ATLANTA -- With their lease expiring Dec. 31, the Atlanta Braves are quietly moving out of Turner Field. And once they’ve moved to Cobb County in January, they may face a lawsuit from their old landlord over as much as a million dollars in unpaid parking revenue. The Braves say they don’t owe the money.
11Alive News first uncovered the dispute in mid-September.
At midday Thursday, workers at Turner field scaled the giant Coca Cola bottle that overlooks the ballpark – then popped the cap and took it down. The Braves' departure from their home of twenty years has been nearly invisible from the outside – apart from the obvious moving trucks that have moved in and out of the stadium’s rear loading dock in recent days.
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"It’s been amicable," said Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority director Keisha Lance Bottoms. She said the authority and the team have temporarily set aside an ongoing dispute over the authority’s share of Braves parking revenue collected over the last six years.
"We still disagree on the numbers, but right now the focus is on (the team) moving, plus closing the sale of Turner Field to Georgia State University," Lance Bottoms said.
The parking revenue dispute centers on special events parking. Bottoms said the team was supposed to share 50 percent of that parking revenue with the recreation authority – but paid only eight percent – leading to what the authority says is a shortfall of at least $400,000 over the last six years. "And on the high end, it could be well over a million" dollars, she said.
The revenue would go to a fund to benefit the surrounding communities of Summerhill, Mechanicsville and Peoplestown.
Lance Bottoms said the authority may find itself in court or in mediation to settle the dispute – after the Braves complete the move to their new stadium in Cobb County.
The Braves have said the authority has arrived at an incorrect figure based on an incorrect calculation. They said that in September. Late Thursday, a Braves spokeswoman wrote in an email: "We dispute this as we did back in September." .
