Demolition of the Georgia Dome will be completed before college football’s national championship game comes to the new Falcons stadium next door in January 2018, according to a schedule outlined for a state board Tuesday.
Leaders of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium construction team told the Georgia World Congress Center Authority board that they are close to choosing a demolition contractor for the Dome and expect to begin salvaging materials from the building in March and to implode it by the fall of 2017.
“There’s a couple different approaches that are being considered … most likely looking at either a single implosion or multiple implosions,” said Wayne Wadsworth, principal in charge of Mercedes-Benz Stadium general contractor Holder Hunt Russell Moody.
“After we hire (the demolition) firm, we’re going to work through a number of months of engineering … to figure out what is the most optimum way … to bring the Georgia Dome down.”
Wadsworth said discussions continue with five finalist firms to serve as the demolition contractor. A choice is expected by next month.
The GWCCA board passed a resolution that authorizes its executive director, Frank Poe, to approve or disapprove the choice of demolition contractor and the start as soon as March of readying the Dome for implosion.
Poe said the last event currently scheduled in the Dome is a Monster Jam motorsports competition on March 10. He said one additional event is under consideration but would occur no later than March 15.
The cost of demolishing the Dome is part of the $1.5 billion budget for the new stadium.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank early this year announced the target date for completing Mercedes-Benz Stadium had been pushed back three months to June 1, 2017. Tuesday’s update on Dome demolition plans came as the Falcons reiterated confidence in the revised date for completing the retractable-roof stadium.
“We would not take down the Dome or even begin to shut down the Dome unless we were certain of the completion date,” Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay said in an interview. “We’re very confident of that (June 1 date) now. If something were to happen along the way before March, we could obviously leave the Dome up (longer). That is not anticipated.”
McKay said the goal is to have the Dome site available for parking and tailgating by the College Football Playoff championship game in the new stadium on Jan. 8, 2018.
“Our thought has been all along that the Dome could get down sometime in late summer or early fall of 2017, and then you could get the site ready and prepared certainly by December 2017, which means it would be ready for the college football championship,” McKay said. “That is definitely the timeline we are on.”
As for the new stadium, the Falcons’ project executive, Bill Darden, said much progress has been made in the past 60 days on erecting steel trusses for the fixed portion of the roof.
“Everything with the project is tough, but going very well,” Darden told the GWCCA board.
Installation of the retractable portion of the roof “starts the first of the year,” he added. “We’re as excited about that as you guys are.”
