Underpass Earns Engineering Accolades

Saturday, the City of Kennesaw’s downtown pedestrian underpass received the prestigious State Engineering Excellence Award for 2010 for its demonstration of engineering merit and ingenuity.

The annual Engineering Excellence design competition by the Georgia Engineering Alliance is held in conjunction with Engineers Week. This year, the underpass was among five winners honored during a banquet at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center.

Kennesaw City Manager Steve Kennedy, David Hardegree of the city’s engineering firm MACTEC, and Scott Caples, design manager at URS Corporation Atlanta, were on hand to receive the award.

The underpass project consists of a 115-foot lighted tunnel connecting Main Street with the historic Depot and . The walkway includes a stone mural of the Civil War locomotive, The General, along with a series of ceramic panels depicting the story of the Great Locomotive Chase as represented through artwork by Wilbur Kurtz.

The project, funded primarily with federal and state transportation funds, is part of the Kennesaw Downtown Development Authority’s master plan for downtown revitalization.