Pavement markings, accessible stalls, access aisles, fire lane work and a written layout record for commercial property inside the City of Roswell and across north Fulton.
A repaint carries the existing geometry forward, including whatever is wrong with it. The Americans with Disabilities Act places the obligation on the entity that owns or operates the facility, so an accessible stall that measures short, an access aisle that delivery drivers park across because nobody hatched it, and an accessible route that runs behind parked cars all stay with the property and its tenants after the striping crew has loaded up and gone. The contractor who reapplied the lines is not the party a complaint names.
Most striping bids on a Holcomb Bridge Road center price a line count and a mobilization. A line count is a promise to reproduce what is already on the ground, and a property that buys one has paid to refresh a defect and to restart the clock on anybody noticing it. Thrare Contracting measures the lot against the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design before pricing, so the proposal states which stalls hold the standard, which are correctable by layout alone, and which need paving or civil work that no striping scope covers.
Roswell lots reach a striping crew from six directions, and the reason matters because it decides how much of the layout is genuinely open for change.
Section 208.2 of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design takes the count from the number of spaces in each parking facility rather than from the property total. 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", and the advisory to that section explains the word choice: "The term 'parking facility' is used Section 208.2 instead of the term 'parking lot' so that it is clear that both parking lots and parking structures are required to comply with this section." A Crossville Road property with a 180 space customer lot and a separate 40 space employee lot behind the building runs the table twice and owes 6 spaces in one and 2 in the other.
Van spaces come out of that number rather than being added to it. Section 208.2.4 requires that "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." The arithmetic below applies Table 208.2 and section 208.2.4 to lot sizes common in Roswell, and every figure in it is a minimum that a local code, a state requirement, an insurer or a franchise standard is free to exceed.
| Spaces in that one lot | Accessible spaces owed | Van spaces within that number |
|---|---|---|
| 18 | 1 | 1 |
| 44 | 2 | 1 |
| 88 | 4 | 1 |
| 140 | 5 | 1 |
| 210 | 7 | 2 |
| 320 | 8 | 2 |
| 600 | 12, at 2 percent of the total | 2 |
Apartment and condominium communities along Alpharetta Highway and Old Alabama Road answer to a second rule as well. Section 208.2.3.2 covers resident parking beyond one space per unit and requires that "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 that same community returns to Table 208.2. A community that ran its entire lot through one rule has almost certainly produced the wrong number.
Placement is a requirement, not a convenience. Section 208.3.1 puts accessible spaces "on the shortest accessible route from parking to an entrance complying with 206.4", and disperses them among accessible entrances where a building has more than one. Grouping every accessible stall at the end of the lot where the paint went on easiest is a location defect that fresh paint cannot repair.
Two exceptions in section 216.5 remove the identification sign rather than the space. Exception 1 applies "Where a total of four or fewer parking spaces, including accessible parking spaces, are provided on a site", and Exception 2 applies "In residential facilities, where parking spaces are assigned to specific residential dwelling units". Neither exception reduces a count and neither one relaxes a dimension.
Every dimension a striping crew has any control over is written down in section 502 of the 2010 ADA Standards, and each one is checkable on a Saturday morning by anybody holding a tape and a level. None of the figures below involve an opinion.
Slope is the measurement that ends a paint conversation and starts a paving one. A Roswell lot that has been overlaid twice can exceed 2.08 percent at the accessible stalls, because each overlay follows the grade underneath it and thickens toward the crown. Thrare Contracting records a slope reading at every accessible stall and reports the stalls that fail, rather than laying a compliant looking rectangle onto ground that is not.
No, and the exclusion is written into the regulation that adopts the manual rather than being an interpretation of it. 23 CFR 655.603(a) makes the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices "the national standard for all traffic control devices installed on any street, highway, or bicycle trail open to public travel", and then states: "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 stays inside the definition, and one Roswell shopping center sits on both sides of the line at once. 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." The circulation road running through a Mansell Road center is therefore inside MUTCD applicability, while the stalls and the driving aisles between them are outside it. A page that flattens that into "the MUTCD does not apply to shopping centers" has overstated the exclusion in the other direction.
