The 1.4 billion-dollar Mercedes-Benz Stadium replaced the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta. In addition to being the home of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United FC, the stadium will host the usual array of major events and concerts. One of its debut events was Super Bowl LIII following the 2018 season.
Like most others, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium is surrounded city surface streets already crowded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. To help ease the congestion between the stadium and its nearest transit station, Georgia Bridge and Concrete build an elevated pedestrian bridge over one of Atlanta’s busier streets. The space available for this bridge was relatively small, and the elevation required to clear the traffic relatively high. Rather than build a short bridge with steep inclines, or escalators that would act as bottlenecks, CPL designed the bridge with 260’ of long looping ramps of gradual slope. In keeping with the modern open design of the stadium itself, they clad the bridge in angular panels of perforated aluminum, supported by a crisscrossing network of framing bars and a series of fabricated metal arches.
Georgia Bridge and Concrete selected us for the decorative metals portion of the scope. Our work includes not only the arched tunnel that crosses the street but also the hand-made, internally-lighted posts and panels of the fencing that lines the ramps, and the decorative cladding that covers the concrete support columns. As a final touch, we also fabricated two small vine sculptures that flank the entrance to the ramp on the transit-station side of the bridge. Since most of the structure is ‘close enough to touch’ and will be subject to high traffic, we powder-coated everything to resist wear, fading, and corrosion. We then attached and assembled it with stainless-steel hardware. With its innovative modern design, color-changing LED lighting, and built-to-last construction this bridge will stand as a visually-striking, architectural landmark for decades to come.
