22 Cite Spring 1992 Planned Effervescence Atlanta's World of Coca-Cola Pavilion KARAL A N N M A R L I N G TLANTA has yearnings to be a the fall of the Confederacy. At Jacobs' objets d'art on view in conventional world-class city. Its successful bid Pharmacy in downtown Atlanta, a soda museums were doomed to be in short for the 1996 Summer Olympics, jerk mistakenly mixed ihe greenish supply: the story of Coca-Cola called for topping ufi the Cinderella sensa- Pemberton syrup with carbonated water, ads, real soda fountains, vending machines, Ation of the 1991 World Series, puis it in the and a soft drink was born. It was wildly radio jingles, and T V sets. So, while the running for at least two more weeks of successful and became the Souths first Coca-Cola saga was serious business, international fame. Meanwhile, there are - national and international consumer pro- especially to Atlantans, the pop-cultural 01 wire, until August 1990-serious duct. Coke was, in other words, just about artifacts necessary to sustain the narrative impediments to Atlanta's becoming an all- everything Atlanta aspired to be: up-to- were of the type usually dismissed out of American city, too, something more than a date, famous, profitable. "Coca-Cola," hand as Madison Avenue kitsch - or worse. regional business center or an appendage to wrote Marshall McLuhan, "is known to an airport. The city had no landmarks, more people than any other man-made Nor were there workable models for such no symbols, no tourist magnets to speak of, [thing], including the Eiffel Tower." an enterprise within American business unless you counted its tree-lined streets, culture. Some companies, including Coca- Atlanta used to be mighty proud of its Atlanta sorely needed an Eiffel Tower in Cola's Atlanta offices, had set up small foliage. All the promotional brochures men- the 1980s - a Times Square, a big neon displays ot product related material in their tioned the abundance ot trees, along with Coke sign. But throughout the decade the lobbies or waiting rooms as a kind of the 23-story lobby-atrium of John Port- city's best-known corporation, the owner of corporate decor. The bottling plant in man's Hyatt Regency Hotel and the Allman the best-known trademark in the world, Etizahethtown, New Jersey, claimed (and Brothers. Nature and culture. was all but invisible in the symbolic life of still claims) to house the largest private the community. As it turned out, the Coca- collection of Coke paraphernalia in the l A survey taken among prospective visitors Cola Company's iconographic withdrawal world, accessible lo the public at SI a head. by the state tourism bureau a few years back lasted only as long as it took to design and When such quasi-museums were more than fabricate the best electric Coke sign ever a distraction for salesmen cooling their fc\> listed Tara (from Gone With the Wind), the Underground (a retail and entertainment built - a revolving neon circle, 23 feet in heels in the lobby, however, they tended to complex lucked under the railroad viaducts diameter, bearing the familiar brand names be waiting areas for visitors beginning a constructed in the 1920s to ease downtown and encased in a latticework globe pro- plant tour. And by 1978, according to Jane traffic congestion), and something having grammed to spin in the opposite direction and Michael Stern's compendium ot road- to do with Coke as prime tourist attrac- at one-and-a-half revolutions per minute. side amazements, the days of the factory tions. Rut Tara existed only in the imagina- The hegemony of multinational cola, the tour were already numbered. tion of Margaret Mitchell, Underground glitzy .splendor of modern Atlanta: Coke's Atlanta was temporarily defunct, and the extravagant gesture said it all. Apart from a couple of sawmills and last visible symbol of Coca-Cola's contribu- quarries, and the Ohio assembly line where tion to the economy of Atlanta and the The [ i n n had also been planned Willi the the Etch-A-Skctch toy was put together, genesis of the New South - a giant neon corporate history of Coca-Cola and its only the food industry still routinely ad- "spectacular" affixed ro a nondescript advertising firmly in mind. In scale and mitted the curious to see how beer, candy building in Margaret Mitchell Square in complexity, the new sign rivaled the bars, cheese, pretzels, sausages, pepper 1948 - had winked out forever on New legendary electric billboard that had hung sauce, cereal, frozen cheesecake, and maple Year's Eve 1980. above New York's Times Square, at the syrup were manufactured. Fears of indus- intersection of Broadway and Seventh Ave- trial espionage and ruinous lawsuits filed by Thousands gathered that night to say nue, since 1920. Its use of an animated non-employees claiming injury on the goodbye to the old red sign in what had pinwheel pattern behind the script of the premises led most big firms to rethink com Canned videos. been Atlanta's own limes Square, thanks to Coca-Cola logo alluded to the beloved old pany policy on tours in the 1970s, despite the elegant pinwheel of light - the place sign in Margaret