Retroreflectivity is where the striping trade most reliably oversells the manual to a property manager. Section 3A.05 of the MUTCD 11th Edition, published December 2023 by the Federal Highway Administration, 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 item D is curb markings and item E is parking space markings. So a proposal that sells a private Roswell lot re-stripe as MUTCD retroreflectivity compliance is citing a rule that reaches neither the location nor the marking type. Glass beads are still worth specifying on a dark lot with poor pole coverage, and Thrare Contracting quotes them as a night visibility decision that the property makes, never as an obligation the property is under.
What the manual does supply for a private lot is a color and symbol vocabulary drivers already read, which is worth following where no rule compels it. Section 3A.03 sets the marking colors as yellow, white, red, blue or purple, and its paragraph 6 states that "When used, blue markings shall supplement white markings for parking spaces for persons with disabilities", so blue supplements white rather than replacing it. Section 3B.22 paragraph 8 advises that the International Symbol of Accessibility pavement marking "should be placed in each parking space designated for use by persons with disabilities". Section 3B.27 requires white for on-street parking space markings, 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 exactly why red fire lane curbing and its legend get confirmed with the Roswell Fire Department as the authority having jurisdiction instead of assumed from a neighboring county's practice.
The City of Roswell's own program reaches a lot inside the Roswell city limits, and Fulton County's stormwater program does not. Fulton County Government states the boundary in its own words: "The purpose of the Stormwater Management Program is to manage the surface water resources of unincorporated Fulton County, including administration, maintenance, operations, regulation, and enforcement. For all other areas of the County, stormwater management is the responsibility of the individual cities."
That distinction decides which document belongs in a closeout file. County guidance on exterior cleaning circulates widely in the trade and gets quoted at incorporated addresses, where it is not the governing authority. The instruction to a crew does not change, because containment is containment. The citation on the paperwork does change, and a compliance file is worth exactly as much as the citation inside it.
The City of Roswell describes its own obligation through the regional and federal programs it sits inside: "The City of Roswell is part of the 15-County Metro North Georgia Planning District (MNGWPD). As part of these requirements, along with the Clean Water Act regulation for the NPDES Phase I Permit, the City is required to undertake certain activities each year to protect our streams." Among the measures the City lists that it must manage and address are "Illicit discharge detection and elimination", "Construction site runoff control and post-construction runoff control", "Litter control", and "Drainage systems operation and maintenance".
Thrare Contracting works out of 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350, and covers Roswell and the rest of north Fulton from there as a service area. Which authority governs a given lot gets checked address by address at quoting time. Inside Fulton County alone, Roswell, Alpharetta, Milton, Johns Creek, Sandy Springs and Mountain Park each administer programs of their own, and one metro-wide assumption is wrong somewhere.
The City of Roswell charges a stormwater utility fee computed from impervious surface, and a parking lot is impervious surface. The City states that it "has utilized a stormwater utility fee since 2011 to finance the replacement and repair of the City's aging stormwater infrastructure", that the fee "is based on the amount of impervious surface area on each developed property in the City", and that "Commercial properties will receive a bill based on their actual impervious surface area."
The rate matters less than the formula behind it. In the City of Roswell stormwater fee table, the non-residential and commercial monthly figure as of July 1, 2024 is $5.99, and the table footnote states how that figure is applied: "Rate calculated by multiplying total amount of impervious surface times the monthly rate divided by 4,100 square feet." So $5.99 is a rate per 4,100 square feet per month rather than a flat bill. Applying the City's own formula to a 90,000 square foot impervious footprint gives roughly 22 billing units and about $131 a month, and that arithmetic is worked here from the published formula rather than quoted from a bill.
Two consequences follow for a striping decision. Re-marking a lot changes the lines and not the impervious area, so a re-stripe does not move the stormwater bill. Adding pavement does move it, which is why a charging island, an enclosure pad or a widened drive aisle belongs in the same conversation as the layout rather than in a separate one a year later.
