The Home Depot Backyard at Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Located just north of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the footprint of the former Georgia Dome, The Home Depot Backyard offers flexible community gathering space for a plethora of events. The 11-acre greenspace was redeveloped to provide a natural turf field for fan activation areas, tailgating space, kid zone playgrounds, and facilitates pedestrian circulation to the stadium. Kimley-Horn provided civil, traffic, and structural engineering as well as landscape architecture design for this multipurpose greenfield.
Kimley-Horn’s design included the Northside Drive streetscape and a plaza that can accommodate food trucks, green markets, game day concessions, and additional seating. A prefabricated structural steel pedestrian bridge spans nearly 100 feet, providing pedestrians with safe, direct, and unobstructed access above The Home Depot Backyard vehicular entrance. The site’s topography varies drastically, requiring multiple structural walls reaching up to 25 feet and multiple forms of vertical pedestrian circulation to provide access to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium plaza, Northside Drive, and The Home Depot Backyard field level. The space also provides patrons access between the Georgia World Congress Center Campus and Northside Drive.
The natural turf field enhances the area from what was previously an impervious site—reducing stormwater runoff and urban heat island effect. Irrigation for the field is provided by the rainwater reuse system at the LEED-Platinum Mercedes-Benz Stadium, specifically the 680,000-gallon cistern, with backup provided by well water. The grass field and permeable paver hardscape includes stone storage underneath for drainage as well as stormwater management.
The Home Depot Backyard project involved many stakeholders, including the City of Atlanta, Georgia DOT, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United, Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, adjacent neighborhoods, and Georgia World Congress Center. The Kimley-Horn team developed a design that provides a sustainable, flexible, and interactive product within the Vine City community and the Georgia World Congress Center campus.