LakePoint Paves Way for Growth

July 24, 2013

"Nothing worth doing comes easy," is the attitude Earl Ehrhart takes when he assures others of the long-awaited LakePoint Sporting Community & Town Center, Ehrhart and the LakePoint team celebrated another milestone Monday receiving a green light for necessary infrastructure.

Weather permitting, work will be underway this week on a road into the south campus of the proposed 1,400-acre sports park.  The road being completed in two sections, LakePoint Parkway and Bass Pro Drive, will serve as a rerouting of Ga. Highway 293 to improve safety and traffic flow via a new intersection on Old Allatoona Road.

Ehrhart, LakePoint partner and veteran state representative, received the news Monday about necessary paperwork being formalized and readying the way for crews to mobilize.

"[Bartow County] Commissioner Steve Taylor called me a couple hours ago with some exciting news.  The Notice to Proceed on the south campus road infrastructure was issued today," Ehrhart said Monday.  "This is a major milestone in tying together all the pieces of the south campus.  What this allows us to do, is to now begin to take care of the Bass Pro Shops business model, this allows construction easements back into the Bass site.  We were on the phone with them Friday talking to their engineers and designers.  They're excited about the access and they'll be able to access their site in a couple months."

Currently, construction is underway at the site of Terminus Wake Park, a cable-pulled wakeboard park.  Terminus will be the first LakePoint attraction to open, slated to start up in September.  LakePoint still is projecting a spring 2014 open date for baseball tournaments on the south campus and Bass Pro Shops will likely be open for business in late 2014 to early 2015.

The finalization of necessary paperwork for the roadway also paves the way for work to begin in earnest for the park's first baseball fields.

"This also begins the civil engineering process for the south campus so that we can get the Perfect Game baseball fields in," Ehrhart said.  "It all starts to roll from that and we don't plan to look back."

The 1.64-mile road is expected to take seven to 10 months to construct, including additional infrastructure.  At that time, Highway 293 will be relocated to the new construction and away from the current intersection at the U.S. Highway 41 overpass.  The new Highway 293 intersection will be located about one-third of a mile west of the Pilot Travel Center on Old Allatoona Road.

The total cost of the road project is $5.2 million funded by a mixture of economic development funds and grant money from the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Article from The Daily Tribune News, by Matt Shinall