Suntrust Park Begins To Take Shape

[Hawk]

It's pretty much a guarantee that food is going to suck. Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea from the Falcons, and the Braves considered doing something similar. But it is likely that the cheap food is going to be pretty crappy and that they will eventually increase those prices.

You can't exactly **** up refillable sodas, hot dogs, pretzels, and waffle fries. Plus, it's not like the food inside of SunTrust (made by Delaware North) doesn't already suck - at triple the price.

And yes, I honestly would rather pay extra for Antico and H&F than get whatever that $3 pizza slice ends up being. Plus, $3 for a pizza slice is $24 for a whole pizza. So you're not saving money there vs. Antico.

Feel free. There will be an Antico (and a Fox Bros.) inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium too.

 

[The Tariff King]

Antico =

 

[Hawk]

As a California native who is a fan of the Falcons and Braves, I'm rooting for whatever makes each team the most money.

But aren't you leaving out the part about PSLs with the Falcons? From what I understand the prices of food at that stadium are almost any empty gesture meant to overcompensate for the ridiculous price to attend a game.

I don't know much about PSLs ... I've read that the Falcons (and ATL UTD) have basically sold them all, though. And that the Las Vegas Raiders adapted the same model. It'll be interesting to see how the secondary ticket market pans out.

 

[Julio3000]

And, y'all, we really need to talk about food.

 

[jpx7]

And, y'all, we really need to talk about food.

I'm interested to see what the concessions at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field are like.

 

[mfree80]

An Atlanta area urban planner critiques Suntrust Park/The Battery:

http://deadspin.com/the-braves-new-ballpark-is-an-urban-planners-nightmare-1797593063

Attached to SunTrust Park like a Cinnabon-scented goiter is the Battery Atlanta, a $550M mixed-used development that looks an awful lot like a New Urbanist project, the widely criticized school of planning that is equal parts social engineering and neoliberalism. New Urbanism is city planning as Truman Show, attempting to humanize and rescale the misguided master planning concepts favored by designers like Le Corbusier. Cities like Seaside, Fla.,—where the Truman Show was partially filmed—and Disney-designed Celebration are attempts to urbanize the suburbs by integrating venerable concepts like transit-oriented design into communities cut from whole cloth. What many of these inorganic communities lack, however, is true diversity. Studies show that homes in New Urbanism communities are often expensive and the communities are more racially homogeneous than urban neighborhoods. “New Urbanism takes seriously many challenges of America’s current suburban landscape with an attention to the human scale, historical references, and architectural character,” says Ashley Bigham, a Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan’s architecture school and co-founder of Outpost Office. “However, many critics of New Urbanism have noted that relying on a historical understanding of urban spaces limits, if not excludes, more contemporary aspects of the city including individual expression and economic diversity.” Planting a project like the Battery in the middle of Cobb County (62 percent white at the last census, compared to 38 percent for Atlanta) only serves to amplify those issues.

[...]

SunTrust Park is an evolution of that “otherness” that the Atlanta suburbs originally represented, a stadium that wants as much to do with its team’s namesake city as the county that’s paying its bills. It still remains to be seen how tight that embrace will be when the team eventually becomes relevant again. As Jason Henderson noted in our conversation, “If the Braves win a World Series, where are they having the parade?”

[...]

Givens also laments the potential lack of diversity at games now that transit options are meager. “When the Braves were at Turner Field, it would have been one of the few opportunities for people from largely-white Cobb to mix face-to-face with people of color and people in lower economic classes,” he said. “You didn’t need to own a car. You could take a MARTA bus there, or even walk if you lived in Summerhill, Peoplestown, or Mechanicsville—all neighborhoods where most residents are historically black and lower-income.”

[MENTION=108]jpx7[/MENTION] [MENTION=4]Julio3000[/MENTION]

I don't line in Atlanta, and have not yet made it out to see the new park.... but this stuff strikes me as sour grapes coming from a guy who is a city or county planner, or studies urban planning, and espouses a different philosophy than the one they chose.

Kind of reminds me of when Andruw negotiated his own contract with the Braves, bypassing Boras. We saw a few articles talking about what was not in the contract, basically calling players stupid for not being totally dependent on agents. It really became clear just how powerful Boras is as he clearly "commissioned" articles to be written to protect his livelihood.

I suspect this is coming from someone with hurt feelings because the Braves ignored his/her advice, or didn't ask for it.

As I say, I haven't been there yet... probably next season sometime, but that is how it reads to me.