00:00The Gulch is this area right in the middle of Atlanta, sort of dark, dank, no-man's land, under the
00:08roadway, an extremely difficult, intractable place to develop.
00:14It's a $5 billion project.
00:17It really is going to transform downtown Atlanta.
00:20It was really ambitious. It just looked complicated.
00:23They even start to build one thing.
00:26You'd have to invest $800 million.
00:28You'd have to build these massive structures over active rail lines.
00:33Will people, in fact, come to downtown Atlanta?
00:36Tony and his partners only get that money if they perform.
00:41Atlanta, one of the most dynamic cultural engines in America.
00:46But as metro Atlanta has boomed, its original downtown has been left behind until now.
00:53It's called Centennial Yards. We're building 6 million square feet.
00:56It'll be a million square feet of retail, 5,000 apartments, half a million square foot entertainment district.
01:02It's opening up just as the World Cup is coming here.
01:06With billions on the line, a global deadline approaching, and decades of failure behind it,
01:12Centennial Yards is the biggest gamble Atlanta has made on its downtown in a generation.
01:18I wish we were further along.
01:20The clock is already ticking.
01:34Tony, here we are, State Farm Arena, home of the Hawks.
01:38What's this all about?
01:39The Atlanta community treats MLK weekend as something extraordinarily special.
01:46This is the home of Martin Luther King.
01:55Tony Ressler bought the Atlanta Hawks in 2015 for $850 million and hoped to turn a losing franchise into a
02:02winner.
02:03But bringing life back to the old heart of the city may prove to be an even bigger challenge.
02:09When Martin Luther King came back in 1960, I joined him in 61.
02:14We wanted to establish some kind of new world order where we could wipe out the diseases and stigmas of
02:21the world that divided us
02:23and build one nation, one city under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
02:29In the 1960s, Auburn Avenue anchored a thriving downtown Atlanta.
02:36Professional sports teams were turning Atlanta into their home at the same time that this place was becoming this sort
02:44of cradle of the civil rights movement.
02:47And, oh, Lord, make sacred the memory of Martin Luther King.
02:52After the 1960s, white flight and suburbanization moved power and investment outward from downtown.
02:58And as Atlanta grew, the center of gravity started to shift.
03:04Right after I got in Congress, we started building Highway 285, which circles the city.
03:10You started seeing these other skylines begin to take shape.
03:14My generation coming out of college in the mid-90s, like, Atlanta was the place to be.
03:19Atlanta influences everything, whether it's the hip-hop community or it's Tyler Perry Studios, Fortune 500 companies, or the Atlanta
03:30University Center.
03:31By the 1990s, Atlanta was a city with a growing global footprint.
03:35Winning the 1996 Olympic Games was supposed to bring the world back to downtown.
03:40The summer of 1996, being on that Olympic team, playing in the old Georgia Dome, there was a lot of
03:48optimism for downtown Atlanta in terms of what the Olympics was going to bring.
03:54And I know there was disappointment that it didn't have that impact that everyone thought it could.
04:02When the Games ended, downtown failed to hold on to the Olympic momentum.
04:06Its many notable attractions and neighborhoods still disconnected from one another due to the massive 40-acre swath of abandoned
04:14and undeveloped land.
04:15When the baseball stadium left downtown, which happened just as we purchased the Atlanta Hawks, we had determined then that
04:24we thought downtown Atlanta could be a really remarkable transformation if done properly.
04:31We had an appreciation that there was this rather large parcel referred to as the Gulch.
04:37I guess for the prior hundred years, no one had figured out what to do with it.
04:41The junction of railroads that gave downtown Atlanta its original purpose left an engineering puzzle that no developer had been
04:47able to solve.
04:48You have to build up to get its street grid.
04:51We estimate that costs $400 million.
04:54Second is in the hole, there's no infrastructure.
04:58No electricity, no water, no sewer.
05:01Maybe what, another $300 million?
05:03These railways are still running.
05:05Yeah, this is an active rail line.
