STORY:
Atlanta millennium offer big dreams

Other cities may compete to throw the biggest and best New Year's millennium bash, but Atlanta says it will focus on long-term legacies designed to inspire residents for years to come.

According to a report in Atlanta's Business Chronicle, the most ambitious proposal calls for a 600-foot-tall steel monument downtown. The structure would be shaped like an "A," with the pointed top missing. A silhouette of a man, jumping from one side of the letter to the other, would top the monument.

Joey Reiman, whose advertising firm BrightHouse drew up for the Atlanta 2000 organization a lengthy idea book that includes the steel icon, calls the structure the Leap of Faith. "The three-dimensional figure jumping illustrates the leap of faith we take from impossibility to making dreams come true," he said in the report.

Other ideas from his book of proposals include the following:

-The Home Depot Inc. would be asked to create blue house keys for all Atlanta residents, embossed with the Atlanta 2000 logo. The keys may cost $1, which would be donated to an Atlanta charity.

-A holiday known as March Forth would be celebrated on March 4. Atlanta businesses would close in order to allow Atlantans to celebrate marching toward their dreams.

-Atlanta would be dubbed "The Possibility City," and programs would educate Atlantans about the hundreds of people who have come to the city and accomplished the "impossible."

-Wolf Camera would create the world's largest photo mural, featuring photos of every Atlantan.

-The world's largest workout would be led by Haitian fitness trainer Ulrick Bien-Aime.

According to ABC's report, Atlanta officials have received unanimous praise from business executives for the proposed monument, and Atlanta 2000 officials are meeting with contractors and architects to see whether erecting it by New Year's Eve 1999 would be physically and financially feasible.

The city can neither estimate how much the structure would cost, nor say who the final designer of the structure would be said event planner Judith Montiar executive director of Atlanta 2000. Montiar and the Atlanta 2000 committees will spend the next three months evaluating and selecting from the ideas.

Reiman, who designed the Leap of Faith structure that is now being used as a working logo for the Atlanta 2000 effort, said he got the idea from a Cherokee Indian custom. A chief teaches each child in the tribe to jump over a wide chasm that is not as big as it appears, a "leap of faith."

He envisions the ceremony introducing the monument this way: "At 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31, 1999, the steel figure has been erected. A three-dimensional holographic figure jumps from one side to the other. It will take 60 seconds to jump, to take the leap into the next century. When in midair, it closes the `A.' The next morning the holographic figure is [transformed into] a steel figure."

DATE: 1/25/99

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