The Atlanta Braves Battery Is Not the Blueprint You Think It Is
Every stadium booster eventually brings up The Battery. The Atlanta Braves built a stadium, developed the land around it, and made it work. That is the pitch. Here is what they leave out.
By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-02-26
Every Bears stadium booster eventually brings up the same example.
"Look at what the Braves did. They left Atlanta, built a new stadium in Cobb County, put a whole entertainment district around it. It works. It's thriving. That's the model."
The Battery at Truist Park is real. It exists. The restaurants, bars, and retail are there, and some of them are doing well. The question is whether the math transfers to a Bears stadium in Arlington Heights.
It does not.
The Game Count Problem
The Atlanta Braves play 81 home games per year.
The Chicago Bears play 8.5 home games per year.
That gap — 81 versus 8.5 — is everything. Every business model that works around Truist Park is built on weekly traffic for six months. Fans come on Tuesday. They come on Thursday. The regulars come twice a week. The restaurants see steady tables. The bars develop a rhythm. The hotels fill on a rolling basis from March through September.
That is what makes a baseball entertainment district viable. Not the stadium. The frequency.
NFL games happen on Sundays. Occasionally Thursday nights and Monday nights. Eight or nine times in four months. The rest of the year, the parking lots are empty and the surrounding blocks have no reason to exist.
You cannot build a neighborhood around an event that happens eight times a year. You can build an event space with parking. That is different from a neighborhood.
The Battery's Actual Financials
The Battery is presented as a success story. That is partly true and partly selective memory.
A 2022 Kennesaw State University economic study found that The Battery ran at a net loss of $12-15 million per year through 2021 — this despite 81 Braves games per season, a concert venue, and sustained investment.
Even at 81 games, the economics of building a neighborhood from scratch are brutal. Cobb County borrowed and spent heavily to make The Battery happen. The surrounding infrastructure required massive public subsidy. The Braves got a new stadium at favorable terms.
If the math is hard at 81 games, apply it to 8.
Who Actually Owns the Upside
The other thing stadium boosters omit: Liberty Media, which owns the Atlanta Braves, also owns the land surrounding Truist Park.
The financial model for The Battery is not "stadium generates retail foot traffic, retail generates revenue, community benefits." The financial model is: Liberty Media builds a stadium, develops the surrounding land on the same balance sheet, and captures the real estate appreciation that results.
They own the whole ecosystem. When the land value goes up — because they invested hundreds of millions into building a destination — they benefit directly.
The Bears do not own Arlington Heights in that way. The site they purchased is the former racetrack. The surrounding community already exists. There is no Liberty Media-style unified real estate play here. The "economic development" benefits they are promising to the suburb would accrue to existing landowners and future developers, not to the Bears.
The NFL Comparable That Stadium Boosters Avoid
Want an NFL equivalent to The Battery pitch? Look at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Stan Kroenke — one of the wealthiest owners in professional sports — opened SoFi in 2020 as the centerpiece of the Hollywood Park development. The plan was a massive mixed-use project: stadium, entertainment complex, residential towers, office space, retail. Los Angeles metro has 13 million people. The Rams and Chargers share the building. It hosted the Super Bowl in 2022.
And the organic neighborhood still has not formed. Hollywood Park as a live-work-play destination has been slower to materialize than the renderings suggested. The stadium draws crowds eight or nine times a year. The surrounding development is still in progress years later.
If it is hard in the second-largest metro in America with unlimited capital, a warm-weather climate, and two NFL teams — it does not get easier in a northwest suburb of Chicago with one team that plays half their games in November and December.
What Actually Works
Wrigleyville works because the Cubs play 81 home games. The bars and restaurants on Clark Street are full in April, May, June, July, August, and September. The neighborhood has a reason to exist.
Soldier Field's lakefront works because it is a public park 365 days a year. The Museum Campus draws millions of visitors who have nothing to do with Bears games. Grant Park fills for concerts all summer. The lakefront path runs 26 miles and is in constant use. The stadium is one element of a destination that exists for other reasons.
Arlington Heights would work eight Sundays.
The Battery is a real thing. It just has almost nothing in common with what the Bears are proposing.