05:07That's an active rail line.
05:08The MARTA line runs through right there.
05:10Does that complicate construction?
05:12Extremely.
05:12So everything we build has to be on stilts, essentially 40 feet up to match that level of the viaducts.
05:19When Tony came in, he saw that and he asked what it is when he was coming in to do
05:23due diligence to buy the team.
05:25And explained to him about the railroad and viaducts.
05:27And he said, we're going to build LA Live there.
05:29And I'm like, sure you are.
05:32Early on, Tony Ressler was made aware of that if it was a really inclusive project that underscored the unique
05:40diversity of this city, he stood a chance to be successful.
05:44One of Tony's big partners on this deal is also his partner in the Atlanta Hawks, and that's the legendary
05:51Grant Hill.
05:52I've been in professional sports my entire life.
05:55And to now sort of be a steward of a franchise, in a sense, and have this responsibility, it's important.
06:02Grant played a role in helping Tony assemble this all-star team of investors.
06:07To everyone from Arthur Blank, who owns the Falcons, to 2 Chainz, the famous local rapper.
06:14The Russell family, to John Bryant, to Usher, to Shaq, to Ambassador Andrew Young.
06:20Tony Ressler's a people person.
06:23There's nobody that doesn't love him and believed in him.
06:25And then Tony happens to have a brother named Richard Ressler, who's the chairman and founder of CIM Group.
06:30Our friends at CIM, they had successful developments in Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, that took really large, complicated, downtown developments.
06:39For this to be successful, it wasn't going to be small.
06:43Ressler and the CIM Group would need to convince the city of Atlanta to contribute billions of dollars for centennial
06:49yards to become a reality.
06:51We came together, negotiated a deal.
06:54They said, we will put in the initial investments, so no money from the city.
06:59We said we would issue bonds.
07:02I have to admit, we had support and opposition.
07:06Those who oppose the deal are concerned about the use of tax dollars and how the project will affect affordable
07:11housing.
07:12Affordable housing is probably the biggest challenge that we have as a city.
07:20So when this huge transaction was before me, I had this whole wish list.
07:25I said, I want an affordable housing trust fund, equity ownership for minority participation, and the list went on.
07:33There was an in lieu of contribution that they would have to make if they didn't hit certain numbers towards
07:41affordable housing.
07:42And they didn't hit those numbers, and they had to write a very big check for it.
07:46That allowed us to create this $28 million affordable housing trust fund.
07:51And we got it done.
07:54Hooray!
07:54A Fulton County judge upheld the city's issuance of the bonds, and centennial yards could finally move forward.
08:01We think at the end there's going to be upwards of 10,000 jobs that are going to be created.
08:06We take on no risk.
08:07We put no initial dollars.
08:09And yet together we're going to build the tax base, property tax and sales tax.
08:16If they do not generate the taxes, there's nothing for them to pay themselves back.
08:23Construction began in 2021, and completion is years away.
08:27But another global deadline is much closer, the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
08:32Damn, I wish we were further along.
08:35We're going to have some things built.
08:37We're going to absolutely be able to showcase what we're building.
08:42We have about six separate developments going on simultaneously.
08:47Here we're going to have a 5,300 seat Live Nation concert hall.
08:52Cosm.
08:53Here's the home of the Hawks, right, Jeremy?
08:55And you're literally across the street from State Farm Arena.
08:58Behind us is Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
09:00Access right across the street to this entire establishment.
09:05I just think in the world we're in now, we need to connect.
09:08We need to see we have more in common than not.
09:11I see that all the time in our arena.
09:13Having that downtown, having sports, having entertainment, all of that, that is so important.
09:19It's time for people to come together.
09:21The biggest challenge will be to make sure that all of our communities get to be a part of it.
09:27That it's not this place that people are outside the glass looking in.
09:31Tony Ressler, he's like Hank Aaron, came here when we needed a winner.
09:37Hopefully it will become the axle around which the city will spin.
09:42We've got a vision of the city of the future.
09:58We'll see you next time.
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