By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

It’s not a terribly long stretch of road, but the Mimosa Extension could prove to be a valuable addition to Roswell.

Located behind Canton Street, the extension does as its name implies: it extends Mimosa Street from Magnolia Street, where it used to dead-end, through to Webb Street, which is further up Canton St. With additional parking spaces and bike paths, the hope is that it will help alleviate some of the historic district’s traffic and parking problems.

“We took an old field that had very little value to it and created an amenity to our city,” said Transportation Director Steve Acenbrak.

The field was the property of George Polatty Jr. and his family. His father, George Polatty Sr., had been Roswell’s city attorney for nearly 50 years and his mother, Rose, had, according to Mayor Jere Wood, “raised most of the kids in Roswell to be good citizens.” In honor of the Polatty’s, a bench was set up underneath two large oak trees on the property beside the road.

The road has been slated for development for a long time. According to Acenbrak and Wood, it has been at least 10 years in the making. When the storm drainage system that was in that field failed some years ago, with a protective fence needing erecting, the city knew it had to act.

Now that it is complete, the Mimosa Extension has the distinction of being Roswell’s very first “complete street.” A complete street in one which is designed from the beginning to be accessible to people using all kinds of transportation. The road is obviously for vehicles; the sidewalk is for pedestrians; bike lanes are on either side of the road. Roswell was the first city in Georgia to develop a “complete street” policy and the idea is catching on throughout the country.

“Isn’t this absolutely exciting?” asked Becky Wynn, transportation liaison on the City Council. “This will be phenomenal to Canton Street.”

To show just how phenomenal the road was, in the middle of the ribbon cutting ceremony, a lost vehicle slowly drove up the road, carefully avoiding the podium and gathered speakers – actually driving through a tent that was set up – before being halted by city workers and the driver told that the road was actually closed for the day. Apparently the “road closed” markers were not clear enough signals.