Big Business Off the Hook for Property Taxes in Georgia? © 2026 Red Clay Watch

 Are Georgia’s Big-Business Stadium Deals (and others) Escaping Property Taxes?

