Liberty Plaza — the state Capitol’s front door — is only a year old, but state officials decided it was looking a little worn.
So they gave it a dye job.
The lawn in the center of Liberty Plaza is Bermuda grass, which goes dormant during the winter and turns yellow/brown. The Georgia Building Authority didn’t like the way it looked. But officials said it was bad to over-seed it over the winter to keep it green.
And, as Paul Melvin of the Georgia Building Authority said, “GBA wants the grass to be green year-round.”
So the state had a sprayer out on the lawn Monday, giving the January grass a touch of April and May.
Melvin noted that the state won’t have to do any maintenance until spring on the newly green lawn of about 8,000 square feet.
This isn't the first re-work the state has done on the Liberty Plaza lawn, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted last summer.
State contractors were in a big hurry to finish the $4 million Liberty Plaza in late 20014 after Gov. Nathan Deal was re-elected and immediately announced he wanted to hold his inaugural there.
Workers finished in time for the inaugural, and the facility was used for rallies during the 2015 General Assembly session, as well as for bill signings after lawmakers had gone home. But six months after it opened, the infield sod looked like it had seen better days. Kind of like it was put down in southern Arizona in the middle of August and never watered.
Melvin said the roots got a fungus because of ponding of water on the grass that probably started when it was first put in during a rainy stretch over the winter of 2014-2015.
The plaza was closed for a week as the state fixed the problem, adding additional water drainage materials with the new sod in hopes of averting a repeat. The state spent about $12,000 to fix the problem.
Monday’s dye job only cost $1,000.
