The Atlanta Braves plan to make another major addition Tuesday to the lineup for their new Cobb County stadium.
The Braves will announce a deal with Omni Hotels & Resorts on a hotel to be built in the mixed-use development adjacent to the stadium, two people familiar with the plans told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Braves declined to comment other than to say that the team’s chairman and CEO, Terry McGuirk, will make “a major announcement related to the SunTrust Park mixed-use community” at an 11 a.m. news conference in an office building overlooking the stadium construction site.
Omni Hotels will become the fourth major corporation to partner with the Braves on the stadium project, following SunTrust Banks, Delta Air Lines and media and cable giant Comcast.
Last September, Atlanta-based SunTrust signed a 25-year naming-rights deal on the stadium.
That was followed early this year by deals with Atlanta-based Delta to sponsor a premium hospitality area in the stadium and with Philadelphia-based Comcast to be the sole tenant in a new nine-story office building adjacent to the ballpark. The Comcast deal also calls for the company to provide cutting-edge Internet connectivity throughout the complex.
A hotel has been part of the Braves’ game plan since the team announced in November 2013 that it would move from Turner Field to a new stadium near the intersection of Interstates 75 and 285.
The Braves repeatedly have said that when the $622 million stadium is completed in March 2017, it will open simultaneously with a $450 million development of offices, at least one hotel, residences, shops, restaurants and entertainment spaces.
J.C. Bradbury, a sports economist at Kennesaw State University, said high-profile corporate partners such as SunTrust, Delta, Comcast and Omni bode well for the project.
“Obviously they must have confidence in it, even though we haven’t seen anything quite like this kind of development associated with other stadiums,” Bradbury said.
He pointed out that in addition to marketing rooms to Braves fans and other Cumberland Mall-Galleria area visitors, the hotel will get another benefit: visibility on Braves telecasts throughout the baseball season.
“There’s going to be a lot of TV exposure,” Bradbury said. “They’re putting not just a billboard, but an actual hotel, on TV.”
Omni, based in Dallas, operates 60 luxury hotels in the United States, Canada and Mexico, totalling approximately 21,000 rooms, according to its website. Its only hotel in Georgia is the 1,059-room Omni Atlanta Hotel at CNN Center.
The Braves’ zoning application in Cobb County calls for one or more hotels in the mixed-use development with a combined total of up to 450 rooms.
A spokeswoman for Omni didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday. A Cobb County official said the county would have no comment until Tuesday’s news conference.
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