The future home of the College Football Hall of Fame is under construction in downtown Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has covered developments regarding the attraction’s move here for years:
Sept. 24, 2009: The National Football Foundation announces the Hall of Fame will move from South Bend, Ind., to Atlanta, following a five-year effort led by Chick-fil-A Bowl president Gary Stokan to lure the college football shrine here.
Dec. 2, 2010: A 2.7-acre Georgia World Congress Center parking lot on Marietta Street near Centennial Olympic Park is selected as the site for the Hall of Fame.
June 2011: The scheduled opening date, originally set for fall 2012 and later amended to spring 2013, is pushed back again as organizers struggle to raise the money needed for construction.
Nov. 7, 2011: Stokan steps down as president and CEO of Atlanta Hall Management, the not-for-profit organization created to build and operate the Hall of Fame here.
December 2011: Atlanta lawyer John Stephenson takes over as interim president and CEO.
Feb. 22, 2012: Stephenson says Atlanta Hall Management will re-examine all of its plans amid continued fund-raising challenges. Everything is on the table at this point, including whether to proceed.
Sept. 21, 2012: After a flurry of sponsorship commitments, the decision is made to move forward with construction. Stephenson says $51.5 million in sponsorship deals have been signed and another $22.5 million in bank loans secured. He puts the total cost of the project at $66.5 million, not including $15 million in state funding for a parking deck, road work and a new entrance to the Congress Center's Building A, which is adjacent to the Hall of Fame site.
Dec. 30, 2012: The Hall of Fame facility in South Bend shuts down.
Jan. 28, 2013: Construction begins in Atlanta.
Feb. 4, 2013: Atlanta Hall Management's board of directors says it has removed the "interim" prefix from Stephenson's position as president and CEO.
Aug. 28, 2013: Enshrinement ceremonies for the 2012 major-college (FBS) inductees and 2013 divisional (all levels below FBS) class are held in Atlanta's Omni Hotel, next door to the Hall of Fame construction site. (Note: In a sometimes confusing two-step process, FBS Hall of Famers are "inducted" at a dinner in New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel each December and then "enshrined" the following summer in the Hall of Fame's city.)
December 2013: Construction continues.
Fall 2014: The Hall of Fame is scheduled to open in Atlanta.
— Tim Tucker
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