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The Olympic Files

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THE CENTENNIAL OLYMPIC PARK: CAPTURING THE SPIRIT, LEAVING A LEGACY

By SAEED AHMED

What looked like a lump of red clay a few month ago, has finally taken shape. And organizers say when it open today, the Centennial Olympic Park will be every bit the grand gathering place Olympic Games CEO Billy Payne originally envisioned.

Set in the heart of the Olympic ring, the 21-acre park is the largest intown park built in the U.S. in the past 25 years. It boasts an 85-foot choreographed water fountain in the shape of five interlocking rings and eight six-story light towers punctuating the borders of its plaza.

Starting next Saturday, the park will offer free entertainment and activities to Olympic visitors.

"This is the first time in the history of the Olympics that a host city will provide quality entertainment and big-name acts to its visitors and residents for free," said Robin Monsky, spokesperson for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG).

The 100,000-plus visitors expected daily can choose from a variety of attractions and sponsor pavilions. These corporate tents offer exhibits toed to the company's products, such as Budweiser's Beer Garden, where visitors can relax in a sports bar atmosphere; and the garish, blue General Motors "Thrill of Motion" theater, which will provide spectators with a life-like feel for the various Olympic activities.

The park also features the three-acre AT&T Global Olympic Village, the largest portable structure in the world. The football-length village houses a broadcasting site for NBC-TV and offers patrons free nightly concerts featuring popular acts such as John Secada, Santana and Chinese superstar Wei Wei.

In addition, AT&T, which paid an estimated $10 million to be the park's presenting sponsor, will use the top two floors of its Global Village to entertain athletes and their families.

"It's a place of refuge (for athletes)," said Edwin Moses, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in track & field. "Sometimes, if you do well, you can't even walk down the streets without getting mobbed."

Along with the corporate tents, the park will offer free outdoor arts festival to give Olympic visitors a taste of the South. The festival, called "Southern Crossroads Festival," will feature hundreds of artists and performers from twelve Southern states.

"We'll be stirring up a gumbo of Southern culture for the Games," said Atlanta-based singer Robert J. Connor, one of the 102 acts chosen to perform. "And our ingredients will be the blues, jazz, cajun, R&B, you name it."

Visitors to the park can also walk on 34,000 personalized, commemorative bricks laid out around the park, or shop at the Superstore, which houses the largest collection of Olympic merchandise anywhere.

The park even has an agricultural exhibit which showcases the state's crop and livestocks.

"Our goal is to educate people about the products they eat and use," said John Beasley, and agronomist working on the exhibit. "Unfortunately, a lot of people from metropolitan areas, their idea if where their food comes form is from Piggly Wiggly or Winn-Dixie."

After the Olympics, the park will be turned over to the state of Georgia and managed by the Georgia World Congress Center. Sherman Day, managing director of physical legacy for ACOG, hopes the GWCC will have an easier time raising the dollars for final phase of the park's development -- which includes planting grass, laying additional bricks and building a stream -- than ACOG did.

Since the inception of the project, the Centennial Park has been beset with financial woes. Plans for an 8,500-seat amphitheater was scrapped when a sponsor couldn't be found. The commemorative brick-selling program raised only 60 percent of the needed dollars. And despite a $25 million contribution from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, officials had to turn to private businesses to raise the $50 million for the first phase of the construction.

"The site of the park was chosen so that there is economic and housing development following the Games in an under-utilized and under-developed part of the city," Day said. "For this reason, we hop e that the people of Atlanta will play a part in supporting the Congress Center in whatever steps it tales to make that possible."

Kellie Cannon Holbrook, spokesperson for the Congress Center, echoed Day;s sentiments and said her organization is ready for the task that lies ahead.

"In order for the Centennial Olympic Park to truly leave a lasting legacy, we have to ensure that we not only provide a magnificent gathering place where the visitors can mix with Southerners and experience the friendliness of the South, but we follow it up with economic development so that native Atlanta benefit from and feel like a part of the Games too."