contract in May 2022 and work is expected to be completed between April and June of 2024.

“The new bridges will provide operational and local

road improvements in advance of the major express lanes construction,” said Georgia DOT Design-Build Project Manager Rick O’Hara.

The Pitts Road, Roberts Drive and Kimball Bridge Road bridges over SR 400 — which are more than 50 years old and nearing their end of lives — are being replaced and widened to accommodate the future express lanes along SR 400, according to project details. The new bridges will be replaced with taller, wider structures which will feature multiuse paths and sidewalks.

• The Kimball Road Bridge will be replaced with a raised profile, increased from two to four lanes with a median, a multi-use path on the north side and a sidewalk on the south side. There is a local agreement with the city of Alpharetta for bridge aesthetics.

• The Pitts Road Bridge is being replaced and widened with a raised profile to allow for a 12-ft. see BRIDGE page 6

The old Kimball Bridge Road bridge was demolished in June 2023.

Page 2 • February 21, 2024 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • Georgia State Supplement • Construction Equipment Guide

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Construction Equipment Guide • Georgia State Supplement • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • February 21, 2024 • Page 3

Page 4 • February 21, 2024 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • Georgia State Supplement • Construction Equipment Guide

Port of Savannah Overpass Keeps Trucks Out of Neighborhoods Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) announced plans Feb. 2 to invest $29 million in an overpass linking the Port of Savannah’s Ocean Terminal to U.S. Highway 17 in order to keep terminal truck traffic from impacting local neighborhoods.

In addition, officials expect the highway structure will increase the port’s efficiency in handling growing cargo volumes.

The project is the result of a joint collaboration involving GPA, the city of Savannah and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). The initiative, led by GPA, started with talking to residents in the communities near Ocean Terminal and hearing their concerns about the impact of increased truck traffic on neighborhood streets.

The proposed overpass will enable trucks to directly access U.S. 17 rather than using Louisville Road and other local streets to enter the highway.

GPA will build the overpass and roadway entrance to U.S. 17, according to GDOT specs, for completion in 2026. Once it is finished, the roadway will then be turned over to the state transportation agency for future maintenance and repair.

“This is a port project in the best interest of the community,” said Griff Lynch, president and CEO of GPA. “We want to keep trucks off local neighborhood roads for safety and sustainability reasons.”

He and other Georgia Ports executives have been in contact with residents in the Brickyard area of Savannah near the port to hear their concerns firsthand.

In addition to the overpass and entrance ramp construction to U.S. 17, GPA also will build a dedicated exit ramp from

the highway as well as a new truck-only entrance road into Ocean Terminal designed for enhanced safety and traffic operations for the traveling public.

future supply chain requirements.

The Peach State’s ports and inland terminals support more than 561,000 jobs annually, contributing $33 billion in income, $140 billion in revenue, and $3.8 billion in state and local taxes to Georgia’s economy.

As part of GPA’s community engagement efforts, the agency has instituted plans to donate $6 million to communities located near the Port of Savannah to support a multiyear, local workforce housing initiative. 

Port of Savannah Experiencing Substantial Growth Spurt The Port of Savannah’s 200-acre Ocean Terminal is one of the busiest container ports on the East Coast. Ocean Terminal and the port’s Garden City Terminal handle about 2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo annually.

In December, Georgia Ports announced details of a $4.5 billion expansion plan that includes the Garden City Terminal West, Blue Ridge Connector and improvements to Berth 1 at the Garden City Terminal.

With these expansions and renovations, GPA expects container capacity at the Port of Savannah to grow by approximately 3.5 million TEUs per year, with annual capacity reaching 10 million TEUs by 2026.

The agency also anticipates investing $4.2 billion in the next 10 years as part of its comprehensive Georgia Ports photo plan to expand cargo handling The Georgia Ports Authority will construct the overpass and roadway capabilities at its ports to support entrance to U.S. 17 according to GDOT specs and be completed in 2026.

UGA Athletics Program Plans to Build More New Facilities Money has been pouring into the University of Georgia’s Athletic Association coffers for some time, and it is pouring out as well.

The association’s board of directors, at its winter meeting Jan. 31 at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education in Athens, received a facilities and development report that could make a billionaire blush.

Already in the midst of nearly $200 million worth of ongoing construction projects, the Bulldogs are poised to add more, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The menu of new projects follows the new $80 million football operations building that was added to the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall complex just a few years ago.

Construction on a new outdoor track-andfield facility is set to start this summer at a location off South Milledge Avenue.

Fundraising for the effort is well under way, according to UGA Athletic Director Josh Brooks, but he will not reveal how much has been raised or what the total cost of the project will be.

However, it is not expected to be cheap, as tons of groundwork will need to be done to level out the area on university land where the track will be built.

“This is a project I’m very passionate

about,” said Brooks, who was the track-andfield sport administrator before he became the UGA’s athletic director. “This isn’t going to be the Oregon track, although I’d love to build the Oregon track, but this is going to be an extremely functional track facility that can support [Southeastern Conference] and regional track meets as well as day-to-day practice needs.”

Eventually, a funding request will be submitted to the athletic board, presumably before the end-of-year meeting in late May at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge on Lake Oconee.

The outdoor track will be Phase I of what is hoped to be a two-phase project that also will introduce an adjacent indoor track-andfield facility on land to the north that has already been acquired for that purpose.

The hope is that the Bulldogs will be able to host regional and national track competitions, something its current facilities cannot accommodate. Those facilities were promised to men’s and women’s track Coach Caryl Smith Gilbert when she came to Georgia from the University of Southern California in the summer of 2021.

