The Falcons presented complete design plans for their new stadium to a state agency Tuesday and declared the project on track to open as scheduled in less than three years.
“We are in full go,” Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay told the Georgia World Congress Center Authority board. “We have a March 2017 date that we are certainly marching toward.”
The new design documents, totaling 2,157 drawings, show much more detail, but no dramatic changes from earlier renderings of the angular, retractable-roof stadium being built next to the Georgia Dome on the Congress Center’s downtown campus.
The GWCCA board voted to authorize its executive director, Frank Poe, to approve the design documents after a follow-up meeting with the Falcons later this week. “There are a couple of clarifications that we’ll pursue,” Poe said, describing the issues as “nothing contentious at all.”
The stadium’s lead architect, Bill Johnson of Kansas City-based 360 Architecture, went over the design with the GWCCA board Tuesday, pointing out details such as outdoor plazas within the ticketed perimeter and operable skylights above the upper-bowl seats intended to help with ventilation.
Johnson also showed how the stadium’s seating capacity can be expanded. The plans provide 70,427 permanent seats for Falcons games, expandable to 74,916 for the Super Bowl and SEC Championship game by adding temporary seating in the end zones and at the top of the upper bowl along the sidelines.
Johnson said in an interview after Tuesday’s meeting that he is pleased that the stadium, which also will be home to an MLS expansion franchise, has stayed true through the design process to its original cutting-edge concept.
“That’s not a small order, really,” Johnson said. “It’s an ambitious project. It’s ambitious to build a retractable-roof stadium, and then to try to raise the bar and do it a different way is tough.
“Arthur (Blank, the Falcons’ owner) from the very beginning told us, ‘I want this to be more than the best stadium in the world. I want it to be more than just another retractable-roof stadium.’ So we’ve really been told to hang on to the quality and the uniqueness of the design.”
Exactly how much all of that will cost is still not nailed down. The Falcons last year estimated the total cost at $1.2 billion, and Blank later said it was drifting toward $1.3 billion.
“The big push right now is to continue to evaluate where we are from a cost perspective and a design perspective as we work toward the guaranteed maximum price,” Johnson said. He said the stadium’s general contractor — a joint venture of four construction companies — is expected to provide that price in September, based on the design drawings.
Bonds backed by Atlanta hotel-motel taxes will pay $200 million toward the cost of construction, with the rest coming from the Falcons, the NFL and personal-seat license sales. Hundreds of millions of additional hotel-motel tax dollars will go toward costs of financing, operating and maintaining the stadium over 30 years.
Work began at the construction site early this year. Excavation within the stadium footprint is now 95 percent complete, the Falcons said.
The Georgia Dome will be demolished when the new stadium is completed.
About the Author
