The Atlanta Games are, fact, expected to be the biggest ever. They’ll mark the centennial of the modern Olympics and will be the first Summer Games in the Eastern time zone-television, with or without Ted Turner, may reach 3 billion viewers. Some of the groundwork has already been laid. A new 70,000-seat domed stadium, future home of the NFL Falcons, will open in August; during the Games it will house gymnastics and basket. ball. Olympic caps and shirts have been on sale for more than a year. Volunteers are planting the first of 5,000 trees downtown to provide shade for the expected 2 million visitors.
Not everything is peachy, though. Plans for a second new stadium have been controversial. By next month the ACOG hopes to commission a design for the $200 million, 85,000-seat Olympic Stadium. The Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, home of the Braves baseball team, would be torn down-the team gets the new facility after the Olympics. But so far the team and ACOG haven’t struck an agreement. And neighborhood groups who don’t like the idea of long-term construction for yet another stadium in Summerhill, the city’s oldest black neighborhood, may put up a fight. “What’s wrong with the old stadium?” complains longtime community activist Ethel Mae Mathews.
The city is trying to spread the Olympic gold. Most of the Olympic venues will be concentrated within a three-mile “Olympic Ring” spreading from the old stadium to the Georgia Tech campus. Mayor Maynard Jackson has ordered a detailed strategy for upgrading those neighborhoods. The ACOG pledged that the Games will go on without public funds, and organizers have targeted about 20 corporate sponsors to raise $750 million for the projected $1.4 billion enterprise. And despite the fact that only Los Angeles has staged an Olympics without losing money, Atlanta officials are predicting an estimated $132 million surplus.
Atlantans aren’t ignoring Barcelona. Payne will lead a delegation of about 100 people to Spain-most of them armed with video cameras and ordered to shoot anything that could be used to enhance 1996’s production. But Atlantans seem confident they know what they’re doing. Says Payne, “I think this will prove to be the most important peacetime event to occur in the United States in the 20th century.” Let the hype begin.
