Chip Ingraham in Atlanta Business Chronicle

In an update on the lawsuit against the city of Atlanta by the design team for the new airport, the Atlanta Business Chronicle (front page, August 28, 2005 issue) iterates that the designers responded to being fired by suing the city for $60 million, setting off a legal and public relations battle, pitting the world's busiest airport against some of the country's best-known architects. The genesis of the cost overruns is hotly debated by the design team and the airport. The airport manager says that while the scope of the project has changed -- from adding gates to changing the location of the train and accommodating the requests from customs, transportation security and airlines -- the design team along the way said it could handle those design elements within the original budget. The dispute is important because Hartsfield-Jackson is Georgia's economic engine. The airport contributes $19 billion to the Georgia economy, or about a third more than the state of Georgia's annual budget. The airport also helps attract corporate headquarters here, and ferries busy corporate executives around the world to do business. The designers now believe the city never intended to pay them, but instead was hell-bent on firing them. They also believe the city mismanaged the project and that airport manager Ben DeCosta's staff had been micromanaging them, making it almost impossible for them to produce designs on time. "We doubt that his people are going to take the fall for him," said one of the design team's lawyers, Chip Ingraham of Seyfarth Shaw LLP.