Goodbye CNN Center

By Guest Columnist MARK ALDREN, a member of the team that launched CNN and past president and current board member of the Atlanta Press Club.

It feels like the loss of an old friend. Although it was common knowledge that the move had been in the works for years, when the official word came that CNN Center would be no more, the news left a pit in my stomach.

I must admit I have great affection for both of CNN’s Atlanta “homes” starting with the original Techwood location where Ted Turner launched Cable News Network in 1980. At that time, skeptics were calling CNN the Chicken Noodle Network and predicting it would meet a quick demise. Instead, it revolutionized broadcast journalism.

After serving on the team that successfully launched CNN, Aldren went on to work with the local Atlanta news departments of WXIA-TV and WGNX-TV. Aldren returned to CNN International in 2008 and served there for 11 years as senior copy editor before accepting a buyout from AT&T in the summer of 2019. Aldren is a past president and current board member of the Atlanta Press Club.

CNN began with a total of just 243 people networkwide. As CNN grew, Turner realized his Atlanta headquarters needed additional space. In 1987, he took great delight in announcing the move downtown to a building known as the Omni Complex. The Omni had briefly housed a quirky indoor amusement park, “The World of Sid and Marty Krofft” and an ice-skating rink. Ted was so filled with glee in making his announcement, he briefly belted out a few lines from Petula Clark’s hit song, “Downtown.” City leaders were ecstatic. Tony Bennett clearly had nothing to worry about.

Over the next three decades, it became clear that Ted Turner was not only a visionary in the field of communications but also for Atlanta. CNN became a leading tourist attraction for the city, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year from all over the world.

Occasionally, if I arrived at work a little early, I would walk by the giant, red CNN logo letters mounted on the sidewalk in front of the building entrance. No matter what time of day or night, there were always people there. Sometimes I would pause, help them take group photos and ask them where they were from. Many of them spoke English, some didn’t. All were excited to be there. They were curious and friendly. The common thread among them was having watched, trusted and learned something from CNN. I could imagine all those people going back to their hometowns, cities or villages and saying, “I visited Atlanta and saw CNN.” How much goodwill is generated in experiences like that?

The area around CNN Center also became a focal point for protesters, apparently thinking that would be their best bet as a place to get attention. The vast majority of those demonstrations were orderly and peaceful. A protest in May 2020; however, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, became violent and left CNN Center with smashed windows and its trademark logo damaged.

CNN Center was resilient and had a knack for bouncing back. But there were a couple of challenges even it couldn’t survive. Then-President Jeff Zucker effectively moved CNN’s headquarters, and much of its live programming, out of Atlanta to New York over the last decade. And CNN’s former parent company, AT&T sold CNN Center to a couple of Florida-based real estate firms. So now CNN will return to the place of its birth – the Turner Techwood campus in Midtown Atlanta. The towering red logo letters will come down and CNN Center will be relegated to history.

There are hundreds of stories we could reminisce about the saga of covering news day in and day out from that building, but that’s for some other time. For now, let’s just say: “So long, CNN Center. And thanks for the memories.”

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