31 Georgia Residents to Have Homes Demolished for Ballpark

County wants to build a 4-lane road to help with traffic
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 18, 2016 12:29 PM CST
31 Georgia Residents to Have Homes Demolished for Ballpark
In this May 5, 2016, file photo, work continues on SunTrust Park, the future home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team in Atlanta.   (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)

Cobb County, Ga., just told the residents of a neighborhood next to the new Atlanta Braves stadium to say goodbye to their homes. The county is using eminent domain to take over at least 16 Turnberry Lane homes, and likely 15 more, and bulldoze them in order to make room for a new four-lane road that will increase access to SunTrust Park, currently under construction. As 11Alive reports, the county has ensured homeowners they will be given fair market value for their homes—but they likely won't be given the amount they could have received for their home had it stayed put and, ultimately, been within walking distance of the new ballpark. Deadspin has more on the contentious background of the new ballpark, including the public paying for it but having no say in the negotiations and the politician behind it getting voted out of office.

Sean Breslin, who has championed the new stadium on his blog, is one of the homeowners who will lose his home within months. "So my wife and I will leave our home soon—the only home we’ve ever known, the place where we’ve lived since the summer of 2013, a year before we got married," he writes. "We’ll find another home, probably in Cobb County, but likely a lot farther up I-75. We’ll pay the same taxes we do now, but we won’t quite feel the changes in the area we’ve anticipated since the Braves made their big announcement." He doesn't blame the Braves, since the county claims the four-lane road has been a consideration for two decades and is simply of more importance now. Interestingly, a statement on the county website and a WSB-TV story in which a county rep said the county would help homeowners find new places to live have both been taken down. (More Atlanta Braves stories.)

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