NFF: ‘All systems are go’ for College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta
Artist's rendering of proposed College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta (Courtesy/Atlanta Hall Management)
The National Football Foundation, which three years ago decided to move its College Football Hall of Fame to Atlanta, received reassurance this week that the long-delayed attraction will be built here.
“I think it’s fair to say that all systems are go,” Steve Hatchell, National Football Foundation president and CEO, said.
Hatchell offered that assessment in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the NFF board, at a meeting Wednesday in Dallas, heard an update from the Atlanta group spearheading the Hall of Fame project.
“We were happy with what we heard,” Hatchell said. “… We’ve been after this since 2009 and our guys were very anxious to be able to say, ‘Things are really going to happen.’ And that was the report we got.”
John Stephenson, interim CEO of Atlanta Hall Management, the non-profit entity formed to build and manage the downtown football shrine, reported to the NFF board that enough sponsorship and loan commitments have been secured to proceed with construction.
Recent votes by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority board and Georgia’s State Properties Commission have cleared the way for construction to begin on GWCCA/state property near Centennial Olympic Park, Stephenson told NFF board members.
“They’ve been waiting very patiently to hear the news we got to deliver to them … that the project is green-lighted,” Stephenson said.
He reported to the NFF board that Atlanta Hall Management has signed contracts for $51.5 million in sponsorships — $43 million of it to be collected before the facility opens — and has lined up $22.5 million in bank loans. AHM hasn’t named the sponsors publicly, saying companies want to announce on their own timetables.
Stephenson put the cost of the project at $66.9 million. That doesn’t include $15 million in state funding that the GWCCA, a state agency, expects to secure for a parking deck, road work and a new entrance to the Congress Center’s Building A, which is adjacent to the hall site. The site is the Congress Center’s 2.7-acre “Green” parking lot on Marietta Street.
The next steps, Stephenson said, are to complete architectural drawings and set a date to begin construction. Originally targeted to open this year and later targeted for 2013, the Hall of Fame now plans an opening in late 2014.
“I think we all got frustrated with the timing on it,” said Hatchell, referring to the delays. “… But I never really felt — and I don’t think a lot of our guys felt — that it was in jeopardy.”
Fund-raising problems were the major cause of delay. Amid those problems, the project underwent a leadership change late last year, when Stephenson, an Atlanta lawyer, took over from Gary Stokan. Early this year, AHM undertook a reexamination of the entire project.
The Dallas-based NFF, which owns the Hall of Fame, voted in September 2009 to move the attraction to Atlanta from South Bend, Ind., where attendance has been poor. The South Bend facility will close by the end of this year. Exhibits will be stored until the hall reopens in Atlanta.
Stephenson was accompanied to the NFF meeting by GWCCA executive director Frank Poe, other GWCCA officials and AHM chairman Steve Robinson, who is Chick-fil-A’s executive vice president of marketing.
– Tim Tucker
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63 comments Add your comment
Not so Casual Observer
October 12th, 2012
8:24 am
As with the other sites in the area, Philips Arena, The Dome, The WCCC and Centennial Park, there is not decent access from the interstae highways.
The surface streets in that area look like bombed-out third world roads and signage is inadequate to direct tourists to the venues now.
Adding more traffic, if the HOF generates interest, will only make a dreadful situation much worse.
Chuck Clausen
October 12th, 2012
9:04 am
The College Football Hall of Fame will be a great attraction for those who might be considering visiting Atlanta. The NFL Hall of Fame is in Canton – in 1976 I was with the Eagles and we played our first preseason game there.
Jambi D.
October 12th, 2012
9:04 am
I don’t know if it will make money or draw tourists but the muggers, weirdos and thugs will love it.
C. Tampa Ironworse
October 12th, 2012
9:12 am
Who is Herschal Galt?
Alabama IS College Football
October 12th, 2012
9:42 am
Tuscaloosa, AL:
THE Capital City of College Football
You all know where this HoF really belongs.
ROLE TIDE !
