|
| Rick Grimes poses for a portrait on the front porch of his home in the Mechanicsville neighborhood surrounding the Atlanta Braves stadium, Thursday, Dec. 12, 2013, in Atlanta. For the Braves, abandoning downtown Atlanta for the suburbs means moving closer to the team’s fan base and developing money-making restaurants and amenities. Team officials say it’s simply good business. But the decision also highlights long-standing disparities over wealth, where people live and even transportation, all facets of life connected to race and social class in Atlanta. The Braves will be moving from an area that’s predominantly black and relatively poor compared to whiter Cobb County, where the team says more ticket-buyers live. Although it is long past segregation, the hometown of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King is far from integrated, and the city’s politics, business and even sports teams reflect that gap. |
ATLANTA (AP)
-- For the Braves, abandoning downtown Atlanta for the suburbs means
moving closer to the team's fan base and developing money-making
restaurants and amenities. Team officials say it's simply good business.
But
the decision also highlights long-standing disparities over wealth,
where people live and transportation - all facets of life connected to
race and social class in Atlanta. The Braves will be moving from an area
that's predominantly black and relatively poor compared to whiter Cobb
County - where the team says more ticket-buyers live. Although it is
long past segregation, the hometown of slain civil rights leader Martin
Luther King Jr. is far from integrated, and the city's politics,
business and even sports teams reflect that gap.
Consider
what Rick Grimes views from his home blocks from Turner Field each time
there's a game: fans, mostly white, streaming past on the sidewalk.
"I would say the large majority of people who support the Braves are white folks," said Grimes, who is African-American.
While
no one would reasonably accuse the Braves of making a decision based on
race or class, one scholar says major attractions often migrate toward
money.
"It becomes a class issue in a lot of
ways," said Larry Keating, a Georgia Tech professor emeritus who has
studied Atlanta's development. "A lot of the primo stuff that is highly
valued by the society ends up going where the wealthiest areas are."
Team
officials say they were looking at other factors. When Atlanta did not
negotiate terms acceptable to the Braves, the team found a suburban
government willing to pay for a chunk of the proposed stadium. The
Braves will also own the property around the stadium, meaning it can
develop restaurants and stores within walking distance. There are few
amenities around Turner Field. Team officials say the new site would
offer better transportation access considering the majority of fans come
from north of the city.
"We don't look at the
exact makeup of the race, religion factor of that ticket buyer," said
Derek Schiller, executive vice president of sales and marketing for the
Braves. "What we're concerned about as a business that sells tickets is
where do our ticket buyers come from? ... We are moving closer to where
the majority of our ticket buyers come from."
Like
many cities, metro Atlanta has an urban core that includes a large
population of black residents and suburbs that are typically whiter.
Atlanta famously marketed itself as "The City Too Busy To Hate" as other
Southern cities resisted integration. But the city has long-standing
racial divisions.
Once owned by media mogul
Ted Turner, the Braves grew a national fan base as their games were
carried on cable systems around the country on one of Turner's TV
stations. To support its argument for leaving, the Braves released a map
based on ticket sales data that showed its fans were clustered in an
arc north of downtown Atlanta that ran through the suburbs.
That
information also shows fans tended to purchase single-game tickets at
the highest rates in places that were several times as rich as
neighborhoods closest to the stadium and much whiter. Of the communities
with the ten highest sales rates, all but one were north of the current
stadium and had median household incomes ranging from roughly $61,000
to $100,000. Those communities ranged from 58 to 85 percent white,
according to counts by the U.S. Census Bureau.
For
this analysis, The Associated Press examined last year's ticket sales
by zip code as tallied by the Braves and compared it with Census counts
and estimates showing the population of adults in those areas along with
race and income. The analysis ignored zip codes with less than 10,000
people and those more than 100 miles from the current stadium. The
comparisons are imperfect. The zip code areas used by the Census do not
perfectly align with postal zip codes. The sales figures do not include
season ticket purchases, people who pay in cash or customers who refuse
to supply their addresses. Braves officials think the sample likely
undercounts suburban fans since at least some suburban commuters
presumably buy tickets using Atlanta work addresses.
In
contrast to the Braves, the NFL's Atlanta Falcons decided to remain
downtown after Atlanta agreed to contribute $200 million in tax money
toward a $1 billion new stadium.
Some see
class, not race, as the more relevant divide. C.J. Stewart, who coaches
Braves star Jason Heyward in batting, sees poverty as a deterrent to
ticket sales. He runs a charity that uses baseball to teach students,
many poor and from the city, about life. Stewart's coaching business is
independent of the Braves.
"It's hard to go to a Braves game when you're hoping and praying that your child graduates from high school," he said.
Some
suburban fans acknowledge the panhandling, barred windows and vacant
lots in the area around Turner Field make them wary. The proposed
stadium is near an exhibition center and a mall anchored by a Costco and
Sears.
"What I don't like about the games, to
be quite frank, is the security aspect," said Rocco Lionetti, who works
with his brother at a suburban Cobb garage. "When you leave the
stadium, you run to your car because you don't want to get mugged."
Lionetti
said his views are shaped by security concerns, not race, and he would
attend more games if the stadium was near bars and restaurants.
One
politician was criticized for invoking - whether intentionally or not -
racial politics when discussing the stadium. The chairman of Cobb
County Republicans, Joe Dendy, said in a written statement that he
rejected calls for bringing rail transit to Cobb County. For years, much
of the debate about MARTA has been wrapped in racial politics. White
communities surrounding Atlanta rejected the transit system in votes
during the civil rights era. Surveys show the transit system's customers
are roughly 74 percent black.
"It is
absolutely necessary the solution is all about moving cars in and around
Cobb and surrounding counties from our north and east where most Braves
fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from
Atlanta," Dendy wrote in a news release.
Dendy
declined an interview, but said in an email that his remark was not
about race, but rather his opposition to a prior rail project that was
rejected by voters.
Four generations of E. Lee
Sullivan's family have lived in the Mechanicsville neighborhood near
Turner Field. She said she understands the concerns of suburban fans, at
least to a point.
"You know, you can dress it
up and say it diplomatically and say crime in the area, which really
breaks down to `I'm scared a black person is going to rob me,'" said
Sullivan, who is black.
She acknowledged the
neighborhood had a crime problem that she blamed on poverty, not race.
Sullivan blames Turner Field and its massive parking lots for sapping
the vitality of a commercial district that once included a theatre, a
bakery and a library.
"They ruined all that, they wiped that all out," she said. "Now they're just kind of like, ok, we're going someplace else."
