Atlanta’s Superbowl Prospects Spike
Atlanta’s years in Super Bowl limbo might be over. After the NFL’s grandees – gathered at Buckhead’s Ritz-Carlton – voted this week to award the 2018 Super Bowl to Minneapolis, Falcons owner Arthur Blank and Atlanta officials saw the championship game’s return here in 2019 as nearly a sure thing.
Despite frigid winter weather, Minneapolis beat out favorite New Orleans and Indianapolis for the 2018 game, largely because the Minnesota city is building a gaudy new domed stadium. Minneapolis taxpayers are picking up half of the stadium’s $975 million cost, the AJC reported.
Also this week, the Falcons broke ground on their new publicly supported dome, which will replace the Georgia Dome. So, NFL owners like Dallas’ Jerry Jones were present as Atlanta began its exciting new football era.
The new Atlanta pleasure dome opens in 2017, and with other sites chosen through 2018, 2019 is the first year the NFL championship can return here.
Since hosting the Super Bowl in 2000 – sports fans, can you recall who won and lost? – Atlanta has been shut out of the game. While an ice storm that hit that week was not as paralyzing as last winter’s snow jam here, then NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue renewed the league’s commitment to “warm weather” cities like Miami, Phoenix and New Orleans. The Ray Lewis murder case didn’t help Atlanta’s standing either. But now the incident in Buckhead’s old bar district is all but forgotten, with Lewis returning to a stellar playing career after mild punishment and now holding forth as a prominent ESPN analyst.
Under new commissioner Roger Goodell, the NFL isn’t spooked by bad weather. Besides, global warming makes such unpleasantness more remote. Last year, the Super Bowl was held in an open air stadium in New Jersey and all went well.
So, with Atlanta building a new stadium and weather concerns receding, Atlanta looks like a two-touchdown favorite to land the 2019 game. Also in Atlanta’s favor is Blank’s strong standing among owners, and as shown by the NFL gathering here this week, the convenience of Atlanta’s airport. New Orleans and Indianapolis will probably renew its bids, and cities like Nashville, Phoenix or Dallas could compete as well. But the NFL will likely want to show off Atlanta’s futuristic stadium at the 2019 game.
New Orleans, which has hosted 10 Super Bowls and appeared the favorite to land the 2018 game, is saddled with the aging Superdome, where a power outage disrupted the 2012 Super Bowl. NFL officials claimed the Superdome’s decaying condition played no role in the Crescent City losing out, but the league is known for being highly image conscious. With the Superdome a central image of New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Katrina, no move to replace it is likely to gather steam.
By the way, the St. Louis Rams beat the Tennesee Titans in the 2000 Superbowl in Atlanta. By 2019, that game will seem even more like ancient history.
Supreme Building
Republicans oppose Keynesian spending plans by governments, but the GOP-controlled Ga. Legislature in its recent session approved what could turn into a massive stimulus project.
The AJC’s James Salzer reported this week that the state budget included a little known $7.5 million expenditure to begin site preparation and design work on a new complex for the state’s Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The complex’s eventual cost is expected to soar to around $115 million, Salzer said, although the total won’t be known until the preliminary work is finished. A similar building in Denver cost $250 million, he reported.
Gov. Nathan Deal, battling Democrat Jason Carter for re-election, supports the new judicial complex. While the expenditure is unlikely to rise as an issue in the race, Carter as a state senator did vote against the budget, mainly because he said it provided too little education money. Carter could point to the judicial complex as another example of misplaced priorities.
A Feather for Atlanta
Noted high-tech venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, co-founder of early Web search engine Netscape and a member of Facebook, eBay and Hewlett-Packard’s boards, this week mentioned Atlanta as a tech hot spot, citing Georgia Tech.
Andreessen’s comments in New York Times writer Nick Bilton’s Disruptions blog is a welcome boost for Atlanta’s tech reputation, seen by some as more hype than reality.
With the success of Tech and other incubators, Hypepotamus announced this week that it will close its Biltmore Hotel incubator, as the AJC reported.
