It was opening day for the Atlanta Braves last April and the stakes were high. More than 50,000 tickets had been sold and the fans began pouring in before noon to kick off tailgating festivities.
Soon after, Braves executive Mike Plant received an email from Larry Bowman, senior director of stadium operations, alerting him to a problem: Fans arriving at the blue lot were being turned away by Georgia State parking officials and told to return after 5 p.m., lest they get booted, he said.
And the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority — the agency that owns Turner Field — wasn’t helping.
“I can’t stress enough how disappointing, frustrating and now flat-out uncooperative the AFCRA is being with our ability to operate our game responsibilities at the stadium complex,” Plant wrote in an email the same day to Atlanta Chief Operating Office Duriya Farooqui and Deputy Chief Operating Officer Hans Utz.
That e-mail, a sample of exchanges between the Braves, the AFCRA and the city over parking problems, offers a glimpse into the friction between the team and the county agency that oversees Turner Field. The documents, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from the AFCRA through an open records request, show the Braves were lodging those complaints just months before the team began negotiating with Cobb County for a new stadium.
In one letter, the Braves make clear that renewing the team’s lease would depend in part on resolving a parking problem for which it held the county responsible.
via Parking clash a glimpse into Braves’ unhappiness | www.myajc.com.
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