Photo of London Eye from janosburg.net---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Rachel Tobin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With developers proposing a $200 million replica of the London Eye ferris wheel attraction for downtown Atlanta, the natural question is: What's next?
Atlanta has become a beacon for inventive -- and sometimes screwy -- ideas.
Downtown already has horse-drawn carriages. How about pedicabs?
How about flooding the railroad tracks in the area called “The Gulch” to create a water feature? Or a casino at Underground Atlanta? And isn't downtown Atlanta missing a pirate museum?
Some of the ideas that have been floated for downtown have often seemed starry-eyed.
Perhaps the biggest and wackiest idea of all also proved the most visionary. When Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympic Games, it showed that dreaming big can pay off.
One of downtown’s most popular attractions, the Georgia Aquarium, was certainly an “if they build it, will they come” exercise. For Georgia Aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus, a founder of Home Depot, his vision has been remarkable. He’s adding a $110 million dolphin museum to his $290 million aquarium that has been attracting over 2 million people a year.
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