Mitchell Square. Set in the public relations benefits attached. where friends met for lunch, where out-of- motion on 7 May 1990, with a speech by General Mills abandoned the practice after towners were directed to turn to get to the mayor and all due civic solemnities, the 1978 season, for example, although the the capitol. The sign was the city's most the new 13-ton, 830-square-foor colossus tour of the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens had important landmark. But neon was too also came attached to a ready-made become a Minneapolis institution. Other old-fashioned and tacky for a hustling, Atlanta tourist mecca called the World businesses opted to replicate what the bustling city of 23-story hotel lobbies that o f Coca-Cola. factory did for a postindustrial audience was pining for municipal stardom. So the weaned on theme parks. Coca-Cola sign came down. The hits and HE new Coca-Cola "pavilion" pieces that were left after the wrecking crew (so called in the official corporare A case in point is Chocolate World in had finished were encased in blocks of lingo) opened to the public in Hershey, Pennsylvania, dating from the Lucite and sold as souvenirs. August. It occupied a onetime mid-seventies. The plant itself, on Choco- Tparking lot along Martin l.utber King, Jr., late Avenue (where the street lights look Tin' Lui thai somebodi had turned .i pint Drive, with the revitalized Underground like Hersheys Kisses), no longer welcomes it on the deal is not out of character for Atlanta to the west anil the dome of the guests. But the nearby visirors' center Atlanta. A Minnesota Twins fan in town Georgia capitol to the east. Shoehorned in simulates the process of making candy in for the third game of the 1991 World Series between the after-hours fizz of the night- an amusement-park-style ride beginning on wis appalled to find that you win in club district and the massive neoclassical an African cacao plantation, complete with Atlanta and you sing 'Taking Care of dignity of government, the ambiguities of jungle sound effects. There is even an Business.'" Business (or "binis") is the heart the site reflected some of the contradictions interlude called "You Be lbe < oco.l Bean" and soul of Atlanta and has been since the inherent in the very idea of a World of in which the tourist is roasted and toasted 1880s, when the town threw off its agrarian Coca-Cola. On the one hand, this was in a hot, red tunnel in a make-believe past (except for all those trees) and created intended to be a major-league, 45,000- chocolate plant. The finale is. of course, the modern, entrepreneurial New South on square-foot museum, displaying more than the gift mall, lull ot Kisses and apparel the ruins of its real-life Taras. Coca-Cola 1,200 items of rare Coke memorabilia and decorated with them. Cranberry World in was invented by druggist John S. Pembcr- tracing the history of the company s rise to Plymouth, Massachusetts, inaugurated in ron in 1886 as a nerve tonic and general global prominence. The nature of the 1977, has no ride but does demonstrate the pick-me-up for Georgians still shaken by product, however, meant that the usual ins and outs of growing, harvesting, and 1 23 :icinMift?;« -" Ji J. Sign of Good Taste: Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates, architects, Coca-Cola Pavilion, Atlanta, 1990. The Pause That Refreshes. Liquid assets. processing cranberries in a series cit engine, but promoters noted that the of an ersatz factory. One of the first pavilion serves Coca-Cola best through its dioramas, cut-aways, and model bogs. The largest crowds inevitably gathered around interior features commissioned for the visual civility, which reinforces a symbiotic bogs surround a bilevel structure the Ocean exhibits from which a finished product, Atlanta pavilion, in fact, was a kinetic relationship between Atlanta and the drink Spray cooperative describes as a pavilion, borne aloft by a welter of clanking display tilled "Bottling Fantasy" (con- that used to be styled "the holy water of built both to give something tangible back mechanical doodads, emerged triumphant. structed in part by Coke's own engineering the American South." The new sign, for to the community and "to enhance the Thus at Chicago's Century ol Progress of department) - an industrial conveyor that instance, hangs inside a hollow rectangle understanding of the cranberry." 1933, the New York World's Fair of 1939, mimicked the bottling process without the thai effectively shields it from the view of and the 1958 Exposition Universelle in fuss and muss of actually making a single the government center, while beaming an What Hershey and Ocean Spray under- Brussels, C !oca-Cola set up as promotional ounce of what the 75th Coca-Cola slogan, appropriate promise of pleasure and leisure stood was the fascination of moving parts displays actual plants thai filled and sealed coined in 1969, called "The Real Thing." ('The Pause That Refreshes") straight at and processes; discarding the manifest the famous "Georgia green" bottles to be Hut the lineage of The World of Coca- Underground Atlanta.