‘Bamboozled’: Some Columbus councilors feel misled on first Minor League Baseball move

The first pitch went by so fast that no one who wasn’t in on the game caught it.

Late on Feb. 28, 2023, during a grueling, hours-long Columbus Council meeting, councilors passed an obscure resolution that was not on their meeting agenda in two minutes and with no public discussion.

The resolution asked the city’s representatives at the Georgia General Assembly to remove deed restrictions on the city’s South Commons, a swath of public property along the Chattahoochee River south of the Oglethorpe Bridge.

The public, the press and the councilors did not know then that this was Mayor Skip Henderson’s first move toward bringing the Double-A Braves baseball team to Columbus’ Golden Park stadium from Pearl, Mississippi, for the 2025 season. That news would come months later.

Councilors said all Henderson told them in a private briefing before the vote was that the city had a development opportunity for the commons, more than 100 acres of city land that includes Golden Park, the city ice rink, civic center, softball complex and A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium, a football venue.

Henderson told them the deed restriction required that the land be used only for public recreation, and no private development was possible because of that. So city leaders needed the Georgia General Assembly to pass legislation to remove that covenant, before the legislature adjourned that March.

What the mayor did not tell them, some councilors now complain, was that the 1928 deed giving that land to the city said the property could be used for no private purpose unless two-thirds of the voters approved of that in a special election.

Midtown representative Charmaine Crabb said councilors were so rushed and poorly briefed that they were “bamboozled” into denying the public a say.

Some residents also are saying councilors disenfranchised the voters, as the city proceeds with plans to spend $50 million on upgrading Golden Park to Minor League Baseball standards, believing the baseball venture will draw up to $350 million in adjacent private development, including hotels, restaurants, retail and housing.

It was not the first time council had to deal with the South Commons deed restriction. It’s what kept the city from selling Golden Park in 2016, when a local businessman thought it would be a good site for a casino, should Georgia legalize casino gambling. City leaders had open debates on that issue, at the time, before the proposal was rejected.

That kind of public discussion did not happen in February 2023 when council quickly passed the South Commons resolution during a crowded meeting occupied primarily with a heated dispute over then-Police Chief Freddie Blackmon, whom councilors later ousted with a paid settlement.

The resolution passed 9 to 1. Assuming city leaders had reached a consensus, legislators followed through on council’s request, passing a bill that Gov. Brian Kemp signed May 1, 2023.

The restriction was removed, the commons was opened to private development, and some councilors said they learned afterward that they had denied their constituents a vote on the issue.

City manager’s role in resolution

The council resolution was not listed on the agenda that’s distributed to councilors and posted in advance on the city’s website. City Manager Isaiah Hugley brought it up as a last-minute “add-on,” along with some grant applications he said had March 1 deadlines.

When he described the land covered by the resolution, he cited the property borders without saying South Commons, and said council was asking legislators to “rescind any restrictions on the property described.”

Only District 2 Councilor Glenn Davis, a developer and former pro baseball player, voted no. Davis said he was suspicious because Henderson would not tell council what would happen to the property.

Davis thought it could be a replay of the casino proposal, and regardless of the intent, he wasn’t voting for it if no one could tell him why, he said.

Other councilors now say they also would have objected, had they known about the deed’s voting requirement, which was never discussed.

No one mentioned it at the private council session held the afternoon before the late night vote.

Council held the closed door meeting under City Attorney Clifton Fay’s advice that they were discussing the acquisition or disposal of property, an exception to Georgia’s open meetings law.

‘Bamboozled’

Crabb said she would never have denied the public a vote, had she known of the referendum restriction.

“That would have changed my vote completely,” she said, describing the maneuver as “how they bamboozled us and took away voters’ rights.”

District 4 Councilor Toyia Tucker said she would not have voted for the resolution.

“I don’t recall them mentioning anything about the two-thirds vote. That was not stated,” she said of the February 2023 briefing. “I don’t agree with removing citizens’ rights.”

Joanne Cogle, whose district includes Golden Park, said she also would not have voted for the resolution.

“I certainly do not support removing voter rights for any of our citizens under any circumstances,” she said at council’s March 26 meeting. “I think that’s a slippery slope that we’re on, and I think we especially need to look at that going forward.”

She admitted she was not as attentive as she should have been: “I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t do the due diligence on what those specific restrictions were, since it was handled as an add-on.”

In a Wednesday message to the Ledger-Enquirer, she wrote:

“I remember the meeting clearly. We were there until 11:30 p.m., we had 16-17 people on the agenda about Freddie Blackmon. There was chaos in the police department. This was the last thing on the agenda. . . . We were told that we needed to clean up some verbiage and lift some restrictions on South Commons so we could explore some potential development. But no one would say what it was. There was concern about it being the casino but staff said it was secret.”

