Centennial Olympic Park has stopped hosting big annual music festivals due to the wear and tear on its park grounds.
For about a decade, park administrators actively sought and hosted music festivals such as Shaky Knees, Sweetwater 420 and One Musicfest, drawing tens of thousands of people at a time. But around the time of the pandemic, the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, which has overseen the park since it was built for the 1996 Olympics, had a change of heart.
Jennifer LeMaster, chief administrative officer for GWCC since 2016, said it costs between $2 million to $3 million a year to operate the 22-acre park. Costs include public safety, landscaping, maintenance and staffing. It’s open to the public year-round.
“The park is seen as the front door of the Congress Center,” LeMaster said. “It’s the entrance to the hospitality district and I believe the center of gravity for downtown Atlanta.”
In the years since the park opened, the Coca-Cola Museum relocated from Underground Atlanta and the Georgia Aquarium, the College Football Hall of Fame and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights opened around the perimeter. SkyView Atlanta Ferris wheel opened nearby in 2013.
For its 28-year existence, the park has hosted a variety of galas, corporate functions, concerts and other ticketed events.
“The question comes down to: How often should the park function as a venue versus a park?” LeMaster said. “It’s an art, not a science.”
The GWCCA subsidized the park from its operating budget for the first 15 years. But in the early 2010s, management decided to aggressively pursue events and functions that would help the park pay for itself. And it did for a few years.
The park held eight to 10 big events a year. Among the largest: 2014′s ATLast festival featuring an Outkast reunion, multiple Sweetwater 420 festivals and Shaky Beats and Shaky Knees festivals.
By 2020, however, management decided…
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