ATLANTA 1996 / Countdown to The Summer Olympic Games : Georgia Asks: What Price Glory? : Venues: With a year to go, cost of event, effects on community cause concern.

In his office overlooking the imaginary circle from the Georgia World Congress Center through the heart of Atlanta, the so-called Olympic ring, Billy Payne, a former Georgia Bulldog defensive end and now organizing committee president for the 1996 Summer Games, has a small television screen that allows him to monitor construction of the Olympic Stadium.

With each feed, the Centennial Olympics, which begin one year from today, become more real to Payne. The stadium not only is the centerpiece of the Games’ legacy to Atlanta but a monument to the struggle he has waged since his successful campaign five years ago to bring the Olympics to the city.

Some politicians almost succeeded in scuttling the project because of concerns about the financial responsibility of maintaining the stadium after the Olympics, but wiser heads prevailed by emphasizing that it was virtually a $209-million donation from the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. As Angelenos can attest, no one should look a gift stadium in the mouth.

The Olympic Stadium will seat 85,000 for the opening and closing ceremonies and track and field competition during the July 19-Aug. 4 Games, then, after the track is removed and seating capacity reduced to between 45,000 and 48,000, will replace Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium next door as home of the Braves in time for the opening of the 1997 baseball season. The existing stadium will be razed, the site becoming a parking lot for the Olympic Stadium.

The only controversy now involved with the project concerns what to call the Olympic Stadium when the Games end. Some have recommended that it be named for famous Georgians such as Jimmy Carter or Henry Aaron. Payne and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young, the other protagonist in Atlanta’s winning bid before the International Olympic Committee, also have been suggested, even in tandem. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however, objected that Young-Payne Stadium sounds too Chinese.

Payne said that it will be reward enough for him if the Olympic effort fulfills his oft-repeated pledge of coming in “on time and on budget.”

There is less concern about the time than the money, since ACOG is still $380 million shy of its projected $1.58-billion budget, which has only $60 million built in as a contingency for last-minute emergencies. ACOG officials are optimistic that they can at least break even by selling 75% of the tickets available to the public, 14% higher than their original, perhaps conservative, projections.

Even so, polls show that Atlantans are concerned about being presented the bill if there is a shortfall. They’re complaining about the $354 million that local, state and federal governments are spending on the Games despite frequent assurances from Payne that they would be privately financed.

Payne countered by pointing out that most government costs are related to infrastructure that was needed regardless of the Olympics and that the Games will leave behind almost $500 million in construction projects, $200 million in tax revenue, a $5.1-billion economic impact on the state of Georgia and a new international image that could benefit the city for decades.

“The community has already been the enormous beneficiary financially of the Games, yet persistently people want to know about how we’re going to pick up trash,” Payne said. “It just blows my mind. I’ve done a real poor job of explaining that.”

The message has not gotten through to some community leaders, who complain that the Olympics are not doing enough to revitalize some of Atlanta’s poorer neighborhoods. The Olympic Conscience Coalition plans demonstrations during the Games to focus on the city’s social ills, such as homelessness.

“When the international press comes in, they’re going to be looking for an issue, and we’re going to give it to them on a silver platter,” said the coalition’s chief, the Rev. Tim McDonald, in an Associated Press interview. “I don’t have a monopoly on truth, but there is another side of the story than Billy Payne’s.”

Payne differentiates between ACOG’s mission and Atlanta’s, dividing them into “inside the fence” and “outside the fence” issues. There are enough problems remaining inside the fence, such as last week’s revelations that two dormitories planned as part of the athletes’ village at Georgia State University have settled much deeper and quicker than anticipated, and continuing angst over the sailing venue at Savannah.

Although sympathetic to the city’s problems, ACOG’s only role, Payne said, is to organize the Games so well that IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch can be sincere when he calls them, as he does at the closing of each, “the best Games ever.”

Times staff writers Eric Harrison and Edith Stanley contributed to this story from Atlanta.