Pavement markings, accessible stalls, access aisles and fire lane work for commercial property inside the Marietta city limits and across Cobb County.
Property managers, asset managers, retail landlords, apartment and condominium boards, church and school facility staff, and Cobb County and City of Marietta facility departments buy lot striping, and the thing being bought is a defensible layout rather than fresh paint. Faded lines are a curb appeal complaint. An accessible stall measuring 92 inches wide, an access aisle that delivery drivers park in because nobody hatched it, or an accessible route that runs behind parked cars is a different category of exposure, because a Title III complaint under the Americans with Disabilities Act attaches to the property owner and the tenant, not to the contractor who reapplied the lines.
Most re-stripe bids on a Marietta shopping center quote a line count and a mobilization. A line count reproduces whatever layout is already on the ground, including the error, and the property has then paid to refresh a violation and to reset the clock on anybody noticing. Thrare Contracting measures the existing layout and compares it to the standard before quoting, so the proposal states which stalls comply, which do not, and what changes when the lot is re-laid.
Section 208.2 of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design sets the minimum from the total number of spaces in the parking facility, beginning at 1 accessible space for a facility of 1 to 25 spaces and 2 accessible spaces for 26 to 50. Table 208.2 runs as follows, quoted from the standard published by the United States Access Board.
| Total spaces in the parking facility | Minimum required accessible spaces |
|---|---|
| 1 to 25 | 1 |
| 26 to 50 | 2 |
| 51 to 75 | 3 |
| 76 to 100 | 4 |
| 101 to 150 | 5 |
| 151 to 200 | 6 |
| 201 to 300 | 7 |
| 301 to 400 | 8 |
| 401 to 500 | 9 |
| 501 to 1000 | 2 percent of total |
| 1001 and over | 20, plus 1 for each 100, or fraction thereof, over 1000 |
Two details in section 208.2 decide more Marietta lots than the table does. The first is that the count is per parking facility rather than per site: section 208.2 states that "Where more than one parking facility is provided on a site, the number of accessible spaces provided on the site shall be calculated according to the number of spaces required for each parking facility." A Cobb Parkway center with a front lot of 180 spaces and a separate rear employee lot of 40 spaces owes 6 accessible spaces in front and 2 in back, not 7 across the property. The second is the van ratio in section 208.2.4: "For every six or fraction of six parking spaces required by 208.2 to comply with 502, at least one shall be a van parking space complying with 502." A lot owing 6 accessible spaces therefore owes 1 van space, and a lot owing 7 owes 2.
Apartment communities off Roswell Street, Powder Springs Street and Franklin Gateway follow a different rule again. Section 208.2.3.2 of the standard covers resident parking beyond one space per unit: "2 percent, but no fewer than one space, of all the parking spaces not covered by 208.2.3.1 shall comply with 502." Guest and employee parking at the same community goes back to Table 208.2. A community that counted its whole lot under one table has almost certainly counted it wrong.
Section 208.3.1 then places the spaces, requiring that they sit "on the shortest accessible route from parking to an entrance complying with 206.4", and where a lot serves several accessible entrances the spaces are dispersed among them. A center that grouped every accessible stall at one end because the paint was easier there has a location problem that no amount of fresh paint corrects.
These figures are federal minimums. A local code, a state statute, an insurer or a franchise standard can require more accessible spaces than Table 208.2, and none of them can require fewer.
Section 502 of the 2010 ADA Standards fixes every dimension a striping crew controls, and each one is a number a property manager can verify with a tape measure on a Saturday morning.
Slope is the dimension that ends a striping conversation and starts a paving one. An older Marietta lot that has been overlaid twice can exceed 1:48 at the accessible stalls, because each overlay follows the existing grade and adds thickness at the crown. Paint cannot correct a grade. Thrare Contracting measures and records the slope at each accessible stall and reports a stall that fails, rather than striping a compliant looking rectangle onto non compliant ground.
No. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices does not reach the parking area itself, and the exclusion is written into the regulation that adopts the manual. 23 CFR 655.603(a) makes the MUTCD "the national standard for all traffic control devices installed on any street, highway, or bicycle trail open to public travel", then states plainly: "Parking areas, driving aisles within parking areas, and private highway-rail grade crossings are also not included in this definition."
The same paragraph is precise about what remains inside the definition, and a Marietta shopping center sits on both sides of the line. 23 CFR 655.603(a) counts as open to public travel "roads within shopping centers, airports, sports arenas, and other similar business and/or recreation facilities that are privately owned but where the public is allowed to travel without access restrictions." So the ring road through a Barrett Parkway center is inside MUTCD applicability while the stalls and the driving aisles between them are outside it.
