Play ball: Columbus OKs $50 million Double-A Braves baseball bet on 1920s Golden Park

After hours of debate before a packed crowd, the final score was 6-4 as Columbus Council voted to play ball.

Council approved a $50 million upgrade to the 1920s Golden Park baseball stadium the Double-A Braves expect to use on opening day in April 2025.

That $50 million over time will amount to around $80 million, as financing $50 million in bonds costs at $4,2 million a year, to pay back the interest and principal on that loan.

A key question at Tuesday’s council meeting was how the city would pay for that. Raising property taxes was a possibility.

Mayor Skip Henderson, who has championed the baseball venture as economic development for south Columbus, said he planned to avoid using a property tax increase for the city’s next two fiscal years. He could not restrain what future city leaders do, he said.

The administration’s plan is to spend $2 million in sales tax money to pay off the interest due in the bonds’ first year, when no payment on the principal is required. That is to be included in the next city budget for the 2025 fiscal year starting July 1.

What the city will do when the full $4.2 million comes due next time was not decided.

The sales tax source is a permanent 1% tax voters passed in 2008, when then-Mayor Jim Wetherington, a former police chief, proposed 70% of that one penny for every dollar spent would go to public safety, with the promise of swelling the police ranks to 488.

The other 30% was devoted to infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and sewers.

The $2 million for the bond interest is to come from that 30%, said Deputy City Manager Pam Hodge.

What council voted on Tuesday night was awarding the contract for the stadium work to construction firm Brasfield & Gorrie, which will be working with Hecht Burdeshaw Architects and Moon Meeks and Associates Inc.

The councilors voting yes were Judy Thomas, Walker Garrett, Pops Barnes, Gary Allen, Bruce Huff and Tyson Begly. Those voting no were Glenn Davis, Joanne Cogle, Charmaine Crabb and Toyia Tucker.

Skateboard park in peril

The crowded and sometimes contentious meeting drew Black leaders who cast the baseball bond issue as an investment in an underserved section of the city, echoing the mayor’s contention the development will help south Columbus.

It also drew skateboarders worried about the Jonathan Hatcher Skateboard Park adjacent to Golden Park.

It is in immediate peril, as the promised residential and commercial development is to abut the outfield, a prime location.

The skate park was built for around $1 million, also financed with bonds.

City Manager Isaiah Hugley said the developer given the use of that site would have to build a new skateboard park elsewhere.

It not only would be newer, it would be bigger and better, he said.

The baseball project has been touted as the catalyst for up to $350 million in private development, and Councilors Begly and Garrett cited projections this would spur so much revenue growth that both the city and the school district would benefit, eventually.

Not everyone buys such rosy predictions. Davis, a former ballplayer turned developer, said the numbers are not realistic, and they mirror similar promises to cities whose baseball investments did not pay off.

The Braves are moving here from Pearl, Mississippi, a suburb of Jackson, the state capital. Pearl built a stadium for the team, expecting an economic bonanza. The team was there for 20 years before it pulled out.

Property tax twist

A twist in Columbus’ baseball investment is that the land surrounding Golden Park is in a TAD, a tax allocation district. That means any growth in property taxes from development goes back to the TAD to pay for more infrastructure. It does not go to the city’s general fund or to the county school district.

The TAD around the stadium encompasses the South Commons, including a softball complex, the civic center and A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium.

It is the Liberty District TAD. The Liberty District is a historic Black neighborhood around the Liberty Theatre, blocks north of the South Commons. Its TAD was supposed to spur development there.

But council extended that TAD to the commons so that the revenue could be used to maintain the facilities there.

According to councilors critical of spending $50 million on baseball, those facilities need maintenance that they are not getting.

Cogle said the softball fields are in such disrepair that a major tournament is threatening to go elsewhere. Tucker said the memorial stadium, a football venue, is in horrible shape, and upon learning the city had $1.6 million in the Liberty District TAD, she demanded it be devoted to the football stadium.

Council voted to do that right away. Then Councilor Crabb suggested the city dissolve the Liberty District TAD, so any property tax growth from development around Golden Park can go straight to the city and school district.

Hugley said any money in the TAD account had to be spent before the TAD could be dissolved. He added that the TAD money could be needed for the Liberty Theater, at some point.

A sense of history

The long night ended with Shea Guinn, an executive at Braves’ owner Diamond Baseball Holdings, telling everyone the staff was eager to move here and set up shop downtown, with job openings for local residents.

The company soon will start working at the ball park, too, and keep up with the renovations, he said.

In an interview outside the council meeting, Guinn said Golden Park has a special appeal that his business can’t get from a brand-new baseball stadium:

History.

Though its professional teams have come and gone, the last in 2008, the 1926 ball park has hosted some of baseball’s greatest heroes, and it has not much changed, in nearly a century. Guinn said it has “great bones,” and gives you the sense of being part of baseball history.

“It’s what baseball originally was,” he said. “You look at that list of players that have played there. You’ve had Babe Ruth. You’ve had some of the all-time greats of baseball play there. That history is also in that stadium, and I think that’s really going to be a real important part of the design and the experience of the stadium.”

As the stadium’s brought up to Major League Baseball standards, his company wants to keep that “historical integrity,” he said. “That was something that was very, very appealing to us.”