Rendering of Georgia State Football at Turner Field, Atlanta
The move is on to turn Turner Field — home to the Atlanta Braves baseball team for 20 seasons and a central site for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta – into a football stadium for Georgia State University (GSU).
The board of regents for the downtown Atlanta University gave the final approval on Nov. 9 to purchase the stadium and its 68-acre site from the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority.
The board approved $53 million total in expenditures for the effort; $30 million for the purchase and $23 million to renovate the stadium into a 23,000-seat football facility, with room for an additional 10,000 seats in the future.
The purchase and renovation will provide a permanent home to the school’s Panthers football team, which debuted seven seasons ago as a member of the Sun Belt Conference.
That team played its home games in the 75,000-seat Georgia Dome; home of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons; via a lease deal that is expected to be terminated after the conclusion of the current football season. The Falcons are also moving out of the Georgia Dome and heading to the new 71,000-seat Mercedes-Benz Stadium that will serve as the home of the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl football game as well.
“Seventy-five thousand is way too big for us and the idea was always to find a location where we could build something permanent but that was far too expensive,” GSU athletic director Charlie Cobb told Venues Today. “Reusing Turner Field was the most effective and efficient option because it has many years left in its life and there’s nothing like having free reign over your own stadium.”
The Turner Field site became available with the coming move of the Braves to the new $1.1-billion SunTrust Park in Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta.
The Turner Field site includes the property that once housed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, which was the 1966-1996 home for the Braves following their move from Milwaukee.
Georgia State plans to build a baseball stadium on that site in the future, though no timeline or budget plans for that effort have been announced. The football facility will feature artificial turf and is expected to host approximately 20 events a year, including high school athletics, soccer matches and concerts, Cobb said. He added that Georgia State and local officials plan to pursue pre-season classic and smaller post-season bowl games at the new site.
Renovations are able to begin Jan. 1 when the school officially takes ownership of the property. Details on the renovation project and request for qualifications for potential contractors are available through the state on the Georgia Procurement Registry.
Two-thirds of the property will be included in a nearly 80-acre, $300-million redevelopment project in partnership with the Atlanta-based Carter USA firm. No committed tenants have been announced for the mixed-use effort, but it is expected to include single-family and student housing and stores and restaurants in addition to the athletic facilities.
Malloy Peterson, senior vice president at Carter, said land acquisition is nearly complete on the non-Turner Field portion of the project, and the first components have already been determined.
"While planning for the project is already underway, we expect to focus on retail activation and beginning development of the private student housing component immediately,” she said. “We plan to close on the land by the end of 2016, and to begin marketing and development in early 2017.”
Local authorities have high hopes for the former anchor of the Olympic Games, which was created as the 83,000-seat Centennial Olympic Stadium before being converted into baseball use and renamed in honor of longtime Braves owner and billionaire Ted Turner.
A master plan revealed for the area around the Turner Field site released over the summer saw the Georgia State athletics involvement as a key ingredient to bring life into a moribund section of downtown, with total future investment activity estimated at $1 billion.
Interviewed for this story: Charlie Cobb, (402) 522-1967; Malloy Peterson, (404) 888-3263