Friendship Baptist Church still in talks with city over proposed stadium deal

• Joeff Davis
• Friendship Baptist Church

Despite reports this week that officials involved in choosing the new Atlanta Falcons stadium location have turned their attention toward an alternate site, Friendship Baptist Church is still ready to make a deal.

“We are still in talks,” the chairman of Friendship’s board of trustees, Lloyd Hawk, told Maria Saporta of Saporta Report. “We are not doing anything to hinder the process, and we are working towards a solution with the Falcons and the city.”

Saporta Report and the AJC respectively reported on Tuesday that the Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s Stadium Development Committee and the Falcons were ready to begin taking a closer look at the north site located on the corner of Northside Drive and Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard due to unsuccessful negotiations to close a deal on the south site, where Friendship Baptist Church and Mt. Vernon Baptist Church sit, by the looming Aug. 1 deadline.

Of course, the south site has been trumpeted by the city as the prime location due its closer proximity to two MARTA stations and a proposed multimodal passenger terminal. Although the Falcons aren’t ready to give up on the south site, the decision to begin serious consideration of the north site was “one of prudence,” Kim Shreckengost, executive vice president of AMB Group, the Falcons’ parent company, told the AJC on Tuesday.

The differing status reports emerging from camps on either side of this potential south site deal one week before the proposed deadline is indicative of a negotiation process that has been highly politicized and publicized from the start.