Though long balls may be flying out of Truist Park when the Cincinnati Reds and hometown Atlanta Braves play Thursday on MLB Opening Day, one thing we won't be seeing is the economic dinger that the $672 million stadium was promised to bring.
When the stadium development was announced in 2013, its booster coalition of team executives, elected representatives, and business leaders pitched it as a "home run for Cobb County," arguing the project would generate sufficient economic activity with associated tax revenues to cover the stadium's costs with a bountiful surplus. This windfall thus justified the $300 million that Cobb committed to construct the stadium in order to lure the team from its downtown Atlanta stadium, Turner Field, built just 17 years earlier for the 1996 Summer Olympics.
