About a year ago, Troutman Sanders lawyer John Stephenson was sitting in the Chick-fil-A Bowl office near Centennial Olympic Park when his client, Bowl President Gary Stokan, proffered what you might call a modest proposal.
“He said, ‘I’ve got something I want to talk to you about,’” Stephenson recalled, adding that he’d come to Stokan’s office on a mundane Bowl matter. But when his client continued, the topic was anything but routine. “’We’re going to bring the College Football Hall of Fame to Atlanta,’” Stephenson said Stokan told him. “It was more of a statement than a question.”
It was an ambitious idea. Atlanta first tried—unsuccessfully—to lure the Hall of Fame, which is part of the National Football Foundation, in 1995. What’s more, the Hall of Fame, which opened that same year in South Bend, Ind., was bound in a 40-year contract with its host city.
But Stokan and George Morris, a former pro-football player and Atlanta business executive who spent 30 years as an official with the Southeastern Conference, persevered.
After more than a year of negotiations not typical of any deal Stephenson said he’s worked on, Stokan announced on Sept. 24 that Atlanta had trumped Dallas its quest to bring the Hall of Fame home.
“From a lawyer’s perspective, it was really an exercise in patience,” Stephenson said. “We weren’t responding to proposed terms as you typically would in a bidding process. … We really had to … gauge the sensitivities of the situation. There was a lot of confidentiality, because the talks were going on for a year, and we really had to let the [National Football] Foundation manage their relationship with South Bend.”
Citing a statement made by Steve Hatchell, president of the NFF, Stephenson added, “This was not an RFP process. It was much more organic than that. The College Football Hall of Fame needed a bigger platform to further their goals.”
In South Bend, he said, the Hall of Fame had been garnering 60,000 to 70,000 visitors per year—far less than the expected 200,000. Atlanta, he added, being a tourist center in the middle of a football state, can probably offer 500,000.
No money changed hands in the deal, Stephenson said. “It wasn’t a money thing,” he said. “It was more about what the people on this committee that were trying to bring the College Football Hall of Fame here could offer them, and could show them the potential of what could happen here.”
Once negotiations on issues such as governance were complete with Dallas-based NFF, Stephenson said the parties operated more like partners than adversaries.
Stephenson said he’ll continue to work with his client and the NFF’s counsel-- Holme, Roberts & Owen in Colorado Springs, Colo-- on the terms of a definitive agreement to govern the relationship going forward.
Plans for the Hall, which in the letter of intent contemplates a 30-year deal with Atlanta, include building a 50,000 square foot facility likely to cost $50 million.
Stephenson said the Hall is considering several parcels of land around Centennial Olympic Park, but added that because it is so early in the process, it’s unclear how the building will be financed and who the construction and financing lawyers might be.
About $11 million in corporate sponsorships—including $5 million from the Chick-fil-A Bowl, $5 million from Chick-fil-A and $1 million from the Atlanta Development Authority—already have been committed. Troutman Sanders handled the documentation, to the extent there was any, on those commitments, Stephenson said.
Stephenson represented the Bowl pro bono, as he generally does on other matters. The Bowl is a non-profit organization which has given more than $1 million to charity in each of the past two years.
Also, he said, as an Atlanta native and Double Dawg, with bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Georgia, he was simply happy to do the work. “I was bred to be a Bulldog,” he said. “That’s why I like to do this. I’m an Atlanta guy. I’m a football fan. And I was raised on Chick-fil-A sandwiches.”