Every team in the world wants to replicate Atlanta's ballpark village. But should they?
ATLANTA – More than a decade ago, Atlanta Braves officials embarked on a road trip that was far more transformative and industry-altering than any game their team would play.
The destination: Kansas City. The mission: Create a blank slate for the franchise to not only build a new ballpark but create a multi-use revenue-capturing monster that, in the years since, has transformed the sports industry, for better and worse.
And over multiple days consulting with Populous, the global design firm that engineered the ballpark revolution of the 1990s and evolved with the times since, the Braves hatched what would come to be known as The Battery.
“They told a pretty compelling story of what they wanted to accomplish,” says Earl Santee, founder and senior executive of Populous, which has guided the evolution of the modern stadium since 1985. “The idea of The Battery was inspired by their vision.
“It’s really the first time we had a fully integrated ballpark that occurred at one time. That they’re one big community, not one big building.
“I think that’s why almost every pro sports team in America has come by and looked at the ballpark and The Battery to understand how they did it.”
In fact, the parade of club presidents, owners, politicians and imagineers beating a path to the intersection of I-75 and I-285 in suburban Cobb County became so voluminous, the Braves had to tell some of them to take a number. They only had so much time to devote to sports franchises wanting to know how they cultivated such a vast expanse to live, work, play – and generate revenue that didn’t have to be shared with other teams in their leagues.
And just what did they concoct? A 41,000-seat ballpark that flows seamlessly into 2.25 million square feet featuring more than two dozen restaurants and bars, four corporate campuses, two hotels, 531 residences and the Roxy Theater, where MLB staged its draft Sunday night.
And it’s not done growing. The Braves’ real estate interests have expanded with the success of their club, a cosmic bit of timing in which the team on the field has not missed the playoffs since 2017, allowing SunTrust Park – now Truist Park – a year of novelty before the club launched seven consecutive postseason runs, including the 2021 World Series title.
Little wonder franchises from four corners of the map are aiming to recreate this utopia of commerce – with a side of sports – for their own towns.
Yet the manner in which the Braves and Cobb County captured those dollars has proven challenging for teams to replicate – with some municipalities just saying no.
Mapping the journey
Santee, as head of then-HOK Sports, had a far simpler task – and a lower bar – to clear when he set out, perhaps unwittingly, and became the godfather of modern stadia. The grim multi-purpose stadiums of the 1960s and ‘70s eventually gave way to the intimate and objectively beautiful jewels of the 1990s, where a little exposed brick and single-sport sightlines went a long way.
Now, more than three decades after Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Cleveland’s Jacobs Field and Pittsburgh’s PNC Park became the standards by which parks would be measured, Santee must navigate a post-Battery world where “experiential” has become as important to a franchise as a reliable starting pitcher.
A trip through the turnstiles is merely the first – or third – imagined step in a long day of what Santee calls “journey mapping.”
“We get to make an impact that’s not three hours long. It’s five or six hours long. That’s pretty exciting,” says Santee. “The journey mapping tells us people want two, maybe three unique experiences, either inside or outside the ballpark.
“Years ago, if you asked me the question, what was it like in the ‘80s and ‘90s designing ballparks? We designed maybe 15 to 20 fan experiences inside the ballpark. With this model, we’re designing somewhere between 60 to 80 fan experiences.
“Because it’s driven by the journey mapping, driven by the generational needs.”
And it’s remarkably easy to get caught up in The Battery’s stream of diversions.
Just steps after exiting the right field gate, the fan is greeted with a mind-bending number of options, with Sports & Social and its many blaring TV screens and game play practically begging your party to commune over a plate of $24 nachos.
A splash pad shoots water aloft, allowing parents to toss their kids in to cool off and burn energy on a hot day. A bandshell on Saturday staged a pep rally – “Javy Lopez is in the house!” – as a drumline performed, giving way to a DJ as the evening arrived.
Residences look down on it all, climate-controlled havens where around $2,500 per month can get you a two-bedroom apartment within strolling distance of gourmet ice cream or salmon cake benedict.