The City also publishes the state of its own queue. Roswell employs a Drainage System Investigator whose work order list "is currently backlogged approximately 9 months". That figure describes the City's maintenance queue for its public drainage system, not permit or inspection response times, and it should not be restated as one. It is a reason to treat on-site drainage as a site problem to solve on site rather than a ticket to file and wait on.
Not into a storm drain. The City of Roswell defines the term it enforces against without qualification: "Illicit discharge is any discharge to a storm sewer that is not composed entirely of storm water." Degreasing an oil spot before paint, rinsing a surface, and grinding out an old thermoplastic line each produce material that definition captures.
Roswell has named receiving water at stake, and the City is explicit about it: "Big Creek, Hog Waller Creek, and Foe Killer Creek watersheds in the City of Roswell are listed as not supporting their designated use. Rocky Creek and Willeo Creek watersheds are partially supporting their designated use." The City attributes those listings to elevated bacteria levels influenced by urban runoff. In its public washing guidance the City states the principle in plain language, written to residents about cars: wash "in an area where water will not go directly into a storm drain and don't pour dirty wash water down the storm drain." That sentence is the City's own statement of the wash water principle rather than a commercial rule the City has issued to contractors, and it is quoted here on that basis.
Five things follow on the ground, and each one is a line a property can hold a striping contractor to.
A Roswell property manager can also see where a complaint would land: the City directs illicit discharge reports to the Department of Stormwater Management at (770) 641-3707 or swmp@roswellgov.com. This page prints no penalty amount, because the dollar figures circulating in the striping and pressure washing trade trace to secondary sources rather than to the City or to a statute, and the amount that would apply depends on the enforcement route taken.
Roswell's noise rules sit in the City Code at sections 5.1.13 and 8.8.3(s), and the City's own summary of them does not publish either the decibel thresholds or the nighttime hours. The City describes the ordinance this way: it "prohibits sounds that exceed established decibel thresholds, particularly during nighttime hours, and outlines restrictions on sources such as animals, construction, landscaping equipment, amplified music, and outdoor performances." The City also records that the ordinance "provides exemptions for certain activities, including emergency work, public safety operations, permitted events, religious services, school-related performances, and daytime construction or landscaping."
Striping is night work by nature, because a stall cannot be laid out or painted with a car sitting in it. So the hours question is real, and this page answers it by naming the code sections rather than by printing a number. No decibel limit and no quiet-hours time appear here: the City does not publish them on its summary, and the codified ordinance text sits behind a reader that did not render on 2026-09-02. For reference on currency, the Roswell Code of Ordinances is codified through Ordinance No. 2025-11-10, adopted November 10, 2025, in Supplement 17, with online content updated August 14, 2026.
What that means in practice is a sequencing decision made before the crew books the night. Blowers, rotary brooms and grinders are the loud operations on a striping job, and those get scheduled into the earlier part of the window wherever a residential property line abuts the lot. Layout, taping, stencil placement and paint application are quiet and carry the overnight hours. Where a property wants loud work late beside houses, Thrare Contracting confirms the window against the ordinance with the City before scheduling rather than finding out when a resident calls at one in the morning.
The order carries more weight than the equipment, because every step downstream of an unmeasured layout inherits the errors in it. Seven steps run a Roswell lot.
Nowhere on this page is there a drying time or a reopening time. Air temperature, humidity and how wet the asphalt is all move that number, and the data sheet for the specific product decides it, so anything published here in advance would be a guess wearing the clothes of a specification. The expected reopening time for the product actually being used is given to the property before the crew rolls.
A Thrare Contracting proposal for a Roswell lot spells out both halves, since almost every dispute in this trade starts in the second one. This page carries no dollar figure at all. A striping number is produced by walking the asphalt: how many stalls, how sound the pavement, how much old marking has to come off, and how many hours the lot can be held.
Findings from the measurement that no striping scope can fix are photographed and listed for the property to price separately. They are neither swallowed silently nor added to an invoice after the fact.
