As a board member for a Cumberland business district, Mason Zimmerman voted in favor of contributing millions of dollars toward the new Atlanta Braves stadium in the area.
Three months later, the development company where Zimmerman works is a finalist to build the $400 million entertainment district the Braves plan to develop around the ballpark.
Critics say Zimmerman’s dual roles were a conflict of interest, and he should have recused himself.
Zimmerman and Tad Leithead, chairman of the Cumberland Community Improvement District, strongly disagree. They say the vote came well before Zimmerman’s company, Pope & Land Enterprises, knew enough about the project to consider bidding for the high-profile lead developer role.
“The vote was about the prospect of the Braves (moving) and how can we facilitate it,” Zimmerman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His vote, he said, had “no connection whatsoever to what might happen in the future.”
Zimmerman is a senior vice president at Pope & Land, part of a two-company development team that could make millions of dollars if picked by the Braves to handle the project. The Pope & Land team is one of two finalists, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last week.
The Cumberland CID is a collection of 180 busineses that tax themselves to fund transportation enhancements in the district. The businesses pay the tax but the costs is generally borne by consumers who purchase items from merchants and from tenants in office buildings and retail centers. Companies elect directors.
The Braves announced their plans to move to Cobb on Nov. 11. The Cumberland CID voted Nov. 19 to commit $10 million to transportation upgrades. The district’s board also made a non-binding vote to endorse the creation of a special taxing district that roughly covers the CID’s borders.
The new special taxing district, which county commissioners later approved, will provide $5.1 million annually to help cover debt service on county bonds for the ballpark.
Five of seven board members voted in favor of the transportation funds, according to a report in the Marietta Daily Journal, so Zimmerman’s vote was not pivotal.
At the time the Braves said they planned a major development around the new ballpark, but they did not begin seeking bids on the work until early December.
“(I had) no knowledge even back then what the (development) team was going to be or what the requirements (for the project) would have been,” Zimmerman said.
Still, given Pope & Land’s potential business interests, Zimmerman should have stepped aside, said William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia.
“Any time you take a vote that could benefit you personally, it’s a conflict,” he said. “That’s the common sense definition of it. This is an exact kind of example of what contributes to the erosion of public trust in a process like this.
“It’s why people throw up their hands,” he said.
Leithead, the Cumberland CID chairman, said the CID has no written ethics policy but is probably governed under the Georgia’s code of ethics since it was created by the state. He said he doesn’t consider the Zimmerman vote a conflict of interest.
Bob Ott, the Cobb commissioner who represents the Cumberland area, said he doesn’t have a problem with Zimmerman’s vote because it happened “significantly in front of” the Braves request for qualifications from potential developers.
Zimmerman is not the only real estate exec on the CID board. It also includes Trey Parrish, a senior executive with B.F. Saul Property Co., the firm that sold the stadium site to the Braves.
In a statement, the Braves said “we are in the process of evaluating project partners at every level and we cannot comment on any potential partners until they are selected.”
Zimmerman said he has been on the board, whose members are elected by district businesses, for about a decade, volunteering about 75 hours a year to help oversee use of district funds.
Pope & Land, he said, has been a stakeholder in the area since the CID was formed in 1987, and has developed City View and other projects in the area. The company plans a second phase of City View, a mixed-use campus at Cobb Parkway and Cumberland Boulevard.
“The CID has absolutely nothing to do with who the Braves decide to (choose),” Zimmerman said. “They will decide (which group) is the best team to do a mixed-use project in Cobb County, period.”
The other finalist group is an Atlanta-led team of Cincinnati-based North American Properties, Houston-based Hines Interests and Los Angeles-based AEG.
Now that Pope & Land has a potential stake, Zimmerman said he will recuse himself from any future votes that might involve the Braves.
Rich Pellegrino, a member of Cobb Citizens for Government Transparency, has been a persistent critic of the Braves deal because of what he says is a lack of transparency by county government. He said the connection between Zimmerman’s vote and his company’s bid to be developer is par for the course. His group also has criticized Leithead’s dual role as chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission and chairman of the CID, which worked to lure the Braves away from downtown Atlanta.
“This kind of thing is just endemic, to the point that it really shouldn’t even be surprising anymore,” Pellegrino said.
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