I drove past Sun Trust Park a couple weeks ago, hours before the Atlanta Braves would clinch the National League East title.
To say that was a happy occasion was an understatement; I trace my Braves’ fandom to 1969, when I first attended a game at Atlanta Stadium and the year they won the West with Henry Aaron. Their opponents that day were the San Francisco Giants and Willie Mays.
During the years to follow, the Braves struggled to solidify the changing business of baseball in an economically challenged area of downtown Atlanta.
Little did I or many of my Cobb County neighbors have any idea, that after only 20 years at Turner Field, the next home of the Braves would be rather close to our homes.
It’s been six years since it was revealed that the Braves had worked out an agreement with Cobb County to jointly finance a new stadium, in the Cumberland area, on Windy Ridge Parkway and visible from I-75.
In that late summer of 2013, Tim Lee became a household name not just in Cobb County, but the metro Atlanta area and the baseball world. As the Cobb Commission Chairman at the time, he was approached by the Braves, and discussions were kept secret for months until the last minute.
Even other commissioners weren’t told until it was clear the word was going to get out. What’s more, they had exactly two weeks before they would be asked to formalize a Memorandum of Understanding that would commit the county to nearly $400 million in public financing.
Lee talked a good game about the money not coming from property taxes. Two of his colleagues, Helen Goreham and JoAnn Birrell, were ecstatic. After some grim years of tax increases and budget cuts due to the recession, here was a big fat piece of economic development, plopped right in Cobb County’s lap.
Anyone who would look this gift horse in the mouth, it was suggested by those doing the rah-rah for the stadium, is a fool.
But two weeks was no time to thoroughly review a 30-year commitment for snags, fine print and other potential issues bound to come up for such a complicated, long-term deal.
It’s not a secret that subsidized sports stadiums and arenas rarely yield the jobs and economic benefits they promise, and quite often come with unexpected costs. But Lee, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce and other civic boosters were undeterred.
Lee rammed the Braves’ stadium deal through with a 4-1 vote, with only Lisa Cupid of South Cobb raising questions about the process, and some of the details of the MOU.
That’s how Lee, who died last week from cancer at the age of 62, got some big things done during his six years as chairman. During the recession, he threatened to close down Cobb library branches, to get commissioners to the table to raise taxes and cut services.
That ploy worked, but I came away with a dim view of how Lee operated. The lack of transparency with the Braves’ deal only confirmed that impression a few years later.
Lee lost his bid for re-election in 2016 to Mike Boyce, an East Cobb resident, who drove home the faulty process of how Cobb got the Braves.
Regardless of how Lee swung the deal, what it has represented since then is a kind of transformation of Cobb County.
As the county went from rural to suburban in the late 1960s and 1970s, Cobb is changing again, to an increasingly urban area in many places, including more pockets of East Cobb.
What county officials like to call the “halo effect” of development stemming from Sun Trust Park and The Battery has spilled over to the nearby Powers Ferry Road corridor.
The tax benefits of the Braves’ relocation to Cobb County look like they’re going to pay off. That’s a good thing.
The high-density residential and commercial development that’s popping up all around the county, even possibly to the Sprayberry area, was likely to come whether a stadium was built or not.
However, Sun Trust stands, not just as the home of our Local Nine, but as a symbol that Cobb County is not just the bedroom community that attracted many of us here. The ranch-style homes once built on big, wooded lots a generation ago are increasingly being plowed under for McMansions on postage stamps and upscale townhomes.
Mixed-use developments are replacing standard strip shopping centers as the retail industry goes through major upheavals. Tax incentives for corporate relocations promising new jobs have become more frequent and controversial.
Some of those trends were already in motion when Lee, seeking his first full term as chairman, won a close Republican runoff in 2012. In that election, he had to fend off a former chairman, Bill Byrne, who raised the idea of a City of East Cobb to get votes.
At his watch party at a hotel near Kennesaw State, Lee breathed a sigh of relief when the voting returns finally went his way. He wiped his brow, thanked his supporters and hugged his wife.
Deep down, he was humble and hard-working, from his involvement with the East Cobb Civic Association, to representing an East Cobb district on the Board of Commissioners and as chairman.
Pragmatism was his hallmark, and as much as I disliked the way the Braves deal went down—ends should never justify the means—Lee never regretted it, even if it cost him his political career.
A few hours after Lee’s memorial service Friday at First United Methodist Church in Marietta, the Braves rallied to win a playoff game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Sun Trust.
It’s a shame he didn’t get to enjoy the renaissance of the team and the area where it now plays. My condolences go out to his family, and in lieu of flowers donations were asked to benefit the Atlanta Braves Foundation.
Lee’s actions helped shape a new evolution for Cobb County, one that may be more dramatic than what has come before.
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