The Georgia Dome was a domed stadium in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta between downtown to the east and Vine City to the west, it was owned and operated by the State of Georgia as part of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. Opened in 1992, it was then the second-largest covered stadium in the world by capacity, behind the Pontiac Silverdome. Though the Georgia Dome was a profitable facility, its primary tenant, the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League, grew dissatisfied with it less than two decades after its opening and began planning for a replacement stadium. It was closed and demolished in November 2017.
In addition to the Falcons, the Georgia Dome was also the home of the Georgia State University Panthers football team. It hosted two Super Bowls (XXVIII and XXXIV), 25 editions of the Peach Bowl (January 1993 – December 2016) and 23 SEC Championship Games (1994–2016). In addition, the Georgia Dome also hosted several soccer matches since 2009 with attendances over 50,000. In its 25 years of operation, the Georgia Dome hosted over 1,400 events attended by over 37 million people. The Georgia Dome was the only stadium in the United States to host the Summer Olympics, Super Bowl and NCAA men's basketball Final Four. The Georgia Dome also hosted WrestleMania XXVII with The Rock as the host, and it was the biggest event in the venue. John Cena vs The Miz was the main event for the WWE Championship.
The Georgia Dome's successor, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, was built adjacent to the south and opened on August 26, 2017. The Georgia Dome was demolished on November 20, 2017.
History
Facility information The Georgia Dome was completed in 1992 in time for the 1996 Summer Olympics at a cost of $214 million, making it one of the largest state-funded construction projects in Georgia history. The stadium seated 71,228 for football, approximately 80,000 for concerts, and 71,000 for basketball when the stadium fully opened and 40,000 for basketball and gymnastics when the stadium was sectioned off (one half closed off by a large curtain). For most Georgia State football games, the dome was configured with 28,155 seats, with tickets for only the bulk of the lower level and the club-level seats on sale. The record for overall attendance at the Georgia Dome came during a college football game, with 80,892 at the SEC Championship Game in 2008.
The Dome had 5,740 club seats and 171 luxury boxes. The executives suites fit 16-24 people, while eight super-suites added in 2007 were capable of accommodating 57-96 guests. There were also four restaurants/bars. There were 12 escalators and 9 elevators.
The structure was located on of land; the Dome had a height of , a structure length of , a structure width of , and a total floor area of . The stadium was the largest cable-supported dome in the world. Its roof was made of teflon-coated fiberglass fabric and had an area of . From its completion until the December 31, 1999, opening of the Millennium Dome in London, it was the largest hooked domed structure of any type in the world. Matt Hartley Lighting, LLC designed the lighting for the concourse of the Georgia Dome.
Surface The Georgia Dome originally used AstroTurf artificial surface for its football events. In 2003, Arthur Blank, the new owner of Atlanta Falcons, funded the installation of the new infilled FieldTurf artificial surface system.
Renovations In 2006, the Atlanta Falcons and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority announced a $300 million renovation to the Georgia Dome. The project was separated into two stages. The first stage, which took place before the 2007 NFL season, focused on updating the premium seating areas, including the creation of eight 'super-suites' as well as an owners' club, most of them now incorporating new plasma televisions. In 2008, the exterior of the stadium was repainted, replacing the original teal and maroon color scheme with a red, black, and silver theme to match the Falcons' team colors; the stadium's original teal seats were replaced with red seats in the lower and upper levels and black seats in the middle level. The entrance gates and concourses were also renovated and updated before the 2008 football season. In 2009, the video screens in both end zones were relocated to a new exterior monument sign on Northside Drive. The interior end zones each received a new and considerably wider HD video screen that significantly enhanced views of replays, as well as graphics and digital presentations. A new sound system was installed in the same year, replacing the previous system that was nearly 20 years old.
In 2008, the Georgia Dome started showing safety videos before games, presented by Deltalina, flight attendant "mascot" of Delta Air Lines. The videos satirize Delta's massively popular "Deltalina" inflight safety videos. The videos' theme was "Delta Safety First"."Delta, Official Airline of the Atlanta Falcons", Delta Air Lines, September 26, 2008
Major weather-related issues Three years after the completion of the Dome, the integrity of its roof became an issue. During a Falcons pre-season game on August 11, 1995, a severe thunderstorm caused water to pool on the fabric, tearing part of the material, and causing a section of the roof to fall into the stadium. The storm was intense enough that the roof panels could be seen moving during the game, and the roof material fell with enough force to smash seats and knock holes in concrete floors. The collapse occurred after fans left the stadium, and no one was injured during the incident. The roof was eventually repaired in a way that prevented similar incidents from occurring in the future.
