Gary Stokan stood in a parking lot in downtown Atlanta on a recent evening, catching a glimpse of the future.
"Right where that red car is," he said, "that's where the lobby is going to be.
"Up there," he added, pointing, "I see the big [video] screen. There will be people sitting here watching games piped in on Thursday nights and Saturdays.
"It's cool," he said. "Isn't it?"
This nondescript parking lot of the Georgia World Congress Center -- the "Green Lot" on Marietta Street next to the Omni Hotel -- was chosen late last year as the site for the College Football Hall of Fame, which will relocate from South Bend, Ind.
Stokan, president and CEO of Atlanta Hall Management, the entity licensed by the National Football Foundation to build and eventually operate college football's shrine, discussed the state of the project in an interview that began in a conference room and ended in a parking lot:
-- The latest timetable: Groundbreaking is scheduled for February 2012 and the opening for fall 2013. Both dates have been pushed back from the targets set when the hall's relocation to Atlanta was announced in September 2009. The reasons for the delay, Stokan said, were a shift in preferred sites and a swelling of the project from a 50,000-square-foot, $50-million facility to a 75,000-square-foot, $82-million facility.
-- What's happening now: As Stokan spoke, two members of his staff were in Michigan, pitching a sponsorship deal to Ford Motor Co. Raising money remains a top priority. Stokan said $33 million in commitments have been secured, including, he said, $15 million in state bonds, $6 million from Chick-fil-A, $5 million from the Chick-fil-A Bowl and $2.5 million from Coca-Cola. Stokan said another $15 million, totaling $48 million, needs to be raised before ground-breaking. If accomplished, the remaining $34 million would be financed with a bank loan, Stokan said. Corporate sponsorship sales would continue throughout construction with the goal of repaying the loan by the facility's opening, he added. "We're getting good vibes the economy is coming back," he said.
-- What else must happen before ground-breaking: To name a few things, leases with the Georgia World Congress Center must be completed and approved, the bank financing package must be put in place and design plans, which are far along, must be finalized.
-- About the design: Stokan said the design-development phase is "100 percent complete" with the architects and will be complete with the exhibit designers in the next month. The latest renderings, completed in the past few weeks, show a three-level facility designed to simulate the game-day experience, including an indoor football field that visitors will enter through a tunnel similar to those players run through at stadiums across the country. "You'll feel like you're going out on the field to play the game," Stokan said. Plans also call for a 3-D theater, extensive event rental space for banquets and receptions, and high-tech displays of hall of famers that go far beyond the traditional busts and plaques. "This will not be your grandfather's hall of fame," Stokan said.
-- More than a museum: "I've termed the phrase 'edutainseum,'" Stokan said. "It's going to be highly educational, highly entertaining and then a museum. If we just build a museum, we have failed. This will have the helmets and old jerseys and all the artifacts and history, but it is going to be very high-tech, interactive and immersive. We are in effect building an attraction that is going to use the content of college football." A content and media partnership deal has been struck with ESPN, which will produce videos to refresh the hall annually, Stokan said.
-- Also in the plans for the 2 1/2-acre site: a six-level parking deck, a Chick-fil-A restaurant between the parking deck and the hall of fame, and a connector through the museum to the Georgia World Congress Center's Hall A.
-- Looking ahead: Back in the parking lot, which is across Marietta Street from his office, Stokan is envisioning the first enshrinement ceremony here. "We're going to bring back all the old hall of famers who can travel, as many of them as we can get here," he said. He said "teamwork" among the state and city officials, corporations, architects and designers have gotten the project to this point. "I stand here in the middle of the parking lot and look around and imagine what it's going to be like in 2013 when we open."
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