Coca-Cola Olympic City was an plaza in downtown

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, adjacent to the city's

Centennial Olympic Park Centennial Olympic Park is a public park located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, owned and operated by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. It was built by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) as part of the infrastructu ...

. It was built in concurrence with the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta. Managed by Orlando-based Baker Leisure Group, it featured three areas that displayed

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

Olympic sports attractions. The first area allowed patrons to play a

H-O-R-S-E Variations of basketball are games or activities based on, or similar in origin to, the game of basketball, in which the player utilizes common basketball skills. Some are essentially identical to basketball, with only minor rules changes, while ...

style game called "HOOPS" against

Grant Hill Grant Henry Hill (born October 5, 1972) is an American former professional basketball player who is a co-owner and executive of the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He attended Duke University and is widely considere ...

. The area also allowed patrons to test their baseball skills by striking out

Cecil Fielder Cecil Grant Fielder (; born September 21, 1963) is an American former professional baseball player in Major League Baseball (MLB). Fielder was a power hitter in the 1980s and 1990s. He attended college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV ...

in a pitching simulator or hitting a home run against

Tom Glavine Thomas Michael Glavine (born March 25, 1966) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball, for the Atlanta Braves (1987–2002, 2008) and New York Mets (2003–2007). With 164 victories durin ...

in a batting simulator. The second area allowed patrons to ride mountain bikes on simulated competition course, race against

Jackie Joyner-Kersee Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962) is a retired American track and field athlete, ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the heptathlon as well as long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals in tho ...

in a dash, perform gymnastics on a balance beam with

Mary Lou Retton Mary Lou Retton (born January 24, 1968) is an American retired gymnast. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a gold medal in the individual all-around competition, as well as two silver medals and two bronze medals. Her performanc ...

, and race in a simulated wheelchair race as a Paralympian. The third area included an Olympic themed theater show which took patrons through a 15-minute story about the history of the Olympic Games and the spirit of the Games. The area also featured actual Olympic artifacts from the

Olympic Museum The Olympic Museum (french: Musée olympique) in Lausanne, Switzerland houses permanent and temporary exhibits relating to sport and the Olympic movement. With more than 10,000 artifacts, the museum is the largest archive of Olympic Games in the ...

in Lausanne, Switzerland. Other areas of Coca-Cola Olympic City included the Champions Challenge Obstacle Course and an open-air theater that feature live shows for the Coca-Cola Olympic City Kids.

Post-Olympics developments

The area was left vacant after the plaza's closure. In 2002,

the Coca-Cola Company The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation founded in 1892, best known as the producer of Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, ...

donated 9 of its of property at the site to

the Marcus Foundation The Marcus Foundation refers to three different foundations: The Marcus Niziak Childhood Brain Tumor Fund, The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation and The Marcus Foundation References The Marcus Foundation{{DEFAULTSORT:Marcus Foundation, The ...

for use as the site of the new

Georgia Aquarium Georgia Aquarium is a public aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It exhibits hundreds of species and thousands of animals across its seven major galleries, all of which reside in more than of water. It was the largest aquarium in the wor ...

, which opened in November 2005. The company also made plans to construct its new

World of Coca-Cola The World of Coca-Cola is a museum, located in Atlanta, Georgia, showcasing the history of the Coca-Cola Company. The complex opened to the public on May 24, 2007, relocating from and replacing the original exhibit, which was founded in 1990 in ...

on the remainder of the property; the attraction opened in May 2007. The area was christened

Pemberton Place Pemberton Place, located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, just north of Centennial Olympic Park in the Luckie Marietta district, is a complex that is home to the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola, and the Center for Civil and Human Rights. ...

after

John Pemberton John Stith Pemberton (July 8, 1831 – August 16, 1888) was an American pharmacist and Confederate States Army veteran who is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later bec ...

, inventor of Coca-Cola and dedicated to the people of Atlanta.

References

External links

* Wulf, Steve (July 15, 1996)
"Ready...or Not?"
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Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

''. Coca-Cola buildings and structures Olympic Parks {{atlanta-stub