Progress continues to widen Georgia 515/US 76 between Blairsville and Young Harris to four lanes, with the last of three construction phases having been awarded last week by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Construction company AIS Infrastructure announced Jan. 29 that the state had accepted its bid, resulting in a successful contract to build Phase III of the massive project. Phase III will stretch from Young Harris Street inside Blairsville city limits to Earl Shelton Road in Union County.
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“This $110,976,976 contract involves the widening and reconstruction of approximately 4.39 miles of roadway, transforming the existing three-lane rural section into a four-lane divided rural roadway with a 32-foot grassed depressed median,” AIS Infrastructure said.
Continuing, “Within the Blairsville city limits, our team will also design and construct a five-lane urban roadway with sidewalks, three special-design retaining walls, and incorporate trout stream restoration efforts.
“This project is set for completion by Nov. 30, 2027, and reflects our continued commitment to delivering innovative infrastructure solutions.”
When AIS Infrastructure begins work, all three phases of the project will finally be under construction, with a total project completion estimate of 2028 provided previously by GDOT.
The project has been on the books since 1999, initially consisting of a single construction phase to both straighten and widen roughly 8.5 miles of the highway between Blairsville and Young Harris city limits.
After bids came back too high in 2023, GDOT divided the project into three phases to bid out separately, with the same ultimate goal for the roadway, that is, to future-proof the corridor by reducing both traffic congestion and crash frequency.
Phase I is about 46% complete and will result in a two-lane rural bypass of 1.25 miles in length running around the west side of Downtown Young Harris, beginning with a roundabout at Brasstown Creek Road and ending with a second roundabout at Timberline Drive.
GDOT has estimated the bypass should be done by September 2026, but the project was put on hold last summer after Native American petroglyphs were disturbed during construction following an apparent miscommunication about the presence of the ancient stone carvings.
Fortunately, the state has arrived at a resolution and has set a meeting with the appropriate tribal authorities to discuss the issue on-site this Friday, according to GDOT District 1 Communications Officer Nathan Johnston.
The meeting will include archaeological planning to ensure this does not recur, and Phase I construction is expected to resume within weeks.
Also last summer, the state’s subcontractor, C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., damaged two water lines belonging to Young Harris during bypass construction, Mayor Andrea Gibby said, putting the city in a position of having to ask GDOT to pay $2,493 to cover repairs and water loss.
Gibby said the state claimed that “the insured is not the proximate cause of this accident or loss” – a contention disputed by the city.
And this issue has been resolved, too, as C.W. Matthews decided last month to pay the amount requested from the state in a spirit of cooperation with the city.
Phase II of the project encompasses the 3.2 miles of Georgia 515 between Earl Shelton Road in Union County and Sampson Road in Young Harris, currently listed by GDOT as 7.82% complete.
GDOT greenlit Phase II for construction by Vertical Earth Inc. last May, but the company had to wait until the fall to begin roadside clearing because of federal regulations around protected bat species that could possibly roost in the trees.
Estimated to be done by August 2027, Phase II will feature straightening and widening of 515 to a four-lane divided highway with a 32-foot depressed median and 10-foot shoulder, to include a 6-foot paved shoulder to accommodate bikes from both directions.
A new bridge is being built across Brasstown Creek at the county line, parallel to the existing bridge. Traffic will eventually be diverted onto the new bridge, at which point the old bridge will be demolished and replaced with another new bridge to form twin bridges over the creek.
As Phase II gets further along, GDOT will implement eight detours to tie sideroads back into the highway.
On top of the tens of millions of dollars in combined right-of-way and engineering costs, the three construction phases of the project figure to a hefty sum: Phase I, $26,916.958; Phase II, $64,085,296; and Phase III, more than $110 million, according to GDOT.
