You may think that because the City Commission just approved an “agreement” with the Georgia Department of Transportation at their meeting last night – which will provide $1,415,867 in federal funding (through the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Centers Initiative) for the North McDonough streetscape improvements – that you might see bulldozers and men decked out in orange down by the high school any day now.

And you would be so very wrong.

According to Decatur Deputy City Manager Hugh Saxon, construction on the project will not begin for 4-7 years.

And it’s not for a lack of trying by the city.  They’ve already hired a design firm (which is being paid for with MARTA “off-set” funding) – the same design firm that’s doing the railroad crossing designs – and have held multiple meetings with residents about what they want to see along North McDonough in the future.

The hold up is due to just one adjective in my first sentence: “federal”.  As Mr. Saxon explained to the City Commission last night, because this is a federally funded project, the city will be required to jump through countless hoops (a full environmental review that was mentioned last night) over the next few YEARS in order to finally get the money in hand to pay for the physical improvements.

So, if you have kids in high school, you might want to break the news that they probably will never walk along wider sidewalks up to the Square before they graduate.  HOWVER, if you’ve got a 7 year-old, get that kid jazzed because in 7 years time “Streetscapes baby!”.