A new track also means that the school’s Spec Towns Track, which has been at its current location parallel to Lumpkin Street since 1964, will be demolished. In its place, Kirby

Smart, UGA’s head football coach, is expected to get the two additional practice fields he has long coveted for his program.

The Bulldogs have been limited to a pair of outdoor fields — one is only 80 yards long — since the new 100-yd., artificial turf field inside the Payne Indoor Facility football facility was completed in 2021.

The Journal-Constitution noted that the Georgia athletics department currently has at least $178.7 million worth of construction projects actively under way on campus.

The Bulldogs are well into Phase 2 of the $68.5 million Sanford Stadium improvement project. After expanding the football stadium’s south-side concourses and adding a plaza and hundreds of restroom facilities, the university is converting the Dan Magill Press Box into a premium-seating space for donors as well as adding a tower in the southwest corner that will accommodate media and add limited auxiliary seating areas.

Other ongoing UGA athletics projects include: • Wrapping up work on Phase I of a twopart, $45 million construction of the school’s baseball stadium, dubbed the “Foley Field Enabling Project.”

• The Jack Turner softball complex, which is in the midst of getting a $38.5 addition.

• The soon-to-be-completed $26.7 million effort to add a new six-court, indoor tennis facility at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex.

• Renovating the interior of a portion of Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall and converting it into what will be known as the Circle of Champions rotunda. That construction budget was set at $2 million.

In addition, Georgia also has spent at least $4 million on its recent refurbishment of Stegeman Coliseum, home to UGA’s basketball and gymnastic squads.

That work, however, was just “Phase 1A” of the “Stegeman Coliseum Master Plan and Renovation,” according to the Atlanta news source. Office spaces within the arena are being renovated for the first time since 2007, repairs were made to the ceiling, the entire interior was painted black, a new weight room and training room has been built, and plans call for a giant scoreboard to eventually be added.

Since the building is owned by the university and shared with the Bulldogs athletic department, some of the costs are being shared.

“We want to put an emphasis on improving things that directly impact our studentathletes’ lives,” Brooks told the newspaper. 

Construction Equipment Guide • Georgia State Supplement • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • February 21, 2024 • Page 5

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Page 6 • February 21, 2024 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • Georgia State Supplement • Construction Equipment Guide

Contractors were awarded the contract in May 2022 and work is expected to be completed between April and June 2024.

The SR 400 Bridge Replacement Project will see a new Kimball Bridge Road, Pitts Road and Roberts Drive bridges constructed over SR 400.

Early in February, construction crews began working on a new deck for the new Kimball Bridge Road bridge, part of the $55 million SR 400 Bridge Replacements project in Fulton County.

Bridge Replacement Reaches Milestone BRIDGE from page 1

multi-use path on the south side, a sidewalk on the north side, as well as interior barrier walls on both the north and south sides separating pedestrians from the two travel lanes. There is a local agreement with the city of Sandy Springs for bridge aesthetics.

• The Roberts Drive Bridge will undergo a similar reconstruction, with an interior barrier wall on the south side separating pedestrians from the travel lanes.

This project is impacting traffic. The Kimball Bridge Road bridge was closed to traffic on May 8, 2023, and the

Pitts Road bridge was closed to traffic on June 12, 2023.

Detours have been established until the bridges re-open in late April 2024.

The Roberts Drive bridge is under construction with the new structure being built alongside the existing structure, with completion expected on May 22, 2024.

The design-build project “was pulled forward as part of the phased delivery of the planned SR 400 Express Lanes,” stated the project web page.  (All photos courtesy of Georgia Department of Transportation.)

Bridges are being replaced and widened to accommodate the future express lanes along SR 400. The new bridges will be replaced with taller, wider structures, which will feature multiuse paths and sidewalks.

Jackson County Recognizes Takeuchi-US as Top Business On Feb. 1, 2024, at the Jefferson Civic Center, the Jackson County (GA) Area Chamber of Commerce hosted its Annual Dinner and Awards Night where it named Takeuchi-US its Large Business of the Year.

“We’re incredibly honored to receive this award on behalf of our amazing employees,” said Jeff Stewart, president of Takeuchi-US. “We have a wonderful group of individuals here who put in their best effort, day in and day out. They are at the heart of everything we do, and we’re able to continue building the Takeuchi brand here in North America

and expanding our market share in the compact equipment industry because of their hard work.”

The Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce’s event celebrates the accomplishments of the previous year and sets the tone for a successful year to come. At this event, the chamber honors those individuals, companies and organizations who have helped enhance local educational systems, healthcare, public service and business communities.

The chamber also uses this event as an

The Jackson County (GA) Area Chamber of Commerce named Takeuchi-US its Large Business of the Year.

opportunity to thank its members for their support of its successful events and programs over the past year.

The Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce chose Takeuchi-US for this honor based on several criteria, including industry awards and leadership; positive impact on the local business community; innovation of leading-edge technology, services and products; support of the chamber’s activities; and dedication to improving Jackson County’s quality of life.

“Takeuchi has been an outstanding member of the Jackson County business community for years,” said Jim Shaw, president of the Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce. “Not only have they brought jobs and made a positive economic impact here, but they’ve also contributed in other ways, including their ‘Takeuchi Gives’ program. Through this program, they’ve donated machines, engines, gifts, and holiday meals, providing students with real-life experiences and less fortunate neighbors with food for their holiday celebrations.

We’re pleased to present them with this welldeserved award.”

For more information, visit jacksoncountyga.com and takeuchi-us.com.  (Photos courtesy of Takeuchi.)

Jeff Stewart, president of Takeuchi-US

Construction Equipment Guide • Georgia State Supplement • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • February 21, 2024 • Page 7

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Page 8 • February 21, 2024 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • Georgia State Supplement • Construction Equipment Guide