CNN Vacating Omni Complex

[dmccall]

The massive Omni project was built 50 years ago and almost immediately sought bankruptcy protection. Thankfully, in 1987, Ted Turner stepped in and committed his quickly growing CNN company to anchor the thing. However over the last 20 years, I could sense the air escaping from it in my annual visit, and now the new Warner Brothers Discovery-led CNN has elected to pull out of the Omni completed and consolidate all of the operations at the more suburban Techwood campus.

CNN camouflaged the underlying problem here well, for a very long time. The superblock there has seen two Undergrounds, two world-class football stadiums, and two basketball arenas. The amount of money Atlanta has dumped here in the last 50 years is astonishing, and it isn't going to stop any time soon.

The massive projects there have never been integrated into the downtown experience, like projects in Midtown, and has collectively stood as a giant vacuole only serving tourists and event-driven locals. Meanwhile MARTA-ignoring, gentrified and brownfield developments like West End and the Krog areas are organically thriving.

How does Atlanta overcome this black hole? Is it a crime issue? Is it a creepy, elevated concrete problem? Is it the lack of any new organic development to the south and west? Is it the occasional massive traffic swells?