The Atlanta Braves and Cobb County have substantially completed negotiations on five major agreements that are necessary before construction begins on the new Cumberland-area ballpark.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution received hundreds of pages of the draft documents Wednesday under the Georgia Open Records Act.
In interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today, Cobb County Commission chairman Tim Lee and Braves executive vice president Mike Plant said the contract drafts released to the AJC are close to the final versions to be voted upon by Cobb commissioners on May 27.
“I don’t anticipate any substantial changes to any of those documents,” Lee said. That doesn’t preclude the possibility, he added, that small portions of the agreements might be reworked if something comes up “as our teams take a breath and step back and look at this.”
Said Plant: “Our teams are going to keep working for the next couple of weeks on tweaking a few of the things in there.”
One of the most important documents, the stadium development agreement, outlines the stadium project’s budget and taxpayers’ obligations toward funding construction.
The county and team have said consistently since announcing the Braves move in November that the stadium cost would be $672 million. But the current budget outlined in the stadium development agreement lists the “total project cost” at $622 million, with a “maximum stadium cost”of $672 million.
The budget also says the “county contribution” toward the stadium budget is $368 million, which includes $92 million that the county says will be repaid with $6.1 million in annual rent payments from the team. The Braves’ cash contribution to the project is listed as $230 million, according to the budget,which lists an additional $50 million of “Braves discretionary” spending.
At $230 million, the Braves would be paying 37 percent of the stadium project’s up-front costs. If the Braves kick in the $50 million in discretionary funds, their contribution would be about 42 percent of the project cost. Those percentages don’t include the rent payments.
The stadium operating agreement also makes clear that the team will collect all stadium and parking revenues once operations begin in 2017.
Both Plant and Lee said the new contracts reflect the same financial arrangement outlined in the memorandum of understanding approved by Cobb commissioners in November.
“The terms and conditions in the MOU have not changed one iota,” Lee said. “These agreements are an extension of the MOU to create more detail as to how that MOU is arrived at. … If you try to diverge and say these are changing the deal from November, you’re going to be way off the mark.”
A second document, the construction administration agreement, dictates that construction begins no later than Nov. 1.
The documents also make clear that the Braves are responsible for all construction cost overruns, unless the county requests a change to the stadium that increases costs.
Another newly negotiated document, the non-relocation agreement, binds the team to play in the stadium through the 2046 season. A provision of the agreement says the team could notify the county of its intention to move at any point in the last three years of the agreement.
The agreement does allow the Braves to occasionally play a few “home” games in international cities, if requested by Major League Baseball.
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