With a little less than a year remaining before Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s scheduled completion date, Falcons executives expressed optimism Thursday about hitting the June 1, 2017, target.
“We’re pretty confident in our timetable,” Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay said. “June 1 is a good date for us. We’re working pretty confidently towards that date, and we feel very good about it. I would say that we’ve really picked up the pace on steel. You see the steel going up. We’re in a pretty good place.”
McKay’s assessment came at the end of a media tour of the new stadium, which is under construction next to the Georgia Dome.
The completion date, originally set for March 1, 2017, was pushed back three months earlier this year because of complications with the steel structure that will support two of the stadium's signature features: the retractable roof and massive halo-shaped video board.
Forty percent of the structural steel has now been installed for the fixed portion of the roof, according to Wayne Wadsworth, principal in charge of stadium general contractor Holder Hunt Russell Moody. The retractable part of the roof can’t be installed until the fixed portion is in place.
One of the highlights of Thursday’s stadium-in-progress tour was the view of the Atlanta skyline from a towering wall of windows on the east end.
The pre-cast concrete risers for the middle and upper seating bowls are in place, but the lower bowl can’t be built until multiple cranes, temporary shoring towers and steel can be moved off the field level.
“Everything is pointing to June 1 (of 2017),” said Steve Cannon, CEO of Falcons parent company AMB Group. “We’ve still got buffers built in there that we’ve got the ability to accelerate if we need to accelerate. We’ve got enough control of the levers that lets us confidently say to you that June 1 is the date.”
McKay indicated Atlanta United, Falcons owner Arthur Blank’s new Major League Soccer team that begins play next year, likely will open the stadium. But he also hinted at other options in the works.
“I’m not sure we know yet,” McKay said. “There is a very good chance Atlanta United opens the stadium and has the first event. That’s probably what we think at this point in time. But … there are a couple of out-of-the-box ideas that have been brought to us that are really cool and would be neat for Atlanta and for a world-wide stage. “
He declined to elaborate on those possibilities.
Even with a June 1 completion date, Atlanta United won’t have use of its home stadium for the first three months of its inaugural season. Blank said earlier this year that the team will play on the road through those months, but he left open the possibility of lining up a temporary alternate home venue if necessary.
“We’ll deal with those issues of where we are in a couple of months, when the time is right,” McKay said Thursday.
Asked if he has any worries about further delays that might threaten the start of the Falcons’ 2017 season in the stadium, McKay said: “No, I do not.”
He said observers may be misled about the stadium’s progress because they focus only on the roof.
“There are 2,000 people (working) in this building,” McKay said. “They’re building out the mezzanine level. The upper deck is being built out. The concession stands are being finished.
“As soon as the cranes come out, you go to the last phase, which is building out the lower bowl. … And (construction managers) get much more exact in what the completion date is going to be once we get the cranes out.”
Removal of the cranes is expected to begin in “late September, early October,” he said.
The complex roof has added to the cost of the building. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last week that the Falcons have issued about $200 million in change orders, most of it related to structural steel.
“We knew that was coming,” McKay said Thursday. “Those overruns were principally driven by the complexity of design, the amount of steel involved, the number of cranes involved to make sure that we get the stadium up on time.”
The amount of structural steel has increased from an early estimate of 20,000 tons to 28,000 tons.
A status report by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, dated May 31, said that with the latest changes the stadium cost is projected to be $1.5 billion. The Falcons reaffirmed that number Thursday.
“It doesn’t mean we won’t add something — we will add things along the way — and it doesn’t mean there won’t be something unforeseen,” McKay said. “But we feel very good now about where we are from a cost standpoint because the roof is where it is.”
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