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July 2014: The oldest African-American Baptist church in Atlanta-Friendship Baptist, established after the Civil War in 1866-is demolished to make way for the stadium.Late 2013: The 18-acre “south site” is chosen for the stadium, versus a location in Midtown off Northside Drive.June 2013: Early stadium designs emerge, with one 360 Architecture official opining: “I think it’s going to set the bar.”.Even in torrential rain, Egan said, the majority of seats stay dry.Ĭrucial moments in the creation of Atlanta’s most impressive sporting venue: “We are going to do everything we can to have this roof open as much as possible,” Egan explained.

The petals’ aperture-like motion reveals an oval opening 300 feet across midfield, 388 feet end to end. Cannon, leading a presser, explains that “the roof opening will be part of the theater that will take place before a football game or soccer match.” NFL rules, however, dictate that the roof must not move position, for competitive reasons, during games, unless dangerous weather sweeps through. The petals’ framework, stationary, with the roof closed. The scale of the multi-story video board is impressive from directly behind it. That was never the question.” Catwalks several hundred feet over seating. it was just a question of we didn’t want to run it frequently, because of the drag. “We knew exactly what we needed to do-we just ran out of time before it was time to actually open the building,” he continued. “We came to realize last summer that the had to be equally balanced across the two rails, otherwise it creates drag that would burn out the propulsion system prematurely, which is designed to last 30 years,” Egan explained, in the best layman’s terms he could muster. Have a glimpse below of up-close footage and photos of the roof in action-allowing a skyline vantage like nowhere else in the city.īut first, the million-dollar question: What took so long? A stadium roof in China opens in a similar way, Egan said, but nothing is of comparable scale. Officials on Wednesday led media up a mountain of metal stairs, across harrowing catwalks, and to the base of the great mechanism for a firsthand glimpse of the roof in action. This architectural icon … is coming online, as of today.”Įleven months, 2.5 million guests, 54 ticketed events, a few water leaks, and one College Football National Championship since the stadium opened, the marvel that is the aperture-like roof has been turned over to MBS brass, and it’ll open and close at the push of a single button in a downstairs control room, near the press box. “It’s absolutely no exaggeration to say this is far and away the most complex, intricate, and interesting roof put on a sports complex anywhere in the world,” the stadium project’s senior director, Mike Egan, asserted from a perch suddenly in the sunshine.Īdded Steve Cannon, CEO of AMB Group, the Atlanta Falcons’s parent company: “We’ve got the most unique roof structure in the world, and it is fully functioning to design specifications. And about eight minutes later-four minutes faster than engineers and architects had always predicted-the Mercedes-Benz Stadium roof was fully open, the crowning, albeit delayed achievement of a $1.5 billion project a half-decade in the making Three-hundred feet above Atlanta United’s pitch, a horn blared Wednesday afternoon, eight giant “petals” weighing 500 tons each slid quietly on long tracks-slowly at first, then up to 90 feet per minute-and a jagged, growing oval shined below.Ī cool breeze cut the coliseum’s sweltering, off-limits upper regions.