TD15 This will get sneered at by some, but the idea of a KSU/Cobb Sports and Entertainment Complex is actually something that has some traction among school and Cobb County political types..
An earlier poster mentioned the 400m dollar bill that Cobb paid for the Truist/Battery complex.. Intially this went over like a lead balloon, people got voted out of office, and heads rolled..But now, 7 years in and a great baseball team later things have changed. That 400m is either completely or almost wiped out. Yearly tax revenues directly from the Battery are enormous, and most importantly, the retail near the Battery, Cumberland, Galleria, Akers Mill, has exploded. Now, Cobb is collecting massive new revenue from the entire area, which was not generally expected..The Battery has revitalized that entire area..
Now, look at the Town Center area.. Retail there is dying a slow painful death..Big sections of the mall are shut off or look like flea markets, and the big box stores are slowly failing.. There are more than a few people in that area that think a Sports and Entertainment Complex could do on a smaller scale what the Battery has done in the Windy Hill to Cumberland area. You wouldn't get 81 home games, but you would get 6 football games, 15 basketball games, along with many baseball, softball, and various other college sporting events year round, along with concerts etc.. There are even some thoughts of a small bowl game being hosted in the future.. One political staffer talked about the idea of a 25-30k Carrier Dome type facility, that would serve as the home for football and could be "half-housed" for basketball or other uses.
I know all this sounds like fantasy, and for now it is. But, within the next 10 years with some sports success, a growing fanbase, and community engagement, don't be too dismissive..
