Centennial Olympic Park’s overhaul could include expansion, new events space, larger amphitheater

• Georgia World Congress Center Authority
• Behold, the new and improved Centennial Olympic Park!

Officials responsible for overseeing Centennial Olympic Park want to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1996 Summer Olympics with new improvements to the 21-acre greenspace.

Frank Poe, executive director of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, earlier this week shed some light on a proposed $46.5 million overhaul of Centennial Olympic Park. Poe told attendees of this week’s Northwest Community Alliance meeting that GWCCA board members were in the early stages of a “refresh” of the park to better connect to the rest of Downtown.

“The goal really is to open the park,” Poe said. “When it was initially constructed, the area surrounding it looked a lot different than they do today. So we’re really trying to open the park back up to the neighborhood and not make it as closed off in that regard.”

Poe said the GWCCA has begun approaching different metro Atlanta foundations for contributions and plans to work with the park’s original architects and planners. He said the public-private partnership that has helped build and operate the park over the past 20 years would continue.

More than $60 million in private-sector funds were originally donated for the park’s initial construction leading up to the 1996 Olympic Games. The state has since contributed another $57 million in operations and capital improvements.

If the GWCCA can secure enough funds, Poe said, the agency would make several key changes to the park’s design and layout. At the corner of Park Avenue and Baker Street, the park’s operations center could be turned into a private-events space. Across the street, GWCCA would partner with the PATH Foundation on a long-planned “bike depot” for bicyclists traveling into and across Downtown. The amphitheater near Marietta Street and Centennial Olympic Park Drive could also get a facelift, boosting its capacity up to 2,000 people.

One of the biggest changes, however, won’t be to the current park. The GWCCA is hoping to expand the greenspace by purchasing the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s headquarters off of Andrew Young International Boulevard, knocking down the building, and turning the property into parkland. Poe declined to say how much the sale would cost. Fulton County property records show the nearly one-acre parcel of land and the MAC building has a total value of $2.47 million.

MAC Senior Vice President of Communications Bari Love confirmed with CL that the talks were still ongoing. She said the GWCCA first approached the chamber in early 2014 about their redevelopment plans for Centennial Olympic Park and the surrounding area. MAC officials have not determined where they would relocate the business group if the building is sold.

“The GWCCA has plans for a transformative project to create a corridor from the edge of the hotel district all the way to the new College Football Hall of Fame,” Love writes in an email.

Poe said the park renovation and expansion plans could one day be followed by an effort to “expand the footprint” toward the hotel district. But first, GWCCA board members will assess the findings of a feasibility study on the fundraising process. That’s expected to be available sometime next month.