Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407300012
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ATLANTA, GA. LENGTH: Long
The crane business is on the rise here.
This city's subterranean retail district remains the best-known Underground in Georgia's capital, but what's going on below the earth to prepare for the Games of the XXVIth Olympiad has Atlanta growing down as well as up.
The center of the Atlanta Games, which open July 19, 1996, will be the 85,000-seat Olympic Stadium and the adjacent Olympic Cauldron, which will flicker between the new oval and Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
With a little less than two years remaining before the Atlanta Games and 54 weeks into construction, only steel emerges from the earth on the site of what will be a $209 million stadium - which will be the track and field (athletics) venue and, starting in 1997, the home of baseball's Atlanta Braves.
``It doesn't look like much has been done at the stadium site,'' said Bob Brennan, press chief of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. ``It's on schedule though. There's $15 million worth of stuff underground.''
The Olympic Stadium not only is the biggest of the venues for the fourth Summer Games staged in the United States, it's also the most unusual. After the Games, the seating at one end of the stadium will be dismantled, leaving a 48,000-seat ballpark for the Braves.
The new stadium will occupy what used to be a parking lot on the south side of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. When 40 percent of the seating is removed, a grassy park area will be built, in addition to an office complex for the National League club. Then, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium will be torn down, restoring needed ballpark parking.
The bridge and tower from the Olympic Stadium to the cauldron, designed by American public artist Siah Armajani, will be left standing and will span Ralph D. Abernathy Avenue, which curves between the two stadium sites. It used to be Georgia Avenue, and it used to be straight.
Most of the Olympic venues already exist, but the construction and renovation under way is impressive. More than $30 million is being spent at Stone Mountain Park, site of archery, tennis and cycling, which will be held at a removable velodrome. A 12,000-seat tennis stadium is being built so that when the Atlanta Games are finished, an 8,000-seat facility for national tennis events will remain. Two grandstand courts and 13 competition courts with a combined total of 14,500 seats complete the facility.
The Georgia Tech campus will be a major Olympic hub. The Olympic Village, housing most athletes and Games officials - a total of about 15,000 - will be on the 320-acre campus. Boxing will occupy Tech's basketball arena, Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Behind what is now a student athletic center, construction of a 15,000-seat natatorium has begun.
The $15 million Olympic Aquatic Center project includes a diving pool, a separate water polo facility and an outdoor Olympic pool under a roof. After the Games, the facility will be given by the ACOG to the university. About 5,000 seats will remain after the Olympics, giving the Yellow Jackets the capability of holding NCAA and ACC championship events.
Much of the other site development for the Games is taking place on the connecting campuses of the Atlanta University Center. The predominantly black colleges - Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College and its School of Medicine, Morris Brown College, Spelman College and the Interdenominational Theological Center - will boast several new facilities.
Morris Brown will be the field hockey championship site, and after the Atlanta Games the facility will stand as a new 15,000-seat football stadium. Another 5,000-seat stadium for field hockey will be built on the adjoining Clark campus. A 6,000-seat basketball arena for preliminary-round games is being constructed on the Morehouse campus, which will keep the facility.
A drug-testing laboratory, broadcast center, supplemental athletic facilities and a continuing education center will be spread among the campuses. All will remain as part of those schools after the Games.
Much of the competition will be within a short walking distance for spectators, starting with six sports at the Georgia World Congress Center, the second-largest convention center in the nation, behind Chicago's McCormick Place. The World Congress Center will be the site for weightlifting, judo, fencing, team handball, table tennis and wrestling.
Next door is the 71,500-seat Georgia Dome, which will be curtained in half, leaving 32,000 seats each for basketball and gymnastics. On the other side of the World Congress Center is the 16,000-seat Omni, home of the NBA's Hawks and for these Olympics, volleyball. The Atlanta University Center sites are less than a mile away.
Walking in another direction, it's only one mile to the two stadiums for baseball and track and field.
These are the 19 competitions scheduled inside the ``Olympic Ring,'' within a 1.5-mile radius of the World Congress Center, which is regarded as the Olympic Center. Stone Mountain Park is 17 miles from the Olympic Center. The shooting venue, the Wolf Creek Trap & Skeet Range, is a 19-mile drive. Georgia International Horse Park gets the equestrian events; it is 33 miles from downtown Atlanta.
The long-distance venue is soccer, which will hold its finals ``between the hedges'' on the University of Georgia campus at 86,000-seat Sanford Stadium. The Athens site has the largest capacity in the Games. The soccer preliminary sites are Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., the Orange Bowl in Miami and RFK Stadium in Washington, a 642-mile stretch from the Olympic Center.
While this construction and planning continues, the ACOG finds itself in the air about the preliminary-rounds volleyball venue at the Galleria Sports Centre in Cobb County. The county has enacted an anti-gays ordinance, and former Olympic champion diver Greg Louganis has been the most prominent athlete to voice his objection to the site.
Recent newspaper reports said the ACOG is seeking a new volleyball site, with college facilities in Macon and Athens the most likely venues. There also have been some logistical problems with the yachting and beach volleyball venues in Savannah, mostly tied to athletes' housing.
Other sports venues are out of town, too, but a tour two years before the cauldron is lit drives home a notion that the Atlanta Games might be best seen on foot.
by CNB