Few significant details have emerged from a Tuesday meeting between Mount Vernon Baptist Church leaders and state and city officials, a camp that now includes a heavy-hitting Civil Rights icon. The church is all that stands in the way of the new $1 billion Atlanta Falcons stadium being built on the so-called "South Site," the MARTA-connected plot favored by Mayor Kasim Reed and Falcons' brass. Reed and church officials were basically mum following the closed-door meeting, but the estimable Andrew Young, always the diplomat, told Fox 5 the "information sharing session" went well, with talk of commitment, faith and love. The state has offered Mount Vernon $6.2 million for their property, but the church wants more than three times that much ($20 million-plus), to keep up with the figurative Joneses in this equation: Friendship Baptist Church. The latter church has in hand a $19 million deal with the city. Our position from the beginning is that the city/state/team are hellbent on securing the South Site, and all this talk of heading a half-mile north is an elaborate bluff, replete with intentional memo leaks to the press (but that's conjecture). How do you see this playing out?
· Church holds meeting on Falcons stadium negotiations [Fox 5]
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