New site being studied for restaurants next to Mercedes-Benz Stadium

“Picture Avalon, or The Battery … pathways to walk, lined with restaurants and entertainment areas,” Joe Bocherer, chief commercial officer at the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, said referring to glitzy suburban entertainment districts.

“We want to look at restaurants and names that people are familiar with in and around Atlanta, local chefs that people are familiar with,” with a mix of grab-and-go options and sit-down restaurants, he said after a committee briefing Tuesday.

The Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s previous plans for an entertainment district on its land were to put the development on the site of the former Georgia Dome where the green space known as the Home Depot Backyard currently sits.

But this year, the authority shifted its focus to the International Plaza, a smaller, 110,000-square-foot location closer to the massive Centennial Yards development across the street, along Centennial Olympic Park Drive. The authority has been meeting with CIM Group, the parent company of Centennial Yards, to discuss plans.

International Plaza “really sits center to everything we’re talking about,” Bocherer said. The move was also driven by the desire to maintain the Home Depot Backyard for parking, especially since the Centennial Yards development has removed a significant amount of parking downtown, he said.

However, the new plan is contingent on due diligence reviews underway, including a structural analysis of the new site, which sits atop the Red Deck between the stadium and convention center. The top of the deck sits at grade with the eastern entrances to Mercedes-Benz Stadium and Buildings A and B of the Congress Center.

Building a development atop a parking deck introduces some complexities, so the analysis will look at how much it would cost to build there — and decide if it’s feasible. About $1 million has been budgeted for the planning process so far, with a proposed increase to about $1.5 million.

Engineers are looking at “what type of structural reinforcement needs to happen,” Bocherer said.

In their early findings, the engineers said part of the site could support two-story buildings, but another area could have only one-story buildings, he said.

The work now seeks to “answer the basic questions here, which is, what can we build?” said Mason Zimmerman, partner at Pope & Land Real Estate, one of the companies selected as part of a developer team along with Fuqua Development and Nelson Worldwide. “What are the limitations?”

That would help determine how much the full project would cost.

A decision on whether to move forward with the project is expected later this year, after reports on traffic, parking, civil and structural analysis are completed by the end of July.

“If it’s, you know, millions and millions of dollars to redo the Red Deck, that may make the project not feasible,” Bocherer said. “We remain hopeful based on early findings that it will be doable. And then we’re going to have to figure out the financing,” which could involve investors or a public-private partnership.

If the project moves forward, plans would be to start construction after the FIFA World Cup ends next summer, and to be ready in time for the Super Bowl in Atlanta in 2028. That could require a phased approach, with part of the project completed before the Super Bowl and part of it starting after.

“Customers have been asking for this for decades,” Bocherer said. Centennial Yards “is really the catalyst that’s going to keep everything moving in downtown for us,” bringing in more residential development and making downtown more of a destination.