The City of Roswell publishes its own thresholds, and a striping job lands in one of three bands depending on size. The City states that "City departments have the authority to purchase between $0 and $2,499", that "Purchases between $2,500-$74,999 are generally competed through an informal solicitation process, typically by means of requesting written quotes", and that "The City requires formal solicitations for most goods and services at $75,000, and at $25,000 for professional services." A formal solicitation "must be advertised a minimum of fourteen days or more, depending on State law", and formal solicitations are posted "to the City's Bonfire Procurement Portal and the Georgia Procurement Registry."
One detail is worth knowing before anyone reads a local advantage into a striping bid. The City's Local Vendor Preference ordinance "applies to all informal and formal procurements greater than $10,000 excluding construction projects; professional and consulting services; federally funded projects; and online/electronic sealed bid/reverse auctions." Construction is on the exclusion list. The City also states that "Vendor registration is necessary for anyone doing business with the City", and its Purchasing Division sits at 38 Hill Street, Suite 130, Roswell, GA 30075, reachable at (770) 641-3718.
These thresholds belong to the City of Roswell alone. They are not Fulton County's, not the State of Georgia's and not federal, and repeating one buyer's numbers at another buyer misstates the process a bid has to follow.
Rare Earth Ltd trades as Thrare Contracting and carries DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification. The firm meets the small disadvantaged business definition, appears in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE code 9JAV8, and participates in E-Verify. Three things the firm does not have, and never claims: HUBZone status, 8(a) status, and a SOC 2 attestation. The only public sector past performance figure published anywhere on this site is $198,000 of recycled aggregate delivered to Fulton County Public Works, and it belongs to that one engagement rather than to a portfolio.
A parking facility holding 60 spaces owes 3 accessible spaces under Table 208.2 of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, which sets 3 for the 51 to 75 range, and at least 1 of those 3 is a van space under section 208.2.4. Every one of the 3 has to meet section 502 on width, aisle, slope and signage, so a lot with three painted symbols and one undersized aisle still falls short.
Lot by lot. Section 208.2 of the 2010 ADA Standards states that where a site has more than one parking facility, the number of accessible spaces "shall be calculated according to the number of spaces required for each parking facility", and the advisory to that section confirms the term covers parking structures as well as surface lots. A Roswell property with a 180 space front lot and a 40 space rear lot owes 6 in front and 2 in back, which is 8 in total rather than the 7 a single site-wide count would produce.
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 the stalls in a private Roswell lot. Section 3A.05 of the MUTCD 11th Edition sets 50 mcd/m2/lx for longitudinal markings on roadways posted at 35 mph or greater, and its paragraph 5 lists curb markings and parking space markings among the markings excluded from that requirement. Glass beads remain worth specifying on a poorly lit lot as a night visibility choice the property makes.
The City of Roswell does. Fulton County Government states that its stormwater program manages "the surface water resources of unincorporated Fulton County" and that "For all other areas of the County, stormwater management is the responsibility of the individual cities." Roswell defines illicit discharge as "any discharge to a storm sewer that is not composed entirely of storm water", and directs reports to its Department of Stormwater Management at (770) 641-3707.
No. The City of Roswell bases the fee on impervious surface area, stating that "Commercial properties will receive a bill based on their actual impervious surface area", and repainting markings changes neither the area nor its imperviousness. The City's fee table lists a non-residential monthly rate of $5.99 as of July 1, 2024, applied through the footnote formula "Rate calculated by multiplying total amount of impervious surface times the monthly rate divided by 4,100 square feet", so the bill scales with square footage. Pouring a new charging island, enclosure pad or drive aisle widening does add impervious area and does affect the fee.
Thrare Contracting operates from 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350, and covers Roswell and north Fulton as a service area. City of Roswell formal solicitations are posted "to the City's Bonfire Procurement Portal and the Georgia Procurement Registry", and the City requires formal solicitation "for most goods and services at $75,000, and at $25,000 for professional services", with purchases from $2,500 to $74,999 competed informally through written quotes. Rare Earth Ltd, operating as Thrare Contracting, is certified as a DBE, an ACDBE and an MBE, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 with CAGE code 9JAV8, and is enrolled in E-Verify.
Give us the street address, how many stalls sit in each separate lot, and which nights the asphalt can be cleared.