You've heard a lot about the budget for the new Falcons stadium, which carries a massive price tag that has grown continuously over the past several months, and you may have wondered whether the Falcons would actually get this thing open in time for the 2017 season. There's still time to worry about that, but publicly the team isn't concerned, and they made a point of telling reporters touring the site exactly that.
"When you look at the change orders -- $200 million in change orders -- it's principally in steel from the complexity of design,'' McKay said. "That's where that [cost] is. We knew that was coming. We've seen it coming. When we decided to do the one-stadium solution and do a downtown solution on a complex site ... this site was complex.
It would not be an utter disaster if McKay's confidence is misplaced, at least for the Falcons, so long as they can open up the 2017 season in the stadium. The contingency plan is to have the Falcons play all their preseason games on the road if there are any further delays, which is very obviously less than optimal for the team when you consider that they'll be playing eight road games in the regular season no matter what happens. At this point, besides the oft-mentioned complexity of the building and the site, there's no particular reason to doubt that this stadium will be open on June 1, so we'll hope that's the case.
Thoughts about the new stadium?