(As told to the AJC Editorial Board)
I’ve been with the the Atlanta Braves quite a few years. I’ve been in baseball 48 years. This project is one of the most exciting ones that I’ve personally had an opportunity to be part of in my years in baseball.
When I was with the Kansas City Royals in 1973, we opened Royals Stadium, and that same year, in July, we hosted the All-Star game. We thought that was a tight timeline. We managed to get that done, and we had the All-Star game without a hitch.
Here, we are faced with something even more exciting. Not only are we building a beautiful new state-of-the-art baseball park, but a mixed-use development as well. And they will come out of the ground simultaneously. That is our plan. That is our goal. We believe that in so doing, we have responded to the best interests of our fans — people from Atlanta, suburban Atlanta (and) the five, six, seven-state region we call Braves Country, who make their way through great effort to come to Braves games.
We believe that in building this complex, it will be to their benefit as well as anything. It will be to ours as well, but principally, it will be to our fans’ benefit. We believe they will find it easier, more comfortable and less stressful to get to our ballpark — to get there earlier and entertain themselves, their families, their guests (and) their neighbors, and to have a pro-active, interested attitude about coming to a Braves baseball game.
Not only that, we are building a destination. This complex will be a destination not only for our fans in Atlanta, but in the five, six, seven-state Southeastern region. We are a regional franchise. That’s a fact. As we move but 12 miles north from our current location to our beautiful new location in Cobb County, we will continue to wear “Atlanta” across our chests, wear the “A” on our hat. We will represent the great city of Atlanta.
We made this decision after many, many years of negotiating with the city. Both sides negotiated very hard, trying to find an opportunity where we could do more things around Turner Field. We got to the point where we knew that wasn’t possible.
We also got to the point on the calendar where we knew we had to move quickly if we were going to plan, design and build a stadium — much less a stadium and a mixed-use development coming out of the ground at the same time. It came to the point where … we had no choice but to make a decision, to advise the mayor that we were going to relocate. We tried as best we could. We gave it our very best effort. In the interim, we knew that we had to find a place. We found a place, fortunately, and it’s a beautiful place.
The responses that I have heard have all been the same: We are delighted about your Cobb County project. We can’t wait for you to open. We are excited about going there. We are excited about buying season tickets. So there is a real positive response.
We’re excited about this. This is really a joyful, stimulating time for us in this organization, and we believe that it will be for the community. We certainly believe that it will be for our fans. We can’t wait for it all to happen, and for Opening Day 2017 to come upon us and to see that what we believed, what we planned, what we hoped for, actually has happened.
John Schuerholz is president of the Atlanta Braves
