Mar. 7, 2006

Statement by A.J. Robinson, President of Central Atlanta Progress in reference to the announcement of the NASCAR Hall of Fame being awarded to Charlotte, NC.

It has been a long race, but now it’s over.

We believe Atlanta and Georgia made an extremely strong showing.

Along the way, I think we surprised some people with the strength of our resolve and resourcefulness.

I want to personally thank Governor Perdue and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin for their unwavering support. Our elected officials truly understood the promise that this project held for this State and this City and their leadership brought us a long way.

Thanks also go to our partners in putting the bid together … especially Sam Williams and the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Atlanta Development Authority, Fulton County and its development authority and the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

Further, I want to commend all the members of our bid committee for their diligence, guidance and leadership, especially Mark Lazarus, the President of Turner Entertainment Group who chaired the committee with Scott Wilfong of SunTrust Bank. Without their support, we wouldn’t have made it this far.

Phil Kent, the Chairman of CAP and Chairman of Turner Broadcasting gave us free rein and tons of corporate support to help put our bid package together. We couldn’t have done it had it not been for his backing.

The members of our business community, especially our local NASCAR sponsors, have supported our efforts in every way humanly possible. They were a driving force in Atlanta’s efforts.

We think it’s fitting to strongly reiterate what we put on the table.

Our offer to NASCAR included …

- largest, richest, most diversity population market of all competitors combined
- the very best tourist related location in the southeast
- a strong, viable publicly backed financial plan
- an intriguing and unique design located on Centennial Olympic Park
- a totally supportive political base from the City and State
- a platform to grow and sustain new and additional NASCAR fans
- the number one NASCAR TV market in the country, and
- a place among international corporate branding giants like Coca-Cola and CNN.

We believed that all these matched and surpassed virtually everything that NASCAR was looking for.

In the end, the only other thing we could have done was change our city’s name to Charlotte, but that wasn’t on the table.

We believe in the viability of Downtown Atlanta and the momentum it has to offer. That’s why we chose to get into what we were sure would be a hard fought race.

There will be other opportunities. And we will pursue them as strongly as this one.

From Atlanta, we salute the efforts of all our competitors and the bids they put forward. Every one of us had many special things that originally brought us to this elite bargaining table.

We wish NASCAR and Charlotte much success with the hall of fame.