Braves Join Falcons in Abandoning Perfectly Good Facility

[The_Admiral]

Oh man I didn't even make the connection that he didn't make the connection

[rams80]

Sweet truck bypass, I guess, but I'm gonna go ahead and call this a future boondoggle.

I dunno, anything that lessens congestion on 80/90/94 is probably a good thing.

[BlueSky]

You guys have me confused with the talk about Cobb County law enforcement. My job interacts with law enforcement in another county and I've lived in metro Atlanta for 12 years now. I had no perception whatsoever of anything different about Cobb County in terms of law enforcement. I just did an informal survey of 5 colleagues, 3 of whom are black. All who have lived in metro Atlanta for years. None of them had any misgivings about Cobb County or thought anything was different about law enforcement there.

We're all of course familiar with the embarassment that was Forsyth County in the past. You're talking as if Cobb is like that.

<SNIP>

Edit: Talked with someone else at work who said in his opinion Cobb County cops are overly aggressive. He had witnessed at least one instance in which cops "jacked up" (his words) a subject who was trying to comply with their instructions. So maybe there's something to that.

You do know any Cobb County law enforcement reference is a reference to this guy, right?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Kmw19Vn0Yio/Tnv746cs-sI/AAAAAAAAADw/JbFaCOwkV9c/s1600/big+boss+man.jpg

Had no idea who that was. Don't follow that "sport" so I had to Google it.

[Brian in Boston]

Speaking of all these "railway racism" chats we're all having, there's the new Expo Line which is supposed to connect Downtown to Santa Monica. Our MTA decided that two of the stops would be near high schools: one in an elite, yuppie neighborhood (Beverly Hills HS) and another in an impoverished, immigrant neighborhood (Dorsey HS in South-Central).

While an extension of the Purple Line subway is planned to run under Beverly Hills High School, there are no Beverly Hills stops on the Expo Line.

Dorsey High School is situated near a stop (Farmdale) on the existing, first phase of the above-ground, light-rail Expo Line. The Farmdale stop was slated to be a part of the Expo Line's route from early in the construction process (2006). However, due to delays in construction that resulted from debates over whether the Farmdale stop should be elevated or at-grade, said stop wasn't ready when the rest of the first phase opened in April of 2012. It joined the Culver City stop in going on-line in June of 2012. The stops on the first phase of the Expo Line are 7th Street/Metro Center, Pico, 23rd Street, Jefferson/USC, Expo Park/USC, Expo/Vermont, Expo/Western, Expo/Crenshaw, Farmdale, Expo/La Brea, La Cienega/Jefferson, and Culver City.

Construction of the second - "new" - phase of the Expo line is currently underway, with the extension to Santa Monica expected to be completed in 2015. Stations on the Expo Line's second phase will be Palms, Westwood/Rancho Park, Expo/Sepulveda, Expo/Bundy, 26th Street/Bergamot, 17th Street/Santa Monica College, and Downtown Santa Monica.

[cmm]

So the new place will have even less parking spots than Turner Field and will rely on golf carts to shuttle fans from satellite lots. Brilliant.

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2013/11/19/6251/new-braves-stadium-being-built-to-cure-inadequate-parking-will-feature-2500-fewer-parking-spaces/

[bosrs1]

So the new place will have even less parking spots than Turner Field and will rely on golf carts to shuttle fans from satellite lots. Brilliant.

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2013/11/19/6251/new-braves-stadium-being-built-to-cure-inadequate-parking-will-feature-2500-fewer-parking-spaces/

Not sure why this surprises anyone. All reasons the Braves are giving for this move are BS. It's not about parking, it's not about the condition of Turner Field, it's not about the specific neighborhood Turner is in, it's not about white vs black, it's not about accessibility at Turner, it's not really even about being near the richer affluent suburbs. The real reason is they're being given free public money. Nothing more, nothing less. They couldn't care less about how this will ultimately negatively impact their fans or many taxpayers in Cobb.

[Raysfan12]

Here is an artist's rendering of the new ballpark in Cobb County:

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

I hate suburban parks/arenas. I'm a firm believer in playing downtown in the city you represent.

If the Braves ever win the Series on home field, where are the fans going to congregate to celebrate? In the adjacent trees? Maybe on the walk ways over the freeway?

[OnWis97]

That's a nice rendering and I like that they envision other development around it. I hate that they have to have one parking space for everyone that is there.

[The_Admiral]

They'll all pile into C.S.A. McJerkoff's Good-Time Grille, which the Braves built so that the team can control the revelry revenue, of course!

[Raysfan12]

I hate suburban parks/arenas. I'm a firm believer in playing downtown in the city you represent.

If the Braves ever win the Series on home field, where are the fans going to congregate to celebrate? In the adjacent trees? Maybe on the walk ways over the freeway?

