Photo from Google Images
On Monday, a piece of sports history was imploded to dust. Atlanta’s Georgia Dome was the only facility in the world to host the Final Four, two Super Bowls, SEC Championships and the Olympics. Hosting over 1,400 events from 1992-2017, the Georgia Dome resulted $7.4 billion dollars in economic impact for the state of Georgia.
After 25 years of hosting events, the Georgia Dome blast collapsed most of the structure in about 15 seconds. According to Morgan Smith-Williams, the spokeswoman for the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, the blast wasn’t strong enough or the charges in the area of the wall didn’t go off. The cleanup process is expected to take at least three months.
As the large cloud of dust is still settling in Atlanta, the city is changing. With Turner Field and now the Georgia Dome no longer the mecca of Atlanta sports, the new and improved venues are hoping that it will improve the success of teams. The Atlanta Falcons have never won a Super Bowl with two appearances. The Georgia Bulldogs haven’t won a National Championship (football) since 1980. It seems as if most Falcons and Bulldogs fans are ready for a brand-new start.
Adjacent from what is left of the Georgia Dome is the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium that opened this past August. The retractable roof resembles a pinwheel or one of those paper-folding fortune teller games you played in elementary school. The design of the eight triangular translucent panels was to create the illusion of a bird’s wings extended when the roof is open. The glass gives it a sleek look and allows the natural light to come in. This is a huge upgrade from how dark the Georgia Dome use to be.
While Atlanta sports fans may not miss all of the sports history in the Georgia Dome, SEC football fans are still holding on the memories. My twin brothers first Tennessee football game was the 1998 SEC Championship game. UT won the SEC Championship and then went on to win the National Championship. That was the last time the University of Tennessee has won an SEC Championship. It feels like they may never get back to those glory days of winning in football or in any sport right now.
When I think about the Georgia Dome, I hear the Ludacris lyrics “I wanna get you in the Georgia Dome on the fifty-yard line, while the Dirty Birds kick for t’ree”. (HA- even Luda knows the Falcons have to kick a field goal instead of going for a TD.) And then I think about the Magnificent Seven of US gymnastics team and the 1996 Olympics. I was in seventh grade and my folder for English class was a picture of the gymnastics team. People used to tell me I looked just like Dominique Moceanu and there wasn’t a four-inch surface (the width of a balance beam) that I didn’t try to do cartwheels on. I remember watching Kerri Strug pull off one of the most iconic American moments in US Olympic history in the Georgia Dome. As a child, I really didn’t understand what it meant to be an American. When Strug nailed her second vault and team USA won their first ever team gold Olympic medal in gymnastics, I felt the pride of the stars and stripes.
Once the Georgia Dome is fully cleared, it will be turned into the Home Depot Backyard. The new, 13 acres of green space is expected to be completed in the fall of 2018, but when has anyone in construction ever completed a deadline on time?