In the 2008 Atlanta tornado outbreak on March 14, 2008, during the 2008 SEC men's basketball tournament, an EF2 tornado ripped holes in the dome and damaged panels along the side of the structure during the Alabama–Mississippi State quarterfinal game, delaying the game for over an hour. The quarterfinal game to follow between the Kentucky Wildcats and Georgia Bulldogs was postponed until the following day. The resulting damage forced the rest of the tournament to be moved to the Alexander Memorial Coliseum, now known as McCamish Pavilion, at Georgia Tech.<ref name="ajctornado">Tornado Kills, 2 Pummels Downtown by Tim Eberly and Paul Shea for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 15, 2008. Retrieved March 15, 2008.</ref>
Final years and replacement
In 2010, the Georgia World Congress Center Authority announced plans for a new stadium just south of the Georgia Dome. At the time, the Georgia Dome had just completed a major update and was still relatively young. The Dome had been designed specifically for football while a handful of NFL teams still made do with multi-purpose stadiums shared with MLB teams; plus, the Dome had plenty of luxury suites and premium seating which were important revenue-generating features lacking other older venues which made them obsolete. Nonetheless, sports economist Rod Fort noted that pro sports team owners "thought they could get away with demanding new" stadiums every year with public money; plus, the Falcons did not have control of the Dome nor the profits, which made them less competitive than other teams that owned state-of-the-art facilities. In addition, Arthur Blank "wanted a state-of-the-art facility for his NFL and MLS teams and was willing to pitch in a huge amount of money to make it happen", as well as wanting to host another Super Bowl. Also with the Atlanta climate the Falcons long desired to play outdoors in either an open-air stadium or retractable roof stadium rather than inside a dome. At the time it was planned to retain the Georgia Dome to continue hosting non-NFL events.
In justifying the need for a new venue, Falcons CEO and president Rich McKay said that the Georgia Dome "was a really functional building that served its purpose very well. We did not want to build a better Georgia Dome. That was not the object. If we would have done that, we would have renovated the Georgia Dome. We really wanted to change the game and do it for a long, long time." Stadium general manager Scott Jenkins described the new stadium's advantages over the Dome, saying "The LED displays we have, whether it's every seat is two-inches wider than the Georgia Dome, almost all the concourses connect so you can circumnavigate the building, you don't get cut-off. You can move vertically throughout the building, we have really wide staircases, we have twice the elevators, twice the escalators compared to the Georgia Dome". McKay said of it, "The architecture, I think, speaks for itself. I hope the first time you're in it, yeah, you're wowed by the architecture, but more wowed by the fan experience." SB Nation noted that while the "Georgia Dome did its job for 24 years...it wasn't anything special. That's not the case with [the Mercedes-Benz Stadium]. Walking up to it feels like you're approaching a darn spaceship".
The new stadium, which would be known as Mercedes-Benz Stadium, received approval from the city of Atlanta, Fulton County, and Georgia state governments in 2013. Construction commenced and ground was broken in 2014.
The Falcons' final game in the Dome was the 2016 NFC Championship Game on January 22, 2017, with a 44–21 victory over the Green Bay Packers, that sent the Falcons to their second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. The stadium's final public event took place on March 4 and 5, 2017, with back-to-back Monster Jam shows.
Demolition Shortly after the Georgia Dome's closing, a group presented a petition to the governor's office to save the stadium from demolition, arguing that it was still in good condition and that its loss would be wasteful. While the Falcons initially sought an open-air stadium to complement the Georgia Dome, GWCCA officials ultimately concluded that maintaining two 70,000-seat stadiums was not financially feasible, and the Georgia Dome's fate was already sealed when Mercedes-Benz Stadium was approved in 2013.
Demolition of the Georgia Dome was intended to begin shortly after the stadium's final event; however, due to construction delays caused by the complexity of Mercedes-Benz Stadium's eight-panel retractable roof, demolition of the Georgia Dome was postponed until the new stadium's certificate of occupancy could be issued. GWCCA officials stated that the Georgia Dome would remain nominally operational until Mercedes-Benz Stadium was ready; however, the Dome's artificial turf had been removed and its offices vacated prior to the announcement of the new stadium's delay.
On June 9, 2017, Steve Cannon, CEO of the Falcons' parent company AMB Group, stated that construction officials were confident that Mercedes-Benz Stadium would be ready in time for the Falcons' first preseason game, and the process of decommissioning the Georgia Dome had resumed, with the Dome scheduled for implosion on November 20, 2017, at 7:30 am EST.
In July 2017, GWCCA officials removed equipment they intend to reuse either at Mercedes-Benz Stadium or elsewhere on the GWCC campus while other equipment was liquidated by sealed bids. Most of the seats in the lower and middle bowls were sold in bulk to high schools and colleges while pairs were sold to individuals; most of the upper bowl seats were recycled. The stadium's lower bowl and loading docks were demolished by mid-August. From September 16 to 30, 2017, memorabilia from the Georgia Dome was sold in an online auction format by Schneider Industries.