Business View Magazine | September 2019

126 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 “It was a win-win-win all the way around,” Hatcher continues. “The city was really excited because this used to be a city facility that the Braves were tenants in. And since it didn’t have a major league baseball team as a tenant to operate it, they were excited to not have a lot of those operating expenses to keep the building running. So the city got rid of it, and we ended up transforming it into our home football stadium, which is now where we’ll play for a long time. On January 1, 2017, we moved in and we’ve been operating ever since. We ended up hiring JE Dunn Construction to do the remodel into a college football stadium. They started work in April and they finished in August; we played our first football game the last week of August. We opened with 25,000 seats, which is the club level down, inside of the football footprint. As we continue to grow and build a tradition of winning football, we hope to open it up to another 10,000 seats in the upper deck.” In addition to hosting the school’s six home football games from Labor Day weekend through the first week of December, Hatcher notes that the stadium is home to many other events, as well: “We just got done hosting the Premier Lacrosse League; we hosted the Atlanta Legends of the AFF League; we’re having multiple high school games; we’re having some Atlanta public school games; and then we’re going to have the high school state championships in December. We also do all sorts of charity 5Ks and things like that. We pictured Associate Athletic Director for Communications, Mike Holmes pictured Associate Athletic Director for Facilities and Operations, Patrick Hatcher