Is Bernie Marcus taking cues from the Columbian Exposition of 1893 to transform Atlanta into a major tourist destination?
When he proposes building a massive, classically-inspired “White City” or replicas of the Nina, Pita or Santa Maria, we’ll know I was right.
J_T
FM Fats
s
Brad
Darenw
Demanda
FM Fats
Steve
Meg
Can We Talk?
Judd
AMB
Parker Cross
decaturite16
FM Fats
well it’ll be fine with me. more tourists= more people = more tax money to fund public safety to correct levels.
By the way, as I posted in another thread this week, I’m currently reading “The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson and it’s a fantastic book on the1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
I read that a year or two ago and loved it. As did most of my family. Highly recommended for anyone else out there who’s interested.
Yes, terrific book. In fact, my favorite part was the decision about the Ferris Wheel and reading about some of the alternative engineering proposals.
Another great one sort of around the same subject is Pynchon’s Against the Day.
A giant pita sounds yummy!
This may sound a little crazy, but hey, it’s the internet. After the tornado that hit Atl a couple of years ago and cracked the Peachtree Plaza Hotel windows, didn’t someone advance a theory that Centenial Park has created wind conditions that help a tornado to spawn?
I love that…the Ninja, the Pita, and the Santa Margherita…
I’d ride that all the time!!
The AJC article has been updated and it sounds like Mr. Marcus wouldn’t be putting up any money for this particular project. It was actually a meeting spurred by the folks who built the London Eye. They’d need $200 million to build it and it would be as tall as the Bank in America Tower (!).
While I doubt it’ll get built, the thought of it going on the Pemberton Place (World of Coke and Aquarium) property hopefully will get everyone to step back and give a bit more thought to where some of the new attractions are going to be located.
The Center for Civil and Human Rights really should not be in Pemberton Place. Fish and fizzy sugar water aren’t really a good match for that museum. Wouldn’t it make more sense to build it on the property on Luckie Street that was the potential site for the NASCAR museum and more recently the College Football Hall of Fame? The new street car is going to go right past it, so the CCHR would have an easy connection to the King Center. Put the College Football Hall of Fame in Pemberton Place. It’s a much better fit for the attractions there. And should the ferris wheel get built, it could go in the common space between the three attractions.
I realize that Coca-Cola donated the land to the CCHR and Coke might want it in Pemberton Place for reasons of public relations but it just seems like the other side of the park with the street car connection to the King Center makes more sense rather than it sitting in what might soon include a wax museum, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, the Pirate museum, and of course the World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium. Since dirt hasn’t been turned on these projects and they’ve been delayed at least a year, Atlanta has a chance to step back, rethinking the locations of these attractions and get it right.