If you said “improved mass transit,” “road repairs,” “improved mass transit,” “more police manpower,” “improved mass transit,” “southside development,” or “improved mass transit,” you’re completely wrong.
But if you said “another sporting complex,” then you’ve hit the jackpot! Ding ding ding!
SSDD: Dekalb County has agreed to build a $30 million dollar soccer complex for the eventual Atlanta MLS team.
It’s stories like this that really make me fucking hate Atlanta, sometimes.
I try not to really give too much thought on stuff like politics, bureaucrats and local government, but at this point, the obsession with sporting venues and the constant development of them has become so saturated and overwhelming that it’s impossible to ignore. That, and the fact that these sporting complexes are putting a stranglehold on varying parts of a city that is already world reknown for its crippling and mindblowing traffic, all because a bunch of rich greedy businessmen want to become richer and greedier, because for some reason sporting venues somehow equate millions and millions of dollars.
Regardless, add “MLS complex” to the list, with the brand-new Falcons stadium next to the still-good Georgia Dome, Great White Flight Park SunTrust Park that isn’t in scary black people ghetto. I’m sure the Atlanta Hawks will soon get a new arena to play, despite the fact that Philips Arena is pretty much solely theirs already.
Seriously, it baffles me to how this kind of stuff is even legal. The complex is estimated to cost $30 million, and Dekalb county will have to pay $12 million of it? And that decision is made by a committee of middle-aged white men that get to speak on behalf of a county that is nearly three-quarters of a million people? Where the committee members themselves will somehow be making money on this whole endeavor while 700,000 people will probably have to pay an extra 1% on everything they purchase within their own communities? This is legal, how?
Personally, I like spectating soccer, but it’s no secret that it really hasn’t caught on with the vast majority of the American population. Furthermore, this is all for a training facility; if the hearsay is correct, the Atlanta MLS team will be sharing the new Falcons stadium with the Falcons, despite the fact that I thought I once heard that MLS teams were not supposed to share arenas with other professional venues. But the point is, Dekalb residents will be paying more money on a regular basis for what is going to amount to a training ground; not an actual venue for real, meaningful games.
If it were a training facility for the Falcons, or even University of Georgia football, or the Braves or a minor league complex, I could see it making more sense. But a soccer complex? A sport that the vast majority of the country has yet to even embrace? So stupid.
Furthermore, a large part of this price tag is the fact that existing structures will need to be uprooted and relocated; the county’s parks department, specifically. An empty plot of land, ready to be developed on wasn’t selected, it’s like Arthur Blank walked around an area and said “hmm, this looks like the perfect place to demolish a building, raze the land, cripple the flow of traffic, and build a sporting complex – for soccer.”
It’s almost as if acres and acres of undeveloped, empty, vacant land didn’t exist on the south side of Metro Atlanta.
In the end, all I can do is shake my head at all this bullshit revolving around the ever-growing number of fucking sporting venues that are being built all over the city limits. And as I’ve often said, and I like sports, but even I have to agree that all these new venues and complexes are bullshit, and coming into fruition because of nothing but greed.
I can’t wait to see the future of Atlanta; one of these days, the perfect storm will hit, where the Falcons, Braves and Hawks all suck at the same time. New Falcons Stadium will be empty, ScumTrust Park will be an ocean of empty seats, and since the Hawks will probably somehow get a new arena as well, that will be empty again when they’re back to losing 60 games. The MGM Casino that will have taken over Turner Field’s property will have brough legions of crime, gang activity and general drunken debaucherous grief to the area, and out in Dekalb county, the training facility for an MLS squad that is the bottom of the standings is seen with disdain and regret from fairweather Atlanta fans, salty over the fact that an expansion team didn’t come out of the gate and win whatever championship MLS has.
It’s going to be great. And by great, I mean fucking depressing, because the city will have sunk billions of dollars into all these supposed projects that promised millions and millions of dollars in potential return and claims that having them will make Atlanta a world-class city. But reality will sink in that none of it will come true, at least not in any of our lifetimes; that is if Atlanta doesn’t become the next Detroit in the process.
