Saying it seems fruitless to try to fight a potential new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons, people who live near the likely sites are trying to get a seat at the negotiating table.
Residents and civic groups in the downtown communities of Vine City, English Avenue and Marietta Street want their concerns addressed as part of any agreement between the team and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority.
Their list includes: access to construction jobs, making sure minority contractors are considered for the project and seeing infrastructure improvements such as widened streets and steps to mitigate water runoff during construction.
They also are concerned about land being turned into parking lots, trash and vandalism from football fans, as well as a reduction in church attendance on game Sundays.
The Falcons and the GWCCA are discussing an almost $948 million retractable-roof stadium on a Northside Drive parking lot now used by trucks bringing big equipment needed for shows at the convention center and the Georgia Dome. The site, which is owned by the state-operated GWCCA, is about one-half mile north of the Dome at the intersection with Ivan Allen Boulevard.
Once the new stadium was finished, under the plan on the table, the Dome would be demolished.
A site south of the Dome is also under consideration, but officials have declined to disclose the exact location.
Tillman Ward wants to avoid mistakes he says nearby communities made during construction of the Georgia Dome in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ward, who was chairman of the area's Neighborhood Planning Committee, said the Dome was supposed to create an economic boon and spotlight the area. Instead, it cut the neighborhoods off from downtown -- literally creating some dead end streets - and starved the area of business activity, he said.
"I had verbal commitments of all kinds of good things that would come of the Dome," said Ward, whose family name is on a park and several other pieces of property in Vine City. "Being eternally optimistic, I took everybody's word. For whatever reasons, it didn't work out."
Vine City and English Avenue were once two of the city's most prominent African American communities. Located near historically black colleges Spelman College and Morris Brown College in Historic West End, the areas were home at one time to Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King and Mayor Maynard Jackson. Northside Drive, which runs parallel to the Georgia Dome and the Georgia World Congress Center convention center, is the entryway to the area.
The communities are now some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, with vacant lots overgrown with weeds and many homes in foreclosure. Mixed in are some newer houses, an updated park and a strip of storefronts that have yet to be leased.
A $10 million fund to build new houses was created when funding for the Dome was authorized, but too much emphasis was put on building the homes and not enough on preparing the tenants to budget properly, Ward said. Many of the homes went into foreclosure.
Marietta Street, which would be on the northeast end of the proposed stadium, is a four-lane road through most of downtown Atlanta, but narrows to two lanes as it nears Ivan Allen Boulevard. The area includes a mix of homes in mostly two-story brick buildings, small shops and a scattering of vacant lots. Some of the lots would be used for parking and bridges would be built to get fans to the stadium, according to one plan under consideration.
Mary Jenkins, 67, who has lived in Vine City all her life, said she is not against a new stadium, though she doesn't see the need. She supports efforts by community leaders to get involved in negotiations because "we weren't educated on the benefits of building the Dome," she said.
Benjamin Summers, also a longtime resident of Vine City, said he thinks that Dome's effects on the neighborhood have been minimal. While the Dome cut off streets that used to connect to Marietta Street downtown, he said the only business casualties he can recall are a lumber company and a motel on Northside. Both were demolished to become parking lots, he said.
The Dome did little to help Northside Drive, a main artery to the facility. Other than a school, a gas station and a few disparate houses -- a few of them ruined by fire -- the street is dominated by landscaped parking lots.
More broadly, however, some argue the Dome has added to the energy in the area around the nearby CNN Center/Philips Arena complex and encouraged hotels and restaurants to open in the Luckie-Marietta District along Marietta Street near Centennial Park -- itself created for the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Turner Field, on the other side of downtown, has fared far worse, however. Beyond its sprawling parking lots, the area is blighted with boarded up buildings, litter and graffiti. There are no restaurants or stores. Fanplex, the entertainment center created for Braves fans to visit after games, closed in 2004 after little business.
Invest Atlanta, formerly the Atlanta Development Authority, has sought to encourage development over the years through its Westside Tax Allocation District, which offers government funds for projects that create jobs. But the area remains unused.
Fearing a repeat of the past, neighbors of the new stadium sent a letter to the GWCCA in 2011, when talk of a new Falcons home heated up. Though some of their concerns such as excessive noise from two massive venues have been eliminated under the latest plan, many like traffic mitigation remain.
At a meetingearlier this month, residents talked about setting realistic expectations.
Curt Flaherty, a member of the Marietta Street Artery Association, said it is not in the Falcons best interest to create restaurants and businesses outside the stadium's gates that could compete for dollars inside. He said he is concerned about public transportation access to the stadium, which will be tougher now that the closest Marta stop is half a mile away next to the Georgia Dome.
But Greg Hawthorne, executive director of the Vine City Housing Ministry, said he is not willing to give up on pushing for some kind of stimulus from the project.
"It's a shame and almost criminal that the neighborhood is one of the poorest," he said. "There has to be some community economic package."
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