LAS VEGAS —- Jeff Fuqua cruises through the hallways of Sin City’s cavernous convention center with determined speed. He keeps to a walk, but it’s the purposeful gait of a busy man with much to do.
His mission is to fill the entertainment district next to the new Atlanta Braves ballpark with merchants and restaurants that not only can serve throngs of fans during 81 regular season baseball games, but also draw patrons every other day of the year.
The deadline is immovable: first pitch is just 23 months away.
“We’re going to make it. We talk about it every single day,” said Fuqua, 53 but a decade younger according to his hairline and boyish visage.
On Monday and Tuesday, the veteran metro Atlanta retail developer and his team crisscrossed acres of convention floor and miles between hotels and restaurants for 78 meetings with brokers, lawyers and some of the world’s most-prominent retailers to talk up the Braves site and others he has underway.
They held court at the high-profile International Council of Shopping Centers RECon show in a secluded conference room lined with maps and renderings high above an indoor field of glowing booths.
Fuqua Development’s goal at this confab of 35,000 retail big shots is to turn maybes into yeses and get closer to signed leases with prospects Fuqua and partner Heather Correa are courting.
A lot rides on their efforts.
The Braves want to create a new fan experience outside their new 41,000-seat ballpark near Cumberland Mall. SunTrust Park and the adjoining live-work-play community are intended to raise the Braves’ profile and revenue to boost payroll and put a winning product on the field.
They plan to open a ballpark, hundreds of residences and more than 1.5 million square feet of retail, restaurant, hotel and office space all at once — something no other pro sports team in the U.S. has done.
Cobb County leaders approved nearly $400 million in taxpayer money to the stadium in the hopes that Major League Baseball could spur development. The county is also banking on big returns in sales and property taxes from the privately-owned mixed-use complex.
The Braves turned to Fuqua, whose career includes development of the Edgewood Retail District and Town Brookhaven, to bring in the retailers.
“Jeff Fuqua is his normal aggressive self. He’s got a lot of stuff in the pipeline,” said Dean McNaughton, a senior director at real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.
The Braves aren’t yet ready to announce first tenants and declined to discuss their targeted companies, but the team’s marketing chief, Derek Schiller, said the development team is “well into the letters of intent” phase of recruiting.
At a real estate event last month, Fuqua said higher-end retailers on par with J. Crew, Anthropologie and lululemon were to be expected. Fuqua is aiming for a grocer and flagship stores for new entrants and retailers that have few shops in metro Atlanta. A focus will be women’s specialty retail.
The complex has to work as a thriving mini-city that draws even in the off-season. But when the team is playing, it becomes an additional traffic generator of 3 million fans a season. Signature restaurants will be chef-driven concepts, but the eateries must also be able to handle rushes of people before and after ballgames.
Among the challenges is a lack of robust transit in the Cumberland area, which isn’t immune from gridlock. The Braves and Fuqua say I-75, I-285 and U.S. 41 provide the site the access it needs. Managed toll lanes being built by the state will open before the ballpark and help relieve some congestion.
Cumberland is one of Atlanta’s biggest office markets, and residents in East Cobb, Smyrna, Vinings and North Buckhead can sustain more retail offerings, Fuqua said.
“This is a very big void in the market. Huge,” he said.
ICSC RECon is arguably the nation’s most important meeting in retail. Attendees say most major retail development deals have some connection to this conference, be it lease discussions over dinner and drinks or meetings with financers.
Fuqua first pitched the Braves deal here last year, before he and his partners had officially landed the gig as retail developer. Now, the team can show the project is for real, he said.
Construction of the ballpark and site prep for the mixed-use complex are underway. Comcast plans to occupy an office tower and fill it with about 1,000 technology workers. Earlier this month, the Braves announced Omni Hotels will be part of the complex.
Unlike some real estate firms that might have spent seven figures on a floor booth with video boards and models under glass, Fuqua’s team was more discrete. They secured a $40,000 conference room above the convention to keep meetings and the guest list secret.
It took effort the find the spot, served by a creaky elevator near the back of the sprawling central hall. In a corner, near the coffee stand, stood a tub of baseballs bearing the SunTrust Park logo.
Fuqua loaded his daytime schedule with 15-minute meetings. At a conference famed for booze-soaked after-hours parties, he said his group would stick to private dinners with major prospects.
Fuqua’s bread-and-butter pitch: The ballpark is a unique destination with 3 million baseball fans for games each season, a concert venue that will drive more crowds and a retail trade area of nearly half a million people within about a 10-minute drive. Average household income is in the six figures.
“We’re not testing the waters, we’re building right now,” Fuqua said.
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