Retroreflectivity is where the trade most often overstates the manual. Section 3A.05 of the MUTCD 11th Edition, published December 2023, requires that "a method designed to maintain retroreflectivity at or above 50 mcd/m2/lx under dry conditions shall be used for longitudinal markings on roadways with speed limits of 35 mph or greater." Paragraph 5 of that same section then lists what the requirement excludes, and the list names "D. Curb markings; E. Parking space markings". A bid that sells a private lot re-stripe on MUTCD retroreflectivity compliance is quoting a rule that reaches neither the location nor the marking type. Glass bead application is still worth specifying on a dark lot, and Thrare Contracting will quote it, as a night visibility decision rather than as a compliance obligation.
The manual supplies a color and symbol vocabulary that drivers already read, which is worth following on private property even where no rule compels it. Section 3A.03 states that "Markings shall be yellow, white, red, blue, or purple", and paragraph 6 of the same section states that "When used, blue markings shall supplement white markings for parking spaces for persons with disabilities." Blue supplements white in the manual rather than replacing it. Section 3B.22 paragraph 8 advises that the International Symbol of Accessibility parking space marking "should be placed in each parking space designated for use by persons with disabilities", and section 3B.27 requires white markings for on-street parking spaces, which is a street rule and not a private lot rule. Section 3B.18 paragraph 5 leaves special curb colors to local highway agencies, which is why red fire lane curbing is a local fire code question and gets confirmed with the authority having jurisdiction rather than assumed.
A parking lot inside the Marietta city limits sits under the City of Marietta's own ordinances, and the Official Code of Cobb County does not reach it. Section 50-181 of the Official Code of Cobb County scopes the county separate storm drainage system to conveyances owned or maintained by unincorporated Cobb County. Section 7-8-18-020 of the Marietta Code of Ordinances scopes the city system to a facility "Owned or maintained by the city", not a combined sewer, and not part of a publicly owned treatment works. Two separate systems, two separate ordinances, and one address falls under exactly one of them.
That distinction is not academic on a striping job, because Cobb County Water publishes exterior cleaning guidance that circulates widely in the trade and that guidance is written for unincorporated addresses. Quoting it at a Marietta Square property as the governing requirement misstates the authority. The practical instruction to a crew does not change: contain the water either way. The ordinance cited on the closeout paperwork does change, and a compliance file is only as good as the citation in it.
Thrare Contracting is based in Atlanta at 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350, and serves Marietta and Cobb County as a service area. The company confirms the governing jurisdiction for each address at quoting rather than applying one metro wide assumption, because Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell and Powder Springs each run their own ordinance inside Cobb County.
Not into a storm drain. Section 7-8-18-030(A) of the Marietta Code of Ordinances states that "No person shall throw, drain, or otherwise discharge, cause, or allow others under its control to throw, drain, or otherwise discharge into the municipal separate storm sewer system any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater." A striping job that degreases oil spots or washes the surface before painting produces exactly the material that definition captures.
Section 7-8-18-020 of the same article defines pollutant to expressly include "detergents (biodegradable or otherwise); degreasers; cleaning chemicals", and defines an illegal connection to include any conveyance allowing "any nonstormwater discharge including sewage, process wastewater, and wash water to enter the storm drain system." The exemptions the public works director may allow are a closed list covering water line flushing by a government agency, potable water sources, landscape irrigation, diverted stream flows, rising ground water, ground water infiltration, uncontaminated pumped ground water, foundation and footing drains, crawl space pumps, air conditioning condensation, springs, natural riparian and wetland flows, other water containing no pollutants, and firefighting. Commercial wash water does not appear on that list.
No penalty figure appears on this page. Marietta's ordinance carries its own enforcement provisions, the amounts depend on the enforcement route taken, and a striping contractor quoting a dollar figure at a property manager is repeating trade folklore rather than the code.
Striping is night work, because a stall cannot be laid out or painted with a car parked in it, and night work in Marietta runs into a noise limit that is measured at the neighbor's property line rather than at the lot being worked. The City of Marietta publishes its sound level limits by receiving property as follows.
| Receiving property | 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. | 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial, Business, Residential, Public Space, Institutional, or Noise-Sensitive Facility | 65 dBA, 84 dBC | 60 dBA, 79 dBC |
| Industrial or Manufacturing | 70 dBA, 89 dBC | 70 dBA, 89 dBC |
The City of Marietta states the measurement point directly: "Sound level readings will be measured at or within the real property line of the receiving property." A retail strip zoned commercial that backs onto houses is therefore judged against the residential receiving limit of 60 dBA and 79 dBC after 11 p.m., not against a commercial allowance, because the receiving property is the one that counts. Marietta's page does not print an ordinance section number alongside that table, so the limits are cited here to the City of Marietta noise ordinance page rather than to a numbered code section.
