Business View Magazine | September 2019

125 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 baseball,” says Hatcher. “It was used for about 40 days and, immediately, they started the changeover into a baseball stadium; they picked up sections of the building and moved them into a diamond shape rather than an oval.” In 2013, the Braves announced that they would vacate Turner Field upon the expiration of their lease in 2016, after negotiations between the team and the city of Atlanta to extend the lease broke down. So, in 2014, Georgia State University announced its intentions to pursue the 77-acre Turner Field site for a mixed use development and a reconfiguration of the baseball stadium into one suitable for football. In 2016, the University and the Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority reached a tentative purchase agreement for Turner Field, which was subsequently approved by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. “It ended up perfectly for us because we only had a football team for ten seasons,” Hatcher explains. “We played our first seven seasons at the Georgia Dome. The Braves said that they were building a new stadium and the Falcons said that they were building a new stadium. So, when the City of Atlanta decided that they were going to blow it up and the Falcons decided that they were going to build the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and we wouldn’t have anywhere to play, it became a no- brainer for us to buy this stadium.” THE GEORGI A STATE STADIUM