UA alum
October 12th, 2012
9:44 am
Even people from Alabama (esp. people from Alabama) know it’s Roll Tide, not Role Tide. Jeez!
Nacos
October 12th, 2012
12:17 pm
I hope $cam Newton and the bag man are enshrined ASAP!
WDE ALL IN FAMILY
the Iron Sheik
October 12th, 2012
12:18 pm
Atlanta is nothing but hip-hop thuggery and the smell of human waste while focusing much more on “pro” sports than anything else.
You say it perfectly bubba
Gerald
October 12th, 2012
12:52 pm
Most of the negative comments are coming from:
A) people who dislike sports (the people who say “why can’t this be spent on public education” are ignoring that this will involve very little public money, less than the salaries of administrators for about a dozen schools that aren’t making AYP)
B) people from Alabama (who need to get over the fact that this is going to Atlanta for the same reason that the SEC title game was moved from Birmingham to Atlanta)
C) people from the suburbs who are upset that this is still more evidence that Atlanta isn’t collapsing, “becoming the next Detroit” or anything like that. It’s been over 30 years, and there is still nothing of significance – no tourist attractions, no museums, nothing that anyone who doesn’t live in the Atlanta suburbs would take any interest in, except oh yeah Six Flags I forgot about that – in the suburbs. The Falcons, Braves, Hawks, aquarium, major universities, CDC … all in DeKalb-Fulton. For you guys in the suburbs, you need to work on making your own region more attractive to projects like this instead of rooting for Atlanta to crater in on itself.
Here’s a deal: a major reason why you can’t get projects like this, the aquarium, sports franchises etc. is because YOU HAVE NO TRANSPORTATION. There is no way for out of town visitors to get to it. You don’t have public transportation to speak of. And you also have no commercial airport. What does have both of those? Atlanta. They have Hartsfield. They have MARTA. That is why attractions that rely on patrons from outside the metro Atlanta area will always locate downtown. Put the aquarium, the Braves, this project or whatever else in Gwinnett or Cobb, and people from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Miami etc. wouldn’t be able to get there. It would only be accessible for people who are willing or able to drive there. That’s what you folks refuse to acknowledge. And as long as Atlanta continues to have what the suburbs don’t – transportation that allows people from outside the region and state easy access (not to mention 3 major universities, several smaller but still well known colleges, and all those major employers) – the great Atlanta decline that you keep wishing for isn’t going to happen.
5150 UOAD`
October 13th, 2012
11:05 am
Not so Casual Observer
October 12th, 2012
8:24 am
As with the other sites in the area, Philips Arena, The Dome, The WCCC and Centennial Park, there is not decent access from the interstae highways.
The surface streets in that area look like bombed-out third world roads and signage is inadequate to direct tourists to the venues now.
—————————————————————————
Try MARTA. many fans that come to the games at the dome will fly to ATL and MARTA or Taxi around downtown.
BobDog
October 13th, 2012
11:12 pm
By placing the Hall alongside major tourist attractions and convention facilities, there will be a lot of traffic to draw upon. I think it will be a major success and a point of pride for Atlanta. And yes, I live in Forsyth County.
The Hall will provide some needed jobs, too. And if it isn’t built, it isn’t like the bulk of the money (private funding) would go to hire teachers or provide for the homeless.
Gerald
October 13th, 2012
11:55 pm
Another curiosity:
So many right wing Republican businessmen are still committed to downtown. Bernie Marcus built the aquarium downtown. Arthur Blank has rebuffed the many overtures to relocate the Falcons to Gwinnett or somewhere else OTP, and wants to build a retractable roof stadium downtown (and he supported T-SPLOST). And Chik-Fil-A continues to sponsor the Chik-Fil-A Bowl and other events downtown, and is playing a leading role in getting the college football hall of fame here. So, if these conservative Republicans in private enterprise know the importance of supporting downtown, how come the suburban Republican politicians don’t? Hmmm …
sonny
October 14th, 2012
9:20 am
Mikey D you are so absolutely right! It would be a travesty to the State of Georgia to have such a Hall sitting on her soil if the great Erk Russell was not in it!!!