Doraville doesn't see stadium idea as a winner

By April Hunt

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Doraville wants the Falcons to nest elsewhere.

In a unanimous vote earlier this week, the City Council rejected what it said is a conceptual plan being pushed by DeKalb County: Build the NFL team a new stadium where a shuttered General Motors plant now stands near I-285 and MARTA rail.

“The county seems to think a stadium would be a wonderful thing,” Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins said. “Our citizens overwhelmingly are not for that.”

DeKalb Chief Executive Officer Burrell Ellis said the county does not favor any concept, including a stadium. Rather, he remains open to any ideas that meet his goals of restoring 4,000 jobs lost when the factory closed in 2008 and puts the property back on the tax rolls.

"It becomes difficult to say no to any idea when we haven't seen any concrete plans," Ellis said. "There is nothing on paper yet."

Redevelopment of the 165-acre site has been a hot topic since GM announced the plant closing in 2007.  Doraville residents have long clamored for a mixed-use project that brings offices, restaurants and possibly homes.

But with the City Council's vote Monday night, Doraville officials worried that DeKalb's answer to mixed-use was to put the Falcons' practice fields and administrative offices on the site, along with a new stadium.

Plans for a stadium were first floated last year by the Sembler Co. during its negotiations with GM.

A feeble economy seemed to kill the idea until rumors began swirling around Doraville in recent weeks that the county was reviving plans for a football stadium. Talk intensified when city officials revealed earlier this month that the county plans to acquire the land with a developer.

Doraville officials worry that move would push the city out of the redevelopment. The city has conducted studies that show the need for mixed-use projects and how they connect to nearby universities and offices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We need to spur this redevelopment, but we must do it in a way that is sustainable and consistent with our goals and planning," the council members said in a joint statement following the vote. "We are certain that our vision, rather than a stadium, will accomplish that."

Whether the Falcons -- whose owner Arthur Blank has been a booster of downtown -- would want to move north from the 17-year-old Georgia Dome is another question.

Blank has said he wants a new stadium when the bonds sold to build the Dome are paid off, expected between 2015 and 2020. The team's lease of the state-owned facility expires in 2020 or when those bonds are paid.

Team spokeswoman Kim Shreckengost said Thursday that discussions regarding any site the team was considering would be "very preliminary" and she declined to comment further.

Ellis said the county has solicited input from Doraville and other stakeholders such as developers and GM on how to best redevelop the site. A Florida developer said earlier this month that the county was working with it on plans for a multiuse project, with or without a stadium.

"We have just brainstormed about some of the ideas that are out there," Ellis said. "We're engaging in an exchange of ideas until one idea takes hold and we move it into action."