Are Cuyahoga County residents, willing to lose any one of the three pro-sports teams? The following article about the Brave’s brings up another important overlooked issue; after teams utilize the tax payer funded facilities and extract their huge financial benefit, the facilities reach the end of their useful life and, the Cities are on the hook for the demolition cost. ------------ Braves plan to build new stadium in Cobb By Tim Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionNov. 12, 2013, ajc/news/sports/baseball/braves-plan-to-build-new-stadium-in-cobb/nbpNQ/ EXCERPTS: The Atlanta Braves plan to build a new stadium in Cobb County and move there from Turner Field at the start of the 2017 season, team officials said Monday… …Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, in a statement issued Monday afternoon, seemed to concede that the Braves are headed to Cobb. “… We have been working very hard with the Braves for a long time, and at the end of the day, there was simply no way the team was going to stay in downtown Atlanta without city taxpayers spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make that happen,” Reed said. “It is my understanding that our neighbor, Cobb County, made a strong offer of $450M in public support to the Braves and we are simply unwilling to match that with taxpayer dollars.” … Turner Field would need about $150 million in infrastructure work, including replacement of seats, upgrading lighting and plumbing, etc., to remain viable, according to Plant. “And that’s nothing that is going to enhance our fan experience, which is very important to us,” he said. He said enhancing the fan experience would cost “upward of an additional $200 million.”
Posted on: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 15:48:35 +0000