Davis told the Ledger-Enquirer he thought the referendum clause would have changed council’s vote.

“There’s no way the council I know would vote to terminate the citizens’ right to vote,” he said. “That was never discussed.”

The city’s response

The mayor, city manager and city attorney all said the deed restriction’s voting requirement was clearly stated in the resolution councilors passed.

But Hugley said it wasn’t his idea.

“It was not listed on my agenda, as I recall.... It wasn’t something that I brought.” He believed councilors saw it before they voted. “They ask questions about things they haven’t seen,” he said.

Asked whether councilors knew of the voting requirement, he said, “I don’t know what they did or didn’t know. You’d have to ask the city attorney.”

The city attorney said the effect of council’s vote was clear.

“It was pretty obvious from the resolution, if you read through it,” he said, later adding, “I’m pretty sure it was passed out. They read it before they voted on it.”

Also councilors likely were told about the voting clause during the closed meeting, he said. “I think it all stemmed from the earlier executive session.”

Council had to act fast, he said, because the General Assembly would adjourn in a month. The legislation had to be amended, passed through committee, and voted up or down before the governor signed off.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Henderson said that in February 2023, he already had been contacted by Braves’ owner Diamond Baseball Holdings, and he was under a nondisclosure agreement that did not allow him to specify why the property needed to be opened to development.

So he didn’t tell councilors then that he believed baseball’s return to Golden Park would be the catalyst for the private development he described only in general, during the closed meeting.

But like the city manager and city attorney, he also believed councilors knew what they were doing.

“We would have had to explain the resolution,” he said.

He thinks the backlash is coming from critics who just don’t like the baseball venture.

“I don’t know why they’re so adamantly against this project,” he said.

The property to be developed first is not a grove or field: It’s the parking lot between Golden Park and the A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium, he said.

Besides a mix of retail, restaurants, lodging and residences, it’s to be replaced with landscaped greenspace, too, he said.

The city has not decided whether to sell or lease the land, he said. The current course is to seek proposals for a master plan for the property.

The area already has basic infrastructure, so it’s primed for redevelopment sparked by a neighboring Minor League Baseball team, he said. That could spur more redevelopment nearby, including an old tank farm on the commons and a former farmer’s market across Victory Drive.

It’s a “once in a generation” chance the city can’t afford to decline, he said.

Mayor Pro-Tem Gary Allen said that without the attendant redevelopment, he would not have voted later to lease Golden Park to Diamond Baseball Holdings.

Columbus’ experience with previous baseball teams shows they can’t succeed when Golden Park remains a relatively isolated location, without nearby amenities to draw people in, he said.

No replay

Among the more vocal critics of the Golden Park project is Pamela Moss, one of Allen’s constituents. She and a group of residents opposed to opening the commons to development have a Facebook group called “A Foul Ball for Columbus, Georgia,” where they post updates on their legal research and monitor the work that’s about to begin at the ball park.

Moss said she wants council to reverse itself and restore the South Commons restriction. The property should remain a park unless the voters decide otherwise, she said.

Of council’s February 2023 vote, she said: “They did that in secret: They stripped us of our rights.”

Allen said council since has held a series of public debates and votes on the baseball venture. Because the city has agreed to lease Golden Park to Diamond Baseball Holdings, it can’t backtrack on that now, or it breaches a contract.

He noted also that councilors no longer allow last-minute add-ons to their meeting agenda. They get a draft agenda the Wednesday before the Tuesday meeting, to avoid any surprises.

The public still does not see the agenda until it’s posted online on the Friday between.

Like Allen, other councilors also said they don’t regret their South Commons votes. District 3 representative Bruce Huff said he never doubted the development prospects, and assumed other councilors understood the impact. “I knew what I was doing,” he said.

Councilor Walker Garrett said the South Commons resolution “was just slipped in there” before the vote, and he recalled no notice of the referendum clause. “It definitely would have concerned me,” he said.

But he believes bringing baseball back to Golden Park will pay off. Most of his constituents are in favor of it, and friends from out of town have told him they’re eager to come to the games, in 2025, he said.

Citywide council representative Judy Thomas said she also might have backed the resolution anyway, despite the public vote clause, but, “I certainly would have given it a heck of a lot more thought than I did.”

The experience should make councilors more vigilant about future proposals, she said:

“We are going to have to be much more careful about how we vote, and what we vote for. We need to make sure we know all the ins and outs.”

Said Tucker: “It further hinders trust.”