After less than five minutes, the right field gate looks almost foreign, a reminder that yes, there is a baseball stadium here.
It is a diverse and truly multi-generational crowd and for a moment, it’s easy to forget the mega-development was – and in some quarters still is – a source of consternation. The Braves’ move from Fulton County’s Turner Field – that stadium was about two decades old - not only removed the club from Atlanta’s urban center but also left a sour taste in the mouth of Cobb County taxpayers who footed two-thirds of the bill.
A stroll to the south end of the complex gives the visitor a reminder of the backlash: The intersection of Battery Avenue and Tim Lee Way.
'We can't leave citizens behind'
Lee was chairman of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners from 2010 to 2017 and passed away in 2019 after a yearlong bout with esophageal cancer.
In 2016, he was roundly defeated at the ballot box by an opponent, Mike Boyce, who ran a single-issue campaign - an anti-stadium platform – and prevailed by a nearly two-to-one margin.
In 2013, Lee spearheaded the effort to commit $400 million in taxpayer money to the Braves, the stadium and what became The Battery – without giving taxpayers a say in the matter.
The transparency – or lack thereof – in the process became a significant wedge between stadium proponents and citizens. Lee reportedly dubbed the effort “Operation Intrepid.” And the dispatch with which the project advanced from private negotiations – Braves president John Schuerholz said if they’d been public, citizens “would not want this to happen” – to commission approval remains a sore point.
Lisa Cupid, the lone no vote in a 4-1 approval by county commissioners, now has Lee’s job chairing the commission. While she has come to appreciate The Battery’s merits and remains optimistic it will have staying power as a destination, she also realizes what was lost in its approval.
“Process is always important when it comes to (earning) the trust of citizens,” says Cupid. “That’s something that, even looking back, was at the forefront of my mind. The idea of having something like a stadium, something as nostalgic as that in your community is always appealing. But it can’t circumvent the significance of, and really, our charge to ensure that the public trust is there.
“It’s not just the what that we do as county government, but the how we do it. We just can’t leave citizens behind in the big decisions we’re making.”
From a volume and value standpoint, The Battery has been a significant success. The county reported that in 2024, a record 10.3 million visitors walked its gleaming avenues and alleyways.
And the Braves, the lone MLB franchise owned by a publicly-traded corporation, reported $67.3 million in mixed-use development income, a 14% increase over 2023.
It would seem like a boomtown for all – county, ballclub, those employed within The Battery and any other stakeholders.
Yet economists argue that The Battery and similar developments are classic examples of “extraction” – that new dollars aren’t necessarily being spent but rather moved around, regionally.
Certainly, Cobb County captured the revenue that used to go to Fulton County when the Braves played there. Yet much of the activity – a night at the movies, a mid-range dinner, a round of drinks with the boys or the baddies – simply would have occurred somewhere else minus The Battery’s existence.
“You built a department store,” says JC Bradbury, an economist and associate professor at Kennesaw State. “We already have seven of those in Cobb County. It’s not transformative for development when you look at a county that’s a ($64 billion) economy. It’s a rounding error.
“Even though they’re always touted as a great economic engine, they’re not. And the data bear this out.”
Bradbury is a frequent detractor of stadium economic impact projections, but in this case, he’s not just a critic; he’s a client. A resident of nearby Marietta, he considers himself a Braves fan and has test-driven The Battery on a few occasions.
While ample parking decks have made it a regional destination, the area has not seen a so-called “halo effect” in transforming the area around it, a potential upside stadium proponents frequently cite.
“They like to describe The Battery as, ‘Oh, we’re recreating Wrigleyville,’” Bradbury says of the once-unique Chicago neighborhood since turned into a replacement-level cash cow for the Cubs. “The Battery is more like Main Street USA at Disney World. And not all restaurants and bars have succeeded there.
“It’s easy to find parking. Are there people there? Yeah. But not much more than if I went to Marietta Square.
“It’s certainly not ‘Downtown Cobb.’”
Much of the area remains unchanged from decades earlier. Cumberland Mall was erected in 1973 and faces many of the challenges similar properties do, though redevelopment is in the mix. Fading strip malls and chain restaurants dot the areas around the interchange.
One common opponent: Traffic. It is epic in Atlanta, even in Cobb’s relatively advantageous position on the northwest edge of I-285, or the “perimeter.” Eighty-one Braves home games can choke the grid further, and it’s interesting to note that the area around Turner Field downtown has largely thrived in the Braves’ absence.
When the moon shot falls short
Those narratives will be missing from any franchise pitches for new stadiums and taxpayer dollars needed to fund them. And the real estate piece of it has only become more urgent.
Both the NFL and MLB aim to centralize revenues among all franchises, particularly national TV money in both sports and gameday revenue in the NFL. It ensures the viability of all teams, regardless of market.
Yet revenue from off-site interests – such as The Battery or Arlington’s Texas Live! and areas around the Cowboys’ stadium in Arlington – are not tossed into the common revenue pool in either league. It is essentially pure profit for the home team and one taking on greater urgency as local and national TV revenues remain uncertain.
That’s why teams in every sport are opting for a Battery moon shot rather than simply building a stadium. And the consequences when they fail can be significant.
One year after The Battery opened, the Oakland Athletics announced plans for what would become a $12 billion proposal in the city’s Howard Terminal – a 35,000-seat ballpark and 6 million square feet of mixed-use development, including commercial buildings and high-rise residential units.
It ended up being an all-or-nothing proposition: When the club failed to reach agreement with Oakland, it lowered its sights significantly and set them on Las Vegas, where the team aims to begin play in a 33,000-seat stadium on a parcel of land barely big enough to play ball, let alone add the “live and work” pieces to create the mixed-use holy trinity.
In Kansas City, citizens showed exactly why franchises prefer to do stadium deals without public input: They roundly rejected a sales-tax initiative that would have built a $1 billion downtown stadium project for the Royals and funded significant renovations to the Chiefs’ stadium. The Royals’ proposal included a hotel, a residential development and entertainment venue consuming several downtown blocks.
That’s not to say politicians heed what might be blowing in the wind.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently celebrated approval of $500 million in Chase Field renovations by showing up to a news conference in a Diamondbacks jersey.
Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has urged the fast-tracking of a new stadium for the Commanders – a massive multi-billion-dollar mixed-use development on the old RFK Stadium site – even as D.C. councilmembers plead for more time to scrutinize a deal she brokered with the team. The city recently approved $500 million in renovations to their downtown arena after Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis was quickly rejected in a quixotic bid to build a massive development in nearby Virginia.
“Plan B is a term that has been used to explicitly get stadiums built,” says Bradbury. “Circumvent the will of the voters: ‘We have a Plan B, we’re going to get around this.’
“What you saw in Kansas City was voters said, we absolutely do not want tax dollars to go toward renovating a stadium for the Chiefs and a new stadium for the Royals. The Chiefs just won the Super Bowl, they’re a popular team and voters were like, ‘Nah, we’re not doing that.’”
The Braves didn’t take that chance and this week will realize the fringe benefit of a jewel event once stripped from the region. While the modern life cycle of a stadium is roughly two decades – and thus this first Truist Park All-Star Game may be its last – county officials believe the site will have staying power.
Its impact throughout the sports industry certainly will, as everyone chases what’s become the standard in development and revenue generation.
“This site has built a tremendous energy beyond any of our comprehension,” says Cupid, the chair of the county commission. “It looked almost surreal what I saw in the renderings on paper. And they brought it to life. And they did it quickly. And they truly changed the footprint of that area.
“It’s become more than just a business, an economic center. It’s a center of vibrancy not just for Cobb but the region right now.
“And it continues to grow.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Battery Atlanta: Truist Park All-Star Game site is envy of sports
Category: Baseball
