ATLANTA — With $3 million in the budget passed by the Legislature last week, construction of a visitors center at Resaca Civil War battlefield could start by the end of this year, the project’s chief engineer said.
“We’re doing as much preliminary work as we can, so when we get the money, we can start right away,” said David Freedman, chief engineer for the parks division of the Department of Natural Resources. The hope is the battlefield park will be ready to serve as Georgia’s gateway for the 150th year commemoration of the Civil War.
Mr. Freedman cautioned there are still steps that must be taken before the project near the Whitfield-Gordon county line gets the money. Those include Gov. Sonny Perdue signing the bill, and waiting for Georgia to sell a bond package.
Resaca Battlefield is seen as the starting point for the influx of heritage tourists expected to visit Georgia and its Civil War sites beginning in 2011 — the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, said John Culpepper, Civil War Commission chairman and city manager of Chickamauga.
He said that for historians, the battle is seen as the starting point of Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s 1864 campaign to take Atlanta.
About 900,000 people each year visit the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, generating about $36 million for the economy, he said.
Those numbers are expected to boom in the four years commemorating the Civil War’s milestone anniversary, Mr. Culpepper said.
He said he was also “relieved” the Legislature restored full funding of $50,000 to the Civil War Commission, which is helping small Georgia communities prepare their sites and monuments for the anniversary, as are similar groups in other southern states.
“We’re all working on it,” Mr. Culpepper said. “When studying the Civil War, most of us are walking on the same ground as our ancestors walked. ... It’s our history. It’s in our blood.”
Gov. Perdue still has to study the whole budget, but the battlefield money was part of his original budget proposal, so it’s “certainly a project he has supported and thinks is the right thing to do,” said spokesman Bert Brantley.
The battlefield’s entrance road is under construction, but Mr. Freedman said officials decided to wait for additional money before starting the design and construction of the visitors center. It should take 12 to 18 months to build once the money arrives.
After work is well under way, Mr. Freedman said engineers can decide how far the state’s money will go in work on interpretive trails throughout the battlefield.
The state money not only allows significant construction to begin, Mr. Freedman said, but will also help launch “ a real aggressive fundraising” program for the battlefield park.
