Deadline Up for Turner Field; Georgia State is In Play

Time's up, well-capitalized visionaries! Put your pencils down and close your books, the city isn't taking any more proposals for would-be changes to Turner Field — probably. The deadline for proposals was Friday, but that doesn't mean all details in any given plan are final. The mayor and representatives of the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority have said the process will take months, lasting well into next year.
That's good news for community advocates who have criticized the city for opening up the Request for Proposals without seeking more input from the surrounding neighborhoods or waiting for the area's Livable Centers Initiative study to be completed. Mayor Kasim Reed and AFCRA Director Keisha Lance Bottoms have reiterated that the process of choosing and modifying a proposal will take longer than the LCI, and that information will be used in whatever new development comes to Turner Field. Input from the LCI was actually built into the RFP.
The process of choosing a proposal will be secret until after a proposal is chosen, so there won't be a definitive answer on how many different plans were proposed and who proposed them for a while. But, that hasn't stopped one group — cough (Georgia State) cough, cough — from confirming it submitted all the necessary paperwork. The most recent idea from the university involves turning the stadium into a large mixed-use development and building a new, smaller stadium at the northern end of the site. It shall be interesting to know what that vision is competing against.

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