Tag Archives: Falcons stadium

Falcons stadium: An uphill fight to right a community beset by wrongs

Date: April 15th, 2013, 7:57 pm

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

That sentence, popularized by President Reagan, could well sum up the first challenge facing the effort to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods around the future Falcons stadium.

From the 2006 shooting death of Kathryn Johnston by Atlanta police during a botched drug raid, to the cheating scandal that touched Bethune Elementary School, to recurrent flooding problems – the neighborhoods of English Avenue and Vine City have seen plenty of efforts to help them either go no where or go awry.

Neighborhood residents have their own share of problems, as well.
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Atlanta City Council passes stadium deal; two approvals down, one to go

Date: March 18th, 2013, 8:50 pm

By Maria Saporta and Dave Williams

Despite pleas from constituents to slow down the train, the Atlanta City Council voted Monday evening 11 to 4 to approve a funding plan for a new $1 billion football stadium in downtown Atlanta.

The City Council vote, which did not go through the normal multi-week committee process, was pushed through on a super fast track on Monday after a six-hour meeting of the whole council.

That approval followed Friday’s unanimous vote by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority that endorsed the new retractable roof stadium for the Atlanta Falcons. Only one more governmental body is needed to approve the deal — the board of Invest Atlanta.
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Revive communities by designing new Falcons stadium on a human scale

Date: March 17th, 2013, 11:05 pm

Part Two: A new football stadium and the surrounding communities

If the first time you don’t succeed, try again.

When the Georgia Dome was developed 23 years ago, setting aside $10 million for the adjacent community — including an $8 million housing trust fund — was seen as a way to address the area’s multiple problems.

But two decades later, the situation has only gotten worse. Population has declined from about 9,000 to 3,000. Nearby blocks that used to be filled with homes are now boarded up or vacant lots, some victims of flooding that could have been caused by run-offs from downtown developments including the convention center and the Georgia Dome.
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Stadium deal: A briar patch with free tickets, wary partners, hardened blight

Date: March 14th, 2013, 11:25 pm

The Atlanta City Council really doesn’t want to be thrown into the briar patch when it comes to its role in the deal for a new Falcons stadium.

As council members realized Thursday, they have no choice but to find a way through the thorny thicket of a deal that they inherited this year from the Georgia Legislature. Their meeting was scheduled for two hours and it lasted five and a half.

A lot of fur went flying. Such as – Why is Invest Atlanta slated to receive free tickets to events in the new stadium when other city entities are barred from accepting such items by Atlanta’s ethics rules?
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To the rescue — City of Atlanta carries the ball for new Falcons stadium

Date: March 10th, 2013, 6:37 pm

Part One: The politics of the new Atlanta Falcons stadium deal

Once again, the City of Atlanta is leading the way.

The tentative agreement reached between the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Falcons holds great significance — far beyond the building of a new home for one of the state’s top professional sports teams.

The agreement is yet one more example that without Atlanta’s leadership, Georgia would have been stuck in reverse.

There are too many examples to name.

But here are a few. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, arguably the most important economic engine for the whole state, was and is a creature of the City of Atlanta.
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Tech’s study of Northside Drive could guide improvements in communities near planned Falcons stadium

Date: March 7th, 2013, 11:27 pm

The pending deal for a new Falcons stadium on Northside Drive ensures the road will be a busy corridor for years to come.

As that deal comes together, Georgia Tech graduate students are putting the finishing touches on recommendations that intend to transform Northside Drive into a grand transit boulevard. Tech’s study is to be complete in May.

One goal of Tech’s study is to improve east-west connectivity, from Midtown and Downtown into some forgotten neighborhoods to the west of Northside Drive. The study also calls for improving north-south connectivity to provide a strong spine for future development and mobility that will solidify Atlanta’s core center.
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Stadium deal offers Atlanta biggest opportunity since airport concessions contracts to shape social policy

Date: March 3rd, 2013, 8:07 pm

Atlanta’s role in funding the proposed Falcons stadium provides Mayor Kasim Reed and the Atlanta City Council with their biggest opportunity since the airport concessions contracts to shape social objectives through public investments.

With the city’s airport contracts, the city strongly encouraged joint ventures and required a minimum of 36 percent of contracts be awarded to disadvantaged businesses. In another example of tightly drawn requirements, a group of restaurant contracts required specific types of food to be served – food unique to the American South.
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Atlanta’s new workforce law among possible community agreements to be addressed by city, Falcons

Date: February 21st, 2013, 5:05 pm

A central question facing the Atlanta City Council is how to harness the city’s influence in the proposed deal to help pay for the planned Falcons stadium.

Just this month, the city enacted a new law that seems to require the stadium’s builders to hire a certain proportion of disadvantaged and underemployed residents. Falcons President Rich McKay said the team is committed to such social objectives – and that they will be addressed.

In addition, some on the council want the new stadium to address blight in nearby neighborhoods, specifically along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. However, Councilmember Michael Julian Bond noted that the project can’t be a panacea for, “every social ill under the sun.”
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Atlanta Council looks for ways stadium deal could be required to help residents, nearby neighborhoods

Date: February 20th, 2013, 5:08 pm

In about three weeks, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s staff expects to deliver to the city council the meat of the legislation that will enable the city council to vote to help fund a new Falcons stadium.

Given the level of support for the new stadium voiced by several councilmembers, its evident some of them will spend the next three weeks figuring out how to ensure that community benefits agreements are created to help city residents and the neighborhoods around. Such concerns were a major issue at the council’s four-hour work session Wednesday.

Falcons President and CEO Rich McKay assured the council several times that team owner Arthur Blank is committed to being a good civic partner. McKay emphasized that Penny McPhee, president of the Blank Foundation, will oversee that outreach effort.
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Atlanta City Council set to grill stadium advocates on why city should help finance it by extending hotel tax

Date: February 18th, 2013, 4:21 pm

Advocates of a new football stadium are to get a chance Wednesday to try to convince members of the Atlanta City Council that the city should help build a new facility.

The work session, set for 11:30 a.m., will be the first real opportunity for councilmembers to engage the advocates. Councilmembers already have raised questions about how neighborhoods around the stadium could benefit from its construction and operation.

Without the council’s support, Atlanta’s development authority likely won’t be able to borrow enough money to help build the stadium. No funding source other than the city’s hotel/motel tax has been publicly identified to fill the gap between what the NFL and Falcons are willing to pay, and the actual cost of construction.
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