ATLANTA — Channel 2 Action News is hearing why a local union decided to take down the well-known peach billboard from its downtown Atlanta headquarters building.
No one much cared for the big peach when the IBEW put it up in an advertising deal 22-years ago, but all that seemed to change when they took it down. Now the union wants to explain why they did it.
"I'm really surprised. It had nothing to do with the Olympics, the sign going up there. It was a business venture on our part," manager Gene O'Kelley said.
O'Kelley admits he didn't expect the kind of social media storm brewed after they took down the big peach billboard from the roof.
A viewer took a photo as it was being dismantled in the IBEW parking lot in April, but O'Kelley insists there's nothing historical about the peach.
It was part of a 1994 ad deal that never really materialized for the union and he says the peach stopped working some 15-years ago.
And that's not even the worst of it.
"We've had to replace the roof twice since we put that sign up, and now that we've taken it down, we just replaced the roof again," O'Kelley said.
When they put big peach up 22 years ago, critics lambasted it as looking cheap and many people didn't realize it was a peach at all, but over the next 22 years, the once-derided peach somehow became a bit of a landmark, even a historical icon, of sorts.
The IBEW wants folks to know they've been here for nearly a 100 years a lot longer than that peach.
"We love Atlanta," O'Kelley said. "This is our home, this is our city. This is the IBEW building, not the building with the peach on top.
Now that the peach is gone, the IBEW says it plans to replace it with solar panels to help power the building.
Peach billboard removal sparks controversy
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