Atlanta has quite an aversion to the past. Most developments don’t stick around very long, like Rio Mall, which was the hot property in the late-80s and not a trace of it existed ten or twelve years later. We go through stadiums in town like underwear, Atlanta-Fulton County, the Omni, the Georgia Dome, built and demolished within thirty years. I watched them tear down the Lowe’s Grand and the Grady Hotel but none of them hurt quite as much as losing the Fox Theatre in the 70s.
In a single afternoon, that fine old lady was reduced to a pile of rubble and replaced with a 95-story glass and steel monument to greed and vanity. Preservationists tried to stop them but it was too little, too late. Once Fox Development caught wind of the growing opposition, they stepped up the demolition process, and actually went ahead without all the required permits. The preservationists nearly rioted, and I didn’t blame them one bit. I’ve never liked that tower. It has always been a blight on an already overcrowded skyline.
Cairo always claimed he missed the Fox, but he’d have been a kid when they tore it down, so I seriously doubt he ever attended anything there. If he did have any legitimate memories of the place, it didn’t stop him from buying Fox Tower when the managing company went belly up a year or so after the Olympics. What he did do that I appreciated was to have them restore the Egyptian Room on the mezzanine level. Folks, I’ve got to tell you, they did a decent job of recreating what I remember of the place.
Bickering owns Fox Tower now. About the only substantive thing they acquired in the merger with Cairo Enterprises since most of the technology was obsolete by the time the ink was dry on the agreement.
