Olympic Legacy Survives In Atlanta -- No Money Left Over, But Arenas, Housing Remain For The Citizens

ATLANTA - This is where Amy Van Dyken stood, whooping it up at the Olympic swimming pool with four gold medals, an unmatched feat at the Summer Games.

Today, an 11-year-old girl stands at that spot, ready for the whistle that starts her race at the Inner City Games, an Atlanta summertime sports event for kids.

This is where Michael Johnson stood, thrusting his chest, reveling in his glory, unique among all the men who ever ran on an Olympic track.

Today, that track is gone. Johnson's feats may be immortal, but the stadium where they happened has been cut in half for a baseball field.

Besides the records set by Van Dyken, Johnson and other athletes a summer ago, the Atlanta Olympics produced a slew of financial marks. The biggest - a $1.72 billion budget, all raised from private sources.

The majority of that money went to stage and run the games, the biggest ever. And while there was no surplus on its books, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games left plenty for two groups - and budding athletes and baseball.

After abandoning hope of matching the $156 million surplus forecast in its Olympic bid, ACOG set its sights on paying for everything it needed and leaving a half-billion dollars in stadiums, arenas and housing for Atlanta and its citizens.

"We intended to leave a positive and spiritual legacy," said Billy Payne, ACOG's founder and president.

The independent auditor who tracked ACOG's finances said the

committee was right to see its brick-and-mortar spending as a profit from an unusually short-term business.

"People can say, `They raised almost $2 billion, why isn't there a surplus?' But this isn't normally how you keep books," said Robbie Pound, the ACOG watchdog with Price Waterhouse. "Normally, if I build a stadium or if I build $500 million worth of facilities, that normally shows up as a profit. That is the surplus. It's just not in cash. They're basically sitting on the government's books.

"If this was an ongoing institution, you would have a substantial equity on the balance sheet. You'd have a borrowing base of half-a-billion dollars. They're hard assets. And these hard assets have been donated back to public entities."

While Payne said he was proud of the building program and the way ACOG built Fortune 500-type finances, others said the plan stretched the organizers too thin.

"What they did bring to the table was the ability to energize the strongest economy in the world," said Dick Pound, an IOC vice president from Canada and head of the international panel's oversight commission on the Atlanta Games. "They covered a massive operating budget and provided their city with $500 million in infrastructure. The problem was that the infrastructure was their profit. They spent their profit before they made the nut."

From Jan. 28, 1991, to closing its books last month in a break-even position, ACOG spent $336.6 million on wages, salaries and benefits; $209 million on professional services; and $412.7 million on rent, equipment and supplies. Smaller amounts went for travel, insurance, outside services, interest charges and other expenses.

But its biggest expense by far was construction and venue development - $541.2 million, more than 31 percent of its total. That compares with about 25 percent at the preceding three Olympics - Lillehammer in 1994 and Barcelona and Albertville in 1992, all of which received hefty government support for new infrastructure.

And the single biggest beneficiary of ACOG's unprecedented Olympic spending spree turned out to be the baseball team owned by one of the richest men in the world.

The Atlanta Braves moved from Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, a dreary place, to Turner Field, the brick-faced leftover of the Olympic Stadium that cost ACOG nearly $250 million. While the city owns the stadium, the Braves benefit from concessions, parking, ticket revenues and other income sources, and didn't have to spend a cent or take a penny of tax money.

"The great spirit in the sky brought the Olympics to Atlanta and we got a stadium without any cost to the taxpayers," said Ted Turner, the Braves' owner and the stadium's namesake.

If tax money had to be spent on a stadium, "at the expense of roads and hospitals and schools. I couldn't sleep at night," said Turner, whose personal wealth was estimated two years ago at $1.72 billion - an exact match to ACOG's total budget.

Most of ACOG's construction spending went to more grass-roots projects.

The Olympic Village is now dorm rooms at Georgia Tech. The students and neighborhood kids now swim where Van Dyken and her U.S. teammates dominated the competition. The school plans to enclose the pool for year-round use.

Tennis courts sparkle at Stone Mountain State Park. The equestrian center in suburban Conyers plays host to horse shows and concerts. The Mondo track that Johnson blitzed now rings the football field at Clark University in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, and younger, smaller feet run where the golden spikes glistened.

The Olympics pumped an estimated $4.4 billion into the Atlanta area economy, according to Steven French, director of city planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology. But the games did not appear to make those who ran them rich.

The final budget paid no bonuses to Payne or his top lieutenants.