Originally Posted by
Atlanta Journal Constitution
There will soon be two Braves teams playing professional baseball in metro Atlanta, sometimes on the same day.
The Atlanta Braves will move their Class AAA minor-league team to Gwinnett County, according to people familiar with the deal.
Final details were being worked out Monday and a news conference has been scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at Gwinnett Center, said Center spokesman Chris Hendley, who declined to discuss the topic.
The Class AAA Richmond Braves, the organization's highest-level minor-league affiliate, could play in Gwinnett as soon as 2009. The Braves' three-year contract at the Richmond, Va. stadium, known as The Diamond, runs through the 2010 season, but the Braves have the option to pull out after the 2008 season. A stadium for the Richmond Braves could be built on land the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners is expected to approve purchasing on Tuesday. Tuesday's commission agenda lists a $5 million "purchase and sale agreement" of about 12 acres of land owned by Brand Properties. Brand Morgan, Brand Properties owner, declined to comment on the sale or what the land will be used for, but did say he plans to attend a news conference at Gwinnett Center on Tuesday.
The land is located along Buford Drive, southeast of I-85 and near the Mall of Georgia.
A Braves spokesman said Monday the team would have no comment.
County Commissioner Mike Beaudreau declined to comment when asked if he knew of plans to relocate the franchise to metro Atlanta or whether the county was involved in the project.
County Commissioner Bert Nasuti said he couldn't talk about the situation, other than to say county officials are continuing to work extremely hard on bringing baseball to the county. "My hope is that we will be able to speak openly and in great detail on this in a short period of time," he said.
Demming Bass, a spokesman for the Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce, also declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements, and referred telephone calls to Preston Williams, general manager of the Gwinnett Center.
Williams was in a meeting, according to his assistant, and did not immediately return a telephone call.
The news came as a surprise to the city of Richmond, where the minor league team has played since 1966. Linwood Norman, press secretary to the mayor, said the city last heard from the Braves on Jan. 7. Richmond was negotiating a long-term lease to keep the Braves and had just asked for proposals to build a new stadium. "We haven't heard anything today," Norman said Monday afternoon.
The city had been dealing with Mike Plant, executive vice president of business operations with the Braves. "We would like to hear from him, if he would like to talk to us," Norman said.
The Richmond Braves will be the third professional franchise to play in Gwinnett, joining the Georgia Force of the Arena Football League and the Gwinnett Gladiators, a minor-league hockey franchise affiliated with the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers.
Gwinnett's minor-league field of dreams has been on the table for some time.
Last July, a consulting firm has concluded that the county provides "one of the strongest markets in the country to support a minor-league baseball team."
That conclusion was contained in a draft report of the study, which was prepared by Convention, Sports & Leisure International, a Minnesota-based consulting firm. The Gwinnett Convention & Visitors Bureau hired the firm to study the feasibility of building a baseball stadium for a minor-league team in Gwinnett.
The report showed that building and operating the stadium could create hundreds of jobs, generate up to $7 million in consumer spending every year and generate as much as $12 million in tax revenue over a 30-year period.
The report also put the price tag for building a stadium between $25 million and $30 million.
"It was a pretty detailed and thorough report," Williams told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution in July. "In comparing Gwinnett County with the demographics of other metro areas that already have minor-league franchises, in most all the categories it was in the top four or five."
Williams was a leading proponent of the new stadium.
Other highlights of the study:
• A Gwinnett stadium should have 5,500 permanent seats, grass seating for up 1,500 people, at least 16 private suites, 300 club seats and 2,300 parking spaces in walking distance of the stadium.
• The projected $890,000 to $1.5 million operating surplus for the stadium wouldn't be enough to pay off an annual debt of $2.1 million if the stadium were paid for by issuing bonds.
Braves moving to Gwinnett
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