A full-page ad that ran last week in The Wall Street Journal promotes the Dallas-Fort Worth region as a “well-oiled machine” that’s becoming known as “the DFW.”
This type of ad is about more than regional bragging rights. It speaks to the very real economic competition between two mega regions anchored by Dallas-Fort Worth and metro Atlanta, the later being a place where many are careful not to refer to the region as the ATL.
Atlanta is poised to ask the ARC to help fund a $200,000 study intended to help guide the redevelopment of neighborhoods surrounding Turner Field.
The ARC would provide $160,000 and the city’s match of $40,000 would be provided by the city and by Invest Atlanta, the city’s development arm, according to legislation that’s due to be adopted Monday by the Atlanta City Council.
When it comes to sales tax campaigns, the one that begins in earnest Wednesday night in Cobb County has to rank among the most politically loaded in a long time.
One issue that’s not being raised seems significant – almost no one is discussing the historic importance of 90 votes. There’s plenty of buzz about the Braves and bus rapid transit. But not much about the narrow approval of a similar 1 percent sales tax referendum in 2011 – a 90-vote margin for passage out of 43,014 ballots cast.
Nor is there much talk about how voters have seen many of the proposed road projects before. A fair share of the current proposals was on a list in 2012, when voters in metro Atlanta rejected the proposed regional transportation sales tax.
Shovels were a sign of excitement at last week’s groundbreaking for the new Atlanta Braves stadium in Cobb County, but they also recalled the grave dug for Jack Falls, who died in a construction accident on the old stadium.
He was killed in 1995 when a light tower he was working on collapsed at the Olympic Stadium, which became Turner Field. An engineer had miscalculated the load that the tower could bear. His family recently recovered a stone plaque from Turner Field that marks his legacy.
No one should hold their breath in anticipation of what’s to be built at Turner Field after the Braves depart.
Overlooked so far in the heady discussions is the local politics of residents who live in neighborhoods near the ballpark. They have an interest in their neighborhoods’ development, as do community leaders who have an eye on jobs to be created during construction and later.
These interests took shape Wednesday during the first meeting of a task force convened by the Atlanta City Council to figure out what should become of the property. For starters, it turns out that Invest Atlanta could take six months to even hire a planning firm to review the existing community development plans, Atlanta Councilmember Carla Smith said.
Never let it be said that the Atlanta City Council doesn’t have a sense of hope and humor.
The council will ask the Atlanta Braves to serve on a task force to recommend ways to spiff up the Turner Field area. The Braves intend to leave the Ted for Cobb County in the the 2017 season.
In addition, the council expects to adopt Monday the community benefits deal regarding the future Falcons stadium, which has riled some civic leaders, and a slate of recommendations on how to bolster Atlanta’s central business district – where the office vacancy rate is among the region’s highest.
A public authority in Cobb County may have the financial capacity to help pay for the planned Atlanta Braves stadium without a vote by the public, the county Board of Commissioners or a city council.
The Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority (Cobb-Marietta) has the sole power to set the hotel tax rate, according to state law. The Braves began talks with the coliseum authority in July, according to espn.com.
The coliseum authority now operates three destinations in the Cumberland area near the site of the planned Braves ballpark – Cobb Galleria Centre, Galleria Specialty Shops, and the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
The notion offered by the Atlanta Braves that fans will find it easier to get to a ballgame in Cobb County than in downtown Atlanta ran into a buzz saw of criticism Monday.
“What a traffic nightmare!! I-75 and I-285 are already [troubled],” a writer identified as MayorDowning commented on ajc.com. “Now you’re adding to it.”
In reality, the Cobb site isn’t a hopeless traffic nightmare. The planned ballpark is alongside Gov. Nathan Deal’s major highway initiative. It’s in the middle of a grid of big roads served by three interstate highways. And it’s about a mile from the transfer station of Cobb’s bus system and its linkage to MARTA.
When the Braves made yet another early post-season exit last week, this time against the Los Angeles Dodgers, former closer Billy Wagner said he was in bed. He said he was too busy working with his son’s private high school baseball team, which he coaches, in Crozet, Va. to watch the National League Division Series.
In 2010, Wagner gave up $6.5 million from the Atlanta Braves, the near-certainty of being major league baseball’s No. 1 closer and any hope of playing in a World Series. He chose home over the game.
How could he give all that up so easily? He answers in a new memoir, “A Way Out: Faith, Hope & Love of the Game.”
By Chris Schroder
If Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron had not taken a Moment in 1952 to walk off the baseball field and take a long-distance call from his brother, Major League Baseball would have missed the humble and charming reign of its home run king.
“I wasn’t just homesick,” Hank said. “I was homesick,” he told us when we filmed his Moment two weeks ago at the Turner Field’s 755 Club. “I wanted to see my mother and go home to my brothers and sisters – I had never been away from home that long,” he said. “I was about to cash the few pennies I had in to go home because I just didn’t feel like I was wanted.”
Diezel is 9, which in dog years is 63, but the Boston terrier didn’t look or act his age Sunday night at Turner Field.
He was rocking a red and blue fur mohawk during the divine canine evening known as Bark in the Park, when dogs take over the nosebleed seats.
At this point in this season, this night was really loyalty – pure and bittersweet. This month will mark the farewell of third baseman Chipper Jones, after a Braves career that began with the 1990 amateur draft.
Chipper is that blue-moon pro athlete who performs so well for so long in the same place. Our dogs don’t stay with us very long, either.
Last weekend, the Atlanta Braves’ home stand once again offered a reminder of one country’s grace and civility in competition – and a story of one Georgia woman’s transformed understanding of that same nation, Canada.
At Turner Field, last weekend served as a paean to Sid Bream’s famous slide that sent the Braves to the 1992 World Series. Their series opponent was back in town — the Toronto Blue Jays, whose fans in 1992 got a chance to show their character when Atlanta botched a basic national symbol: flying a flag.
Imagine that happening the other way around. Granted, at that moment, the post-9/11 patriotic fervor was still a decade away. But would Americans simply let that go as an unintentional slight to Old Glory?
After 17 years in pro baseball, the Carlyles are used to rapid shifts in the foundation of their family’s life.
That’s why their family supporters are so precious to them, and that’s why when the earthquake shook Japan on March 11, 2011, the Carlyles pitched in to care for Akane Nakagawa, the single mom who had cared for them, and for her community that suddenly, desperately needed help.
