Braves’ Cobb County stadium to be transparent?
By Matt Fisher
Turner Field may be only 20 years old by the time Cobb County Stadium will be opened, but plans are already in place to make it revolutionary.
Tim Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an interview up with the architects of the Braves’ planned new stadium, which was announced two months ago. The new stadium is set to open in 2017, and one of the plans in place is for the stadium to open along with a slough of restaurants, hotels, and residences. Building a sporting venue while simultaneously building what amounts to a community is unprecedented.
"…what makes this challenge unlike any of Populous’ previous projects Santee said, is the Braves’ plan to build the stadium simultaneously with an adjacent mixed-use development of shops, restaurants, bars, residences, offices and hotels. “Honestly, it hasn’t been done before,” Santee said. “It’s like designing a community at one time.” …Populous’ agreement with the Braves doesn’t include designing the mixed-use development, but the firm must create a ballpark that works in synergy with the rest of the project."
Another interesting planned feature for the new ballpark is that the exterior is going to be in some way transparent. Whether that means the walls will be see through or the natural landscape will lend itself to transparency has yet to be decided, but where the Populous group plans to build the park seems to open the door for many possibilities.
The project as a whole is going to cover 57-acres in a suburban area near Cumberland Mall in a forested area that creates a natural bowl where the stadium will supposedly reside. One of the main goals of the architects is to keep seating as close to the field of play as possible for an ‘intimate’ ballpark experience, a plan that will bring the maximum seating capacity of the new park down about 10,000 from the 50,000 that Turner Field can now hold.
The entire stadium, along with all adjacent business and properties is scheduled to be open in 2017. Roughs sketches of what the skeleton of the building could look like might be out in less than two months.