FUTURE SUPER BOWL SITES
2017: NRG Stadium, Houston
2018: U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis
2019, 2020 and 2021: To be decided Tuesday
MERCEDES-BENZ STADIUM UPDATE
Construction schedule: Early this year, Falcons owner Arthur Blank said the stadium's targeted completion date had been pushed back three months to June 1, 2017, largely because of delays with the complicated steel structure to support the retractable roof and massive halo-shaped video board. This past week, Blank said the revised target date remains intact. "I'm very comfortable with the June (2017) deadline at this point," Blank said. "I think we've gotten past a lot of the issues." Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay offered a similar assessment. "It's still a complex building with an eight-piece roof, so there's a lot of mechanization and other things that have to be complete, but I think right now we're confident with the completion date," McKay said.
Budget: "Total project cost (is) still projected to be $1.4 (billion)," an April 30 status report compiled by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority stated. Change orders totaling $98.5 million have been issued by the Falcons organization "for various scope changes" and "are funded by project contingency" included in the $1.4 billion budget set in December 2014, according to the GWCCA report. The change orders have included "elements of the concrete superstructure, steel increases, mechanical equipment, electrical systems and finish refinements," according to the Falcons.
For a building still under construction, still more than a year from opening, Mercedes-Benz Stadium has a couple of impressive victories.
The downtown Atlanta stadium is two-for-two in bids for marquee events, having landed college football’s national championship game in January 2018 and college basketball’s Final Four in April 2020.
The stadium’s winning streak will be on the line Tuesday when the 32 NFL owners vote by secret ballot at the league’s spring meeting in Charlotte, N.C., on the sites of the 2019, 2020 and 2021 Super Bowls.
Five cities, including Atlanta, are bidding for the games, with no city allowed to land more than one. The Atlanta bid committee prefers the February 2019 event, which will be awarded first, but also is seeking the other two in case the first goes elsewhere.
“We have put a lot of effort into this. But so have the other cities,” Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay said. “And so we don’t go in with any presumption.”
The other bidders are Miami (for all three years), New Orleans (for 2019 only), Los Angeles (for 2020 and 2021) and Tampa (for all three years).
Atlanta was rejected in its past two Super Bowl bids, losing out on the 2009 and 2010 games, with many owners saying they voted against the city because of the ice storm that marred the 2000 Super Bowl here.
But the city’s bid this time features something NFL owners have a hard time saying no to: a new stadium built with the help of taxpayer dollars.
Twice in the past three years, cities with stadiums under construction asked the NFL for a Super Bowl. Both times, the owners obliged, voting in 2013 to put the 2016 Super Bowl in the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium and voting in 2014 to put the 2018 Super Bowl in the Minnesota Vikings’ U.S. Bank Stadium.
It has become a routine reciprocation for a new stadium: If you build it, the Super Bowl will come. At least once. No matter the weather.
“I feel good about where we are, (but) there are other great cities that are competing that have great venues as well,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank said this past week. “We think we’ve dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t.’”
He hopes the $1.4 billion retractable-roof stadium — slated to open in June 2017 — and its close proximity to the Georgia World Congress Center, thousands of downtown hotel rooms and other attractions will sway the vote.
“We think not just the stadium is unique, but downtown Atlanta is unique,” Blank said. “The fact that everything is walk-able is a major plus, I think, to a lot of the owners. It makes it much easier for guests here for a week to have a tremendous number of attractions and amenities within a stone’s throw of (the stadium).
“I think the amount of public support we’ve gotten in construction from the governor and the mayor and the city council is going to be important to the owners as well.”
Blank has called more than 20 owners recently to answer questions. One brought up the 2000 ice storm. Blank replied that climate change has improved Atlanta’s winter weather since then.
“I don’t think it’ll be an issue,” Blank said.
Weather didn’t dissuade the owners from putting the 2012, 2014 and 2018 Super Bowls in new stadiums in Indianapolis, East Rutherford, N.J., and Minneapolis, respectively.
Each bid city will get 15 minutes for a presentation at Tuesday’s meeting. Atlanta’s will be delivered by Equifax chairman and CEO Rick Smith and United Distributors president and CEO Doug Hertz. Then Blank will have five minutes to make a final pitch, as will the owners of the teams in the other bidding cities.
Atlanta’s strongest competitor for the 2019 game could be Miami, which offers an ongoing $450 million makeover of the Dolphins’ stadium and hopes the owners will like the idea of following a Super Bowl in Minnesota with one in South Florida.
The NFL’s return this year of a team, the Rams, to Los Angeles after a 21-year absence adds a formidable bidder. A new L.A. stadium, slated to open in 2019, likely will be awarded the 2020 or 2021 Super Bowl, although 2020 would leave little margin for construction delays.
New Orleans and Tampa are viewed as underdogs because they don’t offer new or rebuilt stadiums, but both have been popular Super Bowl sites for the owners in the past. New Orleans is bidding only for 2019 because the city has the college-football title game in 2020 and a conflicting convention in 2021.
Hosting the Super Bowl is increasingly costly. The host committee for the 2015 game in Glendale, Ariz., had an operating budget of about $30 million.
The Atlanta host committee’s funding would come from a portion of the city’s hotel-motel tax designated for such purposes and from corporate fund-raising tied to hospitality packages, according to Atlanta Sports Council executive director Dan Corso. The Georgia Legislature and Atlanta City Council in 2011 raised the city’s hotel-motel tax from 7 percent to 8 percent with the additional 1 percent designated for attracting major sports events, conventions and other special events.
Part of the reason Atlanta’s bid committee, which includes representatives of the Falcons, the Sports Council, the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, prefers the 2019 Super Bowl is the timing of the two marquee events already committed to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The Super Bowl “fits best for the stadium if it shows up in 2019 because in 2018 we’ve got the college football championship game and in 2020 we’ve got the Final Four,” McKay said. “But it is way too big of an event to not put our hat in the ring whenever they will let us.”
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