ABC 2012 Preconference Tours Feature Rebuilt New Orleans Facilities

Doug Thornton still has the agenda from a meeting he attended seven years ago - Oct. 11, 2005, to be exact. That was the date the senior vice president of SMG, which operates the state-owned, now-named Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans,

Doug Thornton still has the agenda from a meeting he attended seven years ago - Oct. 11, 2005, to be exact. That was the date the senior vice president of SMG, which operates the state-owned, now-named Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, sat down with then Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to discuss what to do with a facility that had been the scene of "human squalor" (Thornton's words) during its six-day stint as a shelter of last resort as Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in late August of that year.

"We went in and said, 'We believe the Superdome can be rebuilt,' " recalls Thornton, who was SMG's regional vice president at the time. "It would probably have taken four years, at best, to design a new facility, fund it and build it, and we didn't have four years to wait. The only option we had to save the New Orleans Saints was to start rebuilding."

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