Sequencing follows from the table rather than from preference. Blowers, rotary brooms and grinders are the loud operations on a striping job, so those run before 11 p.m. where a residential receiving property is within earshot. Layout, taping, stencil placement and paint application are quiet and run through the overnight window. Where a property insists on a window that puts loud work after 11 p.m. next to houses, Thrare Contracting says so at quoting rather than discovering it when a resident calls code enforcement at 1 a.m.
The order matters more than the equipment, because every step that follows an unmeasured layout inherits its errors. Thrare Contracting runs a lot in eight steps.
Cure and open-to-traffic times come from the manufacturer data sheet for the specific product and the conditions on the night, not from a number printed on a website. Temperature, humidity and surface moisture all move that number, which is why no cure time is printed on this page. Thrare Contracting states the expected open time for the actual product before the crew mobilizes.
Every striping proposal from Thrare Contracting names both halves, because the disputes on this trade come from the second half. No price appears on this page: a striping number follows a site measurement, since stall count, condition, removal quantity and the size of the work window each move it.
Anything found during measurement that falls outside the striping scope goes on the punch list with a photograph rather than being absorbed quietly or invoiced as a surprise.
Cobb County Procurement Services publishes both the registration steps and the dollar thresholds that decide how a striping job is solicited. Cobb County Procurement Services states that "All purchases of goods and/or services estimated to be in excess of $50,000.00 are advertised by the Cobb County Procurement Services Department and in the Marietta Daily Journal", that responses to quotation requests "greater than $10,000 but less than $50,000 must be submitted in writing", and that quotation requests under $10,000.00 "may be responded to verbally but we encourage written responses". Registration is not complete until a W-9 reaches vendor.enrollment@cobbcounty.gov, and the county adds that a vendor "will not be activated in the system until verbal verification is completed."
Those thresholds belong to Cobb County. They are not Georgia thresholds, they are not federal thresholds, and they are not the City of Marietta's, which runs its own purchasing for a city owned lot. Cobb County also states that "All vendors, contractors and subcontractors are required to provide proof of eligibility of their employees to work in the United States upon request."
Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8, and is enrolled in E-Verify. Rare Earth Ltd does not hold HUBZone certification, 8(a) certification or SOC 2 attestation and does not represent otherwise. The one verified past performance figure the company publishes is $198,000 in recycled aggregate supplied to Fulton County Public Works.
Each city page carries what is genuinely local to that jurisdiction, and the shared company policy on layout method, scope and documentation sits on one hub page rather than being restated everywhere.
A parking facility of 120 spaces owes 5 accessible spaces under Table 208.2 of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, which sets 5 for the 101 to 150 range, and at least 1 of those 5 must be a van space under section 208.2.4. If the property has a second, separate lot, that lot is counted on its own, because section 208.2 calculates the required number for each parking facility rather than for the site as a whole.
A re-stripe that reproduces a non compliant layout leaves the property in the same position it started in, and repainting is a poor moment to preserve an error, since the layout is already being set. Thrare Contracting measures every accessible stall and aisle against sections 502.1 through 502.7 before quoting and states in the proposal which stalls comply, which can be corrected by layout alone, and which need paving or civil work that falls outside a striping scope. Whether a given property is legally obligated to alter an existing lot is a question for the property's own counsel, not for a striping contractor.
Thrare Contracting is based in Atlanta at 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350, and serves Marietta and the rest of Cobb County as a service area. The company confirms which jurisdiction governs each address at quoting, because Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell and Powder Springs each run ordinances of their own inside Cobb County and the Official Code of Cobb County reaches only unincorporated addresses.
No. 23 CFR 655.603(a) states that "Parking areas, driving aisles within parking areas, and private highway-rail grade crossings are also not included in this definition" of a facility open to public travel, so the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices does not reach a private lot's stalls. Section 3A.05 of the MUTCD 11th Edition, which sets 50 mcd/m2/lx for longitudinal markings on roadways posted at 35 mph or greater, lists curb markings and parking space markings among the markings its paragraph 5 excludes. Glass beads remain worth specifying on a dark lot as a night visibility decision.
Overnight work is possible, and the loud portion of it gets sequenced before 11 p.m. The City of Marietta sets 60 dBA and 79 dBC from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. for a residential, commercial, institutional or noise-sensitive receiving property, against 65 dBA and 84 dBC during the day, and states that "Sound level readings will be measured at or within the real property line of the receiving property." A commercially zoned lot backing onto houses is therefore judged at the houses. Blowers, brooms and grinders run before the 11 p.m. threshold, and layout, taping and paint application run through the overnight window.
Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8, and is enrolled in E-Verify. Rare Earth Ltd does not hold HUBZone certification, 8(a) certification or SOC 2 attestation and does not represent otherwise. Cobb County Procurement Services requires a completed W-9 emailed to vendor.enrollment@cobbcounty.gov before a vendor application is activated, and requires proof of employee work eligibility upon request.
Send the property address, the parking count by lot, and the window when the lot can be emptied.