Georgia Capitol complex to get big makeover – Atlanta Business Chronicle

Georgians soon will have a lot more room to exercise their constitutional rights outside their state Capitol.

The state is planning to spend an estimated $3.3 million to tear down a deteriorating parking deck east of the Gold Dome and turn it into an open plaza big enough to accommodate up to 4,500.

“We’re excited about this,” said Steve Fanczi, deputy executive director of the Georgia Building Authority, who is overseeing the Capitol Plaza project. “It’s going to be a very positive thing for Capitol Hill.”

A separate $3 million project calls for closing to traffic a block-long stretch of Mitchell Street along the south side of the Capitol to provide safer access to the Coverdell Legislative Office Building.

Fanczi said the Capitol hosts about 260 organized events each year, and about 100 of those take place outside. In the Capitol complex’s current configuration, the largest space for outside gatherings is on the west side of the Capitol along Washington Street. But up to 20 percent of the time, so many people show up that Capitol police are forced to close the street to make room.

“When [Washington Street] gets closed, it backs up traffic on Mitchell, MLK (Martin Luther King Jr. Drive), everywhere,” Fanczi said. “You have families standing in the streets, and drivers here are not pedestrian-friendly.”

In recent years, some of the largest rallies along Washington Street have been held by groups supporting immigration reform at the federal level and/or opposing legislative crackdowns on illegal immigrants by the General Assembly.

“The way it’s been accommodated in the past was the closing down of the street in front of the Capitol,” said Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.

“Anything that would expand the space in and around the Capitol is a good thing.”

The state plans to replace Washington Street as the gathering place for public rallies with an open plaza on the site of a 59-year-old parking deck across Capitol Avenue from the Gold Dome. Lawmakers use the deck during legislative sessions, but it’s open to public parking during the nine months of the year that the General Assembly is not in session.

via Georgia Capitol complex to get big makeover – Atlanta Business Chronicle.