ATLANTA — The iconic sign over Turner Field will soon be no more.
Channel 2's Richard Elliot was at the stadium, where crews were using a crane to remove the letters from Georgia State University's new football stadium.
Each letter stands about eight or nine feet tall and fans stopped by to take photos of crews removing them.
Fan Chris Gwin said he’s seen a lot of Braves games at the old Turner Field, but is excited to see what Georgia State has planned for the area.
“I had to take the picture of the sign coming down,” Gwin said, “The end of an era.”
RECENT INVESTIGATIONS:
- ICE targets convicted criminals living illegally in Georgia
- New metal foam can stop, disintegrate bullets
- 1 in 6 school district officers in Georgia have troubled pasts
It wasn’t a big job, but it was a sentimental one, Elliot said.
“It’s not Turner Field anymore, it’s Georgia State Stadium,” Project Manager Brian Carroll said.
Carroll took Elliot on a brief tour inside of Georgia State's brand new, yet recycled, football stadium.
Carroll said it’s been hard work converting the old baseball park into GSU’s new home.
“It’s a great stadium,” Carroll said. “It’s great to repurpose it, not just the Braves stadium, but the Olympic stadium.”
Crews built brand new concrete stands in what used to be right and center field, cutting off the old baseball diamond and replacing it with a gridiron.
Carroll said that so far, the construction has gone pretty well, despite finding some obstacles left over from the 1996 Olympic games.
He believes his crews will have this finished and ready to go when the Panthers take the field for the home opener.
[ [READ: Work underway to transform Turner Field into GSU football stadium] ]
“We’re excited about this,” Carroll said. “We’ve got six weeks to material completion and eight weeks to the first home game. There’s a lot of little things left there, but we can make it. We can do this.”
The field will be synthetic and Carroll says the only one like it is on the East Coast in the Patriots stadium in Boston.