-The Omni didn't linger. Its death was quick, loud and dusty.

When Jim Parisella of Controlled Demolition Inc. pushed the button at 6:53 a.m. Saturday, the thunder of 484 pounds of explosives shook the area as the egg-crate-looking roof was dislodged and started to fall, with the walls tumbling down with it.

The smell of July Fourth was in the air. Thick clouds of dust and dead pigeons rained on the area.

"The poor birds. no one told them," Turner Sports President Harvey Schiller said as he watched 25 years of Atlanta history disintegrate in 10.5 seconds.

For Schiller, Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell and most of the other 500 or so spectators, the Omni's scripted finale was bittersweet.

"I helped build it, so I'm going to watch it drop," said ironworker Jim McGee. "But that's progress."

Campbell stressed that the new 20,000-seat arena that will rise from the Omni's rubble will be a key part of downtown's revitalization.

But, in this care, making way for the new by imploding the old proved to be an especially difficult undertaking requiring months of planning. It paid off, with no injuries of major damage reported.

The concussion from the 2,844 explosive devices broke fewer than 20 panes of glass at CNN Center, which stood just 50 feet away. In fact, before the implosion, a corner of the Omni's roof overhang was within 13 feet of the plaza outside CNN Center, from a horizontal perspective. Vertically, the roof stood 100 feet above the plaza.

CNN employees and Omni Hotel guests were allowed to stay in CNN Center during the implosion. So was KISS 104.7 disc jockey Ellis King, who also broadcasts from there.

"I'm from San Francisco," King said. "I just acted like it was an earthquake....I put on a long CD."

Controlled Demolition and Olshan Demolishing also had to contend with the arena's close proximity to a MARTA station. The station was closed from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. - 30 minutes longer that had been planned - "to vent out the dust, which was more that we anticipated," said MARTA spokeswoman Laura Gillig. "But there was no structural damage. These people definitely know what they're doing."

The implosion was delayed for 10 minutes because two teenagers hiding behind planters outside the nearby Georgia World Congress Center had to be removed from the area, said Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition.

Atlanta Police Sgt. Nick Roberts said an officer's car that was parked on the upper deck of CNN's lost was hit with metal debris from the blast.

But officials were pleased that nothing major went wrong.

"The only structure that fell was the Omni," said Bill Bartlett, president of Olshan.