One Up, One to Go : Atlanta Opens Georgia Dome With NFL Exhibition and Now Turns Its Attention to Building a 85,000-Seat Stadium for ’96 Olympics

A fan entering a typical domed stadium walks into shadows and darkness. The effect is something like walking into a mausoleum, or a darkened theater with the movie under way.

Except in Atlanta.

On a cloudless summer Sunday, going to the new Georgia Dome is like entering a giant outdoor theater. The fiberglass roof is uncommonly translucent. It blocks out the heat while letting in the soft Southern sunlight.

And the result is striking. When the sun shines in Atlanta, football can be played without turning on a light but for the demands of television, which required some help Sunday to telecast the first game in the Georgia Dome, an NFL exhibition won by the Atlanta Falcons over the Philadelphia Eagles, 20-10.

On opening day at the league’s newest playground, it was a humid 72 degrees outside and a pleasant, air-conditioned 72 inside as a sellout crowd of 66,834--there were 4,760 no-shows--saw the run-and-shoot Falcons score on their first play--a 76-yard bomb, Chris Miller to Michael Haynes--and hang on to win.

“It was a fun game, and this is a grand stadium,” said 23-year Falcon fan Lillian Gantsoudes, a resident of the Buckhead area of Atlanta.

Most Atlantans seemed more interested in the stadium than the game.

They’re obviously proud of the most costly, youngest and second largest dome in pro football, one that is surpassed in capacity only by the Pontiac, Mich., Silverdome.

The price was $214 million, and the people of Georgia put the dome in place three years after breaking ground on July 12, 1989--when Los Angeles was only talking stadium improvements.

As it still is.

These were their motives:

--In part, as America’s newest important international city, Atlanta wanted to bring in the world’s two biggest sporting events, the Olympics and the Super Bowl. It won both, the 1994 Super Bowl and the 1996 Olympics.

--In part, Atlanta’s residents wanted a cash cow. Their economists estimate that the dome will make a $209-million annual impact on the community, returning nearly as much,

every year, as they spent on it. The estimate is based on the $580-million annual impact being made by their new convention center, which, like the dome, is rented out an optimum 280 days next year.

--Most of all, in an area where sticky summers last five or six months, Atlanta wanted a big, beautiful, comfortable, all-weather stadium of a kind that Chicago and New York, among other metropolitan centers, have needed for years, but can’t seem to get organized to build.

Uniquely light and airy inside, the Georgia Dome also has a different look outside. To the traveler coming upon it at ground level, it appears to be a flashy, modernistic, 12-story office building, with a white oval roof, with a striped exterior. The stripes are plum, aqua and white.

The interior--for a sports stadium--is luxurious. Floors and walls have a finished look. There are mall-like atriums in all four corners. Seats are entirely in shades of turquoise. The restrooms are purple. And the carpeted visitors’ locker room has off-lavender walls whose color, the painter said, is periwinkle salmon.

The newest building in Atlanta will prove to have some flaws, no doubt, but not to Falcon owner Rankin Smith, the moving spirit in its origin and construction.

“The reason we’re so glad to be out of (Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium) is that the seats there are so far from the action,” Smith said. “The sight lines at the new place are the best in the league.

“On the 50-yard line, a seat at the Georgia Dome is exactly 100 yards closer to the field than you were at Fulton County.”

TWO NEW DOWNTOWN ATLANTA STADIUMS

For most towns, a new dome would be enough. For Atlanta, it’s just the beginning.

When 15,000 world-class athletes descend on the Georgia capital in 1996, they will discover possibly the best-equipped Olympic layout yet.

The truth is that Atlanta is the only city in America erecting two downtown stadiums in this decade.

The state will own and operate both:

--The Georgia Dome, seating up to 75,000 for indoor attractions, was planned as the site of the two most popular Olympic events, basketball and gymnastics.

--The close-by, soon-to-be Olympic Stadium, seating 85,000 outdoors, will be the 1996 track-and-field venue, as well as the site of the opening and closing ceremonies.

For Georgians, the priority structure was the dome. Atlanta contractors have just turned to the Olympic stadium, which will rise in a parking lot behind Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, home of the Braves.

After the Olympics, the new stadium will be cut in half and leased to the Braves for National League baseball. The other half, along with the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, will be leveled for a new parking lot.

All this is ambitious but seems fully within the means of energetic Atlantans, whose planning has set new municipal standards.

For example, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, known as ACOG, sent 120 workers to monitor the recent Barcelona Games. Among other things, at Olympic core events, they counted every vacant seat every day.

“You don’t want surprises,” said the ACOG commander, lawyer Billy Payne.

