But according to the Braves, Turner Field is in need of $150 million in renovations and upgrades, on top of the $125 million the Braves have spent on improvements to date. It opened in 1997, after the city of Atlanta converted its Olympic Stadium into what was then a state-of-the-art ballpark. The ballpark will be just 20 years old when the Braves depart. At SunTrust, the cheapest seats will be $6 and the most expensive will be around $500.Monday morning brought the startling news that the Atlanta Braves will be leaving Turner Field in downtown Atlanta at the end of the 2016 season for a new ballpark in neighboring Cobb County. He said competition with Atlanta’s other sports teams with new stadiums is a factor, but baseball is different in deliberately keeping some low-priced seats. He explained that the goal in baseball is selling about half the seats as season tickets, and the Braves are “well beyond half” now.
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Seat sales are “very good,” Gitomer said. He said that “55 percent of the people that come through our gates come with a child,” leading the team to assume fans will travel from home rather than from the workplace, cutting down on long-distance travels from work centers such as downtown. Gitomer said the Braves also expected some traffic improvements due to the ballpark being located closer to its north metro Atlanta season-ticket population. However, some Sandy Springs officials say they are more concerned about the Battery’s traffic impacts than that of the ballpark. The idea is that traffic will be spread out, instead of jammed at game time, as many fans choose to come earlier and stay later for shopping and eating. He noted that SunTrust Park will have about 9,000 fewer seats and many more entrances than the old Turner Field, nicknamed “The Ted.” Unlike The Ted, the new stadium is paired with a massive mixed-use project called the Battery, featuring many shops and restaurants. Gitomer said that, while the Braves have their own concerns, they’re also comfortable with the solutions. At the Temple Emanu-El talk, a few residents expressed similar fears. About 250 people attended a September forum in Sandy Springs to voice concerns about traffic. However, the Braves’ move from Atlanta to Cobb has not always generated camaraderie.
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“You see people going to those games and hugging complete strangers.” “You start to see this camaraderie that’s built,” he said.
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He talked about getting into the sports marketing business after seeing how games can bring people together with events that are “trivial” in the grand scheme of things. Gitomer has worked in similar positions for such teams as the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and, most recently, the Orlando Magic basketball team. He’s a consultant with the sports marketing firm Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment, hired by the Braves to direct stadium marketing, starting with selling the naming rights to SunTrust. Gitomer spoke about the stadium as part of Temple Emanu-El’s community lecture series. That’s one reason the Braves have made such changes as moving game start times back to 7:30 p.m., he said, a decision that came from a 12-day study of when rush hour starts to thin out. It includes how long, and how painlessly, it takes them to get to the ballpark, he said.
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“What we learned is, the experience doesn’t start when walk in the doors,” Gitomer said.