Atlanta Olympic Stadium Facing Demolition

(ATR) The largest physical legacy of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics will be gone with the wind after barely 20 years of existence.

Centennial Olympic Stadium, which was converted into a baseball park and reopened in 1997 as Turner Field, will be demolished once the Atlanta Braves desert it in 2016. The Braves announced plans Monday to build a $672 million complex in the city's northern suburbs, which they say is closer to their fan base.

Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed wasted no time in pronouncing a death sentence for the stadium, which was named for media tycoon Ted Turner, the former Braves owner, and nicknamed "the Ted."

"We're going to have a master developer that is going to demolish the Ted and we're going to have one of the largest developments for middle-class people that the city has ever had," Reed said Tuesday.

The city of Atlanta got the stadium for free after the Olympics, with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and the Braves paying to retrofit it from an 85,000-seat stadium to a baseball field seating about 50,000.

News of the demolition was a shock to those who viewed the conversion of the Olympic stadium as a blueprint for avoiding white elephants.

"This is a tragic moment for the Olympic Movement," George Hirthler, author of Atlanta’s Olympic bid books, tells Around the Rings. "Centennial Olympic Stadium, the Ted, was probably the finest sustainability case study across the course of the last 20 years of the Olympic Movement."

The Braves said that they will leave after their 20-year lease expires. They said staying at Turner Field would cost $150 million in infrastructure improvements, such as new seats and better lighting, plus at least $200 million to enhance the fan experience.

Reed said the city would have had to take on $150 million to $250 million in debt to keep the Braves. Suburban Cobb County countered with a $450 million deal to lure the team. Cobb County was originally supposed to be a 1996 Olympic venue. In the wake of protests a resolution condemning homosexuality, the preliminary volleyball competition was moved to nearby Athens. The torch relay also bypassed the county.

The Los Angeles Times wrote that with Turner Field originally costing $209 million and being torn down 21 years later, that comes to $9.5 million a year, "about the price of a solid No. 3 starter."

"It was built for three weeks’ use, and a lot of the things done were not overly forward-thinking," said Derek Schiller, the Braves’ executive vice president for sales and marketing. Derek's father, Harvey, is a former executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and member of the ACOG board of directors.

Schiller said the Braves spent $125 million to maintain Turner Field.

The fate of the Olympic cauldron is unclear. The cauldron, whose controversial design has been compared to a French fry container, was moved from the stadium to a location up the street following the stadium conversion. It now sits in a small plaza near a highway overpass.

There has been talk of moving the cauldron in the past, and with the stadium gone, it would lose its anchor to the area.

Written byKaren Rosen

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