It's actually nice to see a team that moves away from a city center especially with most teams playing in a downtown setting. Plus, it brings a cozy feeling of being in a suburban area and is located in the hot-red area on the graph that I posted earlier in the thread. I also like the fact that it is in a "safer" neighborhood than in downtown Atlanta and there is actually space to build shops, restaurants, and much more.

[IceCap]

I hate suburban parks/arenas. I'm a firm believer in playing downtown in the city you represent.

If the Braves ever win the Series on home field, where are the fans going to congregate to celebrate? In the adjacent trees? Maybe on the walk ways over the freeway?

It's actually nice to see a team that moves away from a city center especially with most teams playing in a downtown setting. Plus, it brings a cozy feeling of being in a suburban area and is located in the hot-red area on the graph that I posted earlier in the thread. I also like the fact that it is in a "safer" neighborhood than in downtown Atlanta and there is actually space to build shops, restaurants, and much more.

You wouldn't happen to be Glendale's city planner, would you?

[bosrs1]

Here is an artist's rendering of the new ballpark in Cobb County:

Looks like they're going for a post-retro park like Nationals Park or Target Field. Not exactly the most interesting of designs, but they get the job done. Problem is though, they're already leaving a fairly vanilla stadium...

[The_Admiral]

It's actually nice to see a team that moves away from a city center especially with most teams playing in a downtown setting.

No, it isn't nice at all. Part of what makes the ballpark so compelling as a sports venue is the juxtaposition of the urban and the pastoral. There's also a nice dash of populist spirit to the way a neighborhood grows around a stadium, dependent on but also independent of the team. When people talk about how great it would be for the Cubs to move to the suburbs so that the children of the corn can build their own stores and a hotel in the parking lot, I want to throw up. Besides, it seems like all these grand plans for team-controlled revenue streams always go balls-up anyway. Remember how the Cardinals were going to build the Ballpark Village around the new stadium and it was going to revitalize downtown St. Louis and so on, and all it ended up being was a puddle in a pile of gravel?

[cappital92]

I was really hoping the Braves were going to go with a more Southern influenced design. Even though the team and TBS are no longer intertwined, it seems like from Richmond to Jackson is Braves country.

[Gothamite]

My gods, Deadspin comes up with some good ones.

A Cobb County commissioner on why residents won't get to vote on putting $300 million toward the Braves' stadium: "It would have to be a special election, and that would cost taxpayers 300, 400 thousand dollars."

[IceCap]

That's truly amazing.

[dbadefense1990]

If the Braves ever win the Series on home field, where are the fans going to congregate to celebrate? In the adjacent trees? Maybe on the walk ways over the freeway?

They did once. At the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. In 1995.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/features/1998/wsarchive/1995.html

[dbadefense1990]

My gods, Deadspin comes up with some good ones.

A Cobb County commissioner on why residents won't get to vote on putting $300 million toward the Braves' stadium: "It would have to be a special election, and that would cost taxpayers 300, 400 thousand dollars."

It seems like every other day that comes across do I compare the situations with Cobb to those of Glendale. Then again, those people in Georgia are legitimately being screwed by the special interests, while the people in Arizona have been proven to make legitimately stupid arguments in keeping the Coyotes.

[dfwabel]

The MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) gives us more giggle.

Per Field of Schemes:

• The Braves and the county would split 50/50 the cost of a “capital maintenance fund.” Annual amount: to be determined, with details to be spelled out in a later Stadium Operating Agreement. It’s more than a bit worrying, though, that the Braves are committing only to pay for upgrades that “exceed industry standards and that are not reasonably necessary to maintain the Stadium as a competitive MLB facility.” As we’ve seen before, these kinds of “state of the art” clauses have been interpreted by teams — and by arbitrators — to require anything up to and including renovations that cost more than twice what the stadium cost to build in the first place.
• Nobody knows yet what the infrastructure costs will be. That’s left to a separate Transportation and Infrastructure Agreement that’s yet to be written. The included wish list, though, goes far beyond the new pedestrian bridge over I-285 and new exit ramp that the county has already agreed to pay for, to include a Windy Ridge Parkway Connector and other improvements extending northeast across I-75 to Powers Ferry, plus public transit connecting to Route 10 and possibly downtown Atlanta. (The last of which will not make the Cobb County Republican chair happy at all.)
• The Braves would agree to a 30-year lease. But there could be out clauses in the Stadium Operating Agreement that’s — stop me if you’ve heard this — yet to be negotiated.
• The mystery about why the Braves’ contribution to the project is anywhere from $322 million to $372 million is explained: The Braves are committing $372 million toward a $672 million stadium, but if they can cut the price tag they can keep the savings, up to $50 million worth.

The upshot, then, is that there are a ton of details that aren’t going to be worked out by the time of next Tuesday’s county commission vote — details that could amount to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in costs shifting one way or another.