Atlanta’s Olympic ring will reach out about 1 1/2 miles from the two hub facilities, the Georgia Dome and the adjoining convention center, which is known as the Georgia World Congress Center. The NBA arena next door, the Omni, is to be used for Olympic volleyball.

Most Olympic housing will be at midtown Georgia Tech. Most 1996 venues are set for greater Atlanta. Yachting will be contested 300 miles to the southeast, in Savannah, Sherman’s target in 1864 when, leaving Atlanta in ruins, his Union army marched to the sea.

The Civil War remains a presence in Atlanta, where Margaret Mitchell wrote “Gone With The Wind” more than a half century ago. It is clear to visitors that Georgia is still angry at Sherman.

But the Georgia generation that conceived two new downtown stadiums--forsaking the suburbs that have proved irresistible to the Rams, the Dallas Cowboys and so many others--is also clearly focusing on Atlanta’s future. The many Peachtree streets are still here; legendary Five Points is still here; they are still fighting the war here in the Cyclorama--but what they are betting on in Atlanta is the future.

Georgians don’t seem to have any trouble with its cost. Progressive state politicians, hotelmen and business leaders combined to underwrite the Georgia Dome at no risk to taxpayers. Bond issues totaling $214 million are to be repaid with dome earnings and a 2 1/2% hotel-motel tax.

The $500-million cost of the Olympics, including construction of the Olympic Stadium, will be paid from television revenues.

The maturing of a great city isn’t really about money but local leadership, and in the 1990s, Atlanta has had the leaders.

GAME NOT ENOUGH--500 TV SETS, TOO

Unless the roof falls, parking deficiencies seem to be the Georgia Dome’s biggest problem. Only 3,400 cars could be parked close by Sunday. Most fans left their cars a mile or so away and either walked or rode subways or buses to the game, complaining all the way.

Aside from ample parking--which would have cost too much, the Georgians say--they thought of almost everything when they built this dome:

--Overhead, the ribbed, soft-material roof is built like the top of a huge umbrella, saving the fuel costs of most air-supported domes.

--For fans with extra money, 182 VIP suites on the executive concourse were sold out at $20,000 to $120,000 a year.

--Two jumbo video screens at either end of the new field are each the size of 185 20-inch television receivers.

“With these TVs, the game is just as good as seeing it at home,” said Jerome Lee of suburban Marietta.

--For the disabled, the dome has 11 unisex restrooms. Called patron-assisted toilets, they were recommended by a special task force that looked into the community’s stadium-related needs.

--And perhaps best of all, fans who stood in line for any of the 81 restrooms Sunday, or who queued up for lunch, missed none of what happened on the football field. There were TV monitors in front of them anywhere they stood.

“Altogether, we’ve installed 534 television sets,” said Atlanta architect Scott W. Braley, project director for the design crew.

Braley said that Atlanta-based architects and contractors, working in teams, built the dome. Three major architectural firms, normally competitors, got together on the project as did four contractors.

Their contribution and cooperation has been unprecedented.

Said Braley: “The interesting thing is that the architects and contractors all worked with each other so closely and successfully that they brought the dome in on budget--and on time.”

The same architectural team, with one addition, has designed the Olympic Stadium, which is being built by the same construction companies.

“We’re in the big leagues now, and this is part of it,” said Atlanta businessman Lewis G. Holland.

Oddly enough, considering the future, greater Atlanta, population 1.5 million, wasn’t enthusiastic about the Olympics this summer. The Atlanta television rating each night throughout the Barcelona Games was last or next to last among America’s 25 largest cities, once falling to 9.6.

That is because the Atlanta Braves’ games were matched against Olympic events, and Atlantans prefer baseball, particularly if the Braves are winning.

It’s a bad night when the Braves don’t get TV ratings of 26 or 30.

It’s also a bad night when they don’t have out-of-state visitors.

For, long before Rhett Butler, Atlanta’s founders picked an ideal spot for a metropolis. From the Georgia Dome, it is two hours or less to 80% of the airports of America. In 1996, people will be commuting from South, East and Midwest to the Olympic Games.

Dome Sweet Dome

With the arrival of football in the Georgia Dome Sunday, one-fourth of the NFL’s 28 teams are playing home games this year in indoor stadiums. In order of capacity:

Year Venue Site Opened Capacity Silverdome Pontiac, Mich. 1975 80,500 Georgia Dome Atlanta 1992 71,594 Superdome New Orleans 1975 69,065 Kingdome Seattle 1976 64,400 Metrodome Minneapolis 1982 63,000 Astrodome Houston 1965 62,021 Hoosier Dome Indianapolis 1985 60,129

The nation’s other major-league indoor stadium, the Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg, Fla., built for baseball, seats about 50,000.