In March, the Olympics-era metal peach tower that stood atop the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) building, west of the Downtown Connector, was taken down.
The tower was built on IBEW's roof in the '90s, after the roof was leased to an ad agency who convinced them the structure was a good investment. Not so, say IBEW officials, and when the agency's lease expired, employees were thrilled to be rid of the "nightmare" tower — even bringing out champagne to celebrate.
What they weren't expecting were upset Atlantans, some of whom took umbrage at the news.
"We love the city of Atlanta and its people," Gene O'Kelley, business manager of IBEW local union 613, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "But it's our building and it's our peach."
The tower "was a mechanical nightmare," O'Kelley said.
When it was first put up in 1994, two years before Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics, the tower was built to open and close with two advertisements on the sides, O'Kelley said. It was also supposed to change color with the temperature: Purple when it was cooler out, red and orange when it was warmer.
But O'Kelley said the structure only worked properly for about two years. He said it broke down constantly and as a result, the roof of the IBEW building had to be replaced multiple times. In addition, he said, there were only about five advertisements that ever went up. And to the dismay of IBEW, none of those advertisements involved American union companies.
"We had to threaten a lawsuit just to get those first two advertisements off the sign," O'Kelley said. It just didn’t turn out to be the investment that leadership, at the time, expected it to be, he said.
IBEW, which will be celebrating 100 years in Atlanta in 2019, plans to replace the "business venture gone bad" with new solar panels, he said.
"We're an electrical union and that's what we do," O'Kelley said. "We think this is probably a better thing to promote than a peach that doesn't work."
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