The 25 years of history that the old Georgia Dome attracted to the Peach State may live on forever, but the historic 80,000 seat venue that hosted the 1,400-plus events that made it famous, was brought down to the ground on Monday, November 20. It took nearly 5,000 pounds of explosives to demolish the structure, drawing lots of attention to the Atlanta sports center.
All but a few parts of the 270.67 ft high, 102,149.51 square foot structure crashed to rubble within 15-seconds of the 7:30 am implosion being set off. A little bit of work remains to get some of the erected parts that remain, down, as the Georgia World Congress Center Authority has determined the explosives may not have been strong enough to get it all in one blast. But it is only a matter of time before the standing parts are decimated and a crew moves in for what is estimated will be a three-month clean-up effort.
Onlookers snapped pictures to capture the venue's last surviving moments. During its quarter century as the center of Georgia sports, the dome went from being noted at one time as the world's largest covered stadium to being the only facility to host the NCAA Final Four tournament (2002, 2007, 2013), the Super Bowl (Super Bowl XXVIII and Super Bowl XXXIV), and the Olympics (1996).
In place of the massive structure, the city of Atlanta has plotted out plans to construct green space, a hotel, and a parking lot for the adjacent Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which opened up this past summer.
Source: YouTube
