Grand Scheme for 1996 Olympics: Are the Hurdles Too High? : Stadium groundbreaking does not dispel questions about whether plans to transform Georgia’s capital are too ambitious.

After months of controversy and discord, city and state officials broke ground over the weekend for Atlanta’s $209-million Olympic stadium.

But as dignitaries such as Georgia Gov. Zell Miller talked of unity and touted the 1996 Summer Olympics as “the opportunity of a lifetime” for Atlanta, 50 or so neighborhood residents protested the disruption the stadium will cause and complained that residents of the depressed inner-city neighborhood won’t benefit enough from jobs the development will bring.

For good or ill, the stadium will greatly transform the dilapidated area--especially if adjacent shops, apartments and restaurants are built as planned--and will become a lasting monument to Atlanta’s unlikely hosting of the 1996 Olympic Games.

But the sometimes bitter battle over the stadium, which is likely to continue at least until construction begins in the fall, symbolizes the clashing aspirations, racial tensions, class conflicts and quite possibly overreaching ambitions that have marked this city’s Olympic preparations from the start.

Charges of elitism, racism and greed have peppered the public discourse over Olympic preparations. Opposition to the stadium grew so strong in March that the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games briefly considered building it outside the city. The stadium was saved, and the Fulton County Commission approved it, only after the Olympic committee agreed to a number of concessions, most of which were designed to appease community and taxpayer concerns. A core group remains opposed, however.

In Atlanta, the Olympics are seen as much more than the world’s premiere athletic event; they are viewed simultaneously as the city’s ticket to the major leagues and the engine with which Atlanta will address its social and aesthetic shortcomings and radically remake itself.

“Unlike Los Angeles in 1984, we are attempting something ambitious,” said Leon Eplan, Atlanta’s commissioner of planning and development. “I feel very confident that we will end up with a different city as a result of the Olympics. There’s going to be a fundamental rebuilding of the city.”

Such grand talk has emanated from City Hall since soon after the announcement in 1990 that the Games would be held here.

But after months of seeming inertia, political haggling, controversies and financial worries, many people have begun to question whether the city’s grand schemes will be realized.

Olympic venues will be paid for by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games through the sale of television and advertising rights. So far, six of a projected 10 corporations have agreed to pay $40 million each for exclusive use of Olympic symbols in their advertising. Other developments not directly connected to the Games must be financed through tax money or private investment.

City officials acknowledge that time may be running out for some of the most ambitious projects.

“A few projects are going to be very difficult to achieve,” said Eplan, mentioning the much-touted new downtown train station. “But very little has been scaled back yet.”

If Eplan’s dreams are realized, automobile-addicted Atlanta by 1996 will become a pedestrian city, with attractive promenades, plazas, tree-lined streets and numerous small “pocket parks” studding the inner city.

“We’re where Chicago was in 1890 when it was about to host the World’s Columbian Exposition,” he said, referring to the 1893 exposition designed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to the New World. The energy spun off by the exposition launched ambitious plans for Chicago’s lakefront development, park system, rail system and neighborhood design that transformed the city.

“We plan to restructure (Atlanta) in major ways and use the event as an opportunity in terms of resources and energy and focus to achieve some longstanding goals, things that we have wanted to do for a long time but had been unable to.

“In general, what we’re trying to do is prepare the city for the role it will play in the 21st Century,” Eplan said.

Among the projects on the drawing board is development of a 210-acre park--the city’s largest--that would link the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library east of downtown with the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Another priority is a $100-million upgrade of rundown Auburn Avenue, once the vibrant center of Atlanta’s black community and the street on which the King Center, King’s crypt and his boyhood home stand.

The city also hopes to build a $16-million promenade linking downtown to the Atlanta University Center, where some Olympic events will take place. In addition, streets will be widened and bridges replaced or repaired. And a $74-million traffic control system is planned for downtown.

Also, Georgia Tech University--which will be turned into an Olympic Village for the 15,000 athletes, trainers and coaches expected to attend the Games--will receive more than $220 million in capital improvements, including new dormitories, an aquatic center and a 15,000-seat basketball arena. This will be paid for by the Olympic committee and the board of regents.

At this stage, nobody expects all of the $400 million to $1 billion in non-venue projects to be built in time for the Games. But Eplan predicted that a half dozen of them would be pursued.

That half dozen is likely to include Greenlea Commons, the residential and commercial development project planned for the area next to the Olympic Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies and track and field events will take place.

The stadium will be built directly south of the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where baseball’s Atlanta Braves play. After the Olympics, the existing stadium will be torn down and the Braves will move to the new arena.

Because most people drive to the stadium rather than use public transportation, the proliferation of unsightly, unpaved parking lots in the area has stymied plans for economic development. But Douglas Dean, who heads Summerhill Neighborhood Inc., said recent passing of an ordinance outlawing “gypsy” lots may make landowners more willing to discuss selling or developing their property.

Dean, who has been criticized as a “sellout” by some other neighborhood leaders because of his willingness to work with city and Olympic officials to develop the area, said plans call for development of 650 new housing units in the neighborhood. A third of those would be low-income homes.

Speaking of the protesters, Dean said: “I truly believe that they want the same things we want. It’s just a different approach. We believe that we can achieve our goals through negotiating and leveraging. They think that we can gain through protest.”

Eplan said city officials will spend the rest of the year absorbed in planning for the projects. Construction of those the city decides to pursue should begin by next summer, he said.

“It looks like a period of laxity and so forth,” he said, responding to criticisms about the city’s slowness, “but really we’re working 65 and 70 hours per week getting ready for this.”

Noting that Atlanta is a far smaller city than Los Angeles, he said the Olympic venues will be less spread out than for the 1984 games, with 18 of the 29 venues within 1 1/4 miles of downtown. That means the impact on Atlanta will be far greater, he explained. In addition, the 1996 Olympics will have 50% more athletes and probably substantially more spectators than the 1984 Games.

“This will be the largest in-gathering of nations in history,” he said.

Consulting an Olympic countdown clock in his office, Eplan noted Friday that 1,107 days and 4 hours remained before the start of the Games in 1996. The task ahead “is so huge, so awesome, that you hear (the clock) ticking,” he said.