The Atlanta Falcons have confirmed that $200 million in changes have been ordered for the new $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but they are confident it won't affect the target opening date of June 1, 2017.

"When you look at the change orders -- $200 million in change orders -- it's principally in steel from the complexity of design,'' CEO Rich McKay said. "That's where that [cost] is. We knew that was coming. We've seen it coming. When we decided to do the one-stadium solution and do a downtown solution on a complex site ... this site was complex.

"As you know, it's 50 feet higher up from the [nearby convention center, the World] Congress Center is to where we are here. So, there's a lot of complexity. We knew that was going to increase cost. We also knew when we put a roof on, it's going to increase cost.

"Those overruns were principally driven by the complexity of design, the amount of steel involved, the numbers of cranes involved to make sure that we get the stadium up on time. All those things went into that.''

There were previous delays in the construction process that moved the target date from March 2017 to June 2017, as first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.