An Olympic venue hides in plain sight on a historically Black college campus in Atlanta. CAU Panther Stadium at 735 Beckwith Street SW, on the campus of Clark Atlanta University in the Atlanta University Center district, was built for the 1996 Summer Olympics as the secondary venue for field hockey, hosting the men's and women's preliminary competitions from 20 July to 2 August 1996 and lawn bowls during the Paralympics that followed. Before the Games the site was a grassy practice lot; the Olympic agreement between the AUC institutions and the organising committee turned it into a permanent 5,000-seat stadium, designed by one of the era's few African American-led architecture firms. The stadium's best artefact arrived after the closing ceremony: when Centennial Olympic Stadium was converted into the Turner Field ballpark, its running track was dismantled and relocated to Panther Stadium, meaning students and joggers today circle the same surface on which Michael Johnson's golden-shoes 1996 season played out. Few college facilities anywhere carry a more direct piece of Olympic fabric. Today the venue is home to the Clark Atlanta Panthers of NCAA Division II and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, hosting football Saturdays that come with the full HBCU pageantry - the Mighty Marching Panthers band, Greek life stroll-offs and homecoming crowds that overflow the 5,000 seats. A state-of-the-art video board modernised the game-day experience, and in 2024 the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation funded a striking new red FieldTurf Prestige Vertex playing surface, one of the few red football fields in America. The Beckwith Street location threads the stadium into the country's largest consortium of historically Black colleges - Clark Atlanta, Morehouse, Spelman and Morehouse School of Medicine share the district - a short hop from downtown and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium skyline. Community track meets, band exhibitions and campus ceremonies keep the Olympic bowl working year-round, twenty-eight years after the world came to Beckwith Street.

Type: Stadium / Arena

Address: 735 Beckwith Street SW, Atlanta, GA, United States, 30314

Website: https://clarkatlantasports.com

Capacity: 5000

Opening Date: 20/07/1996

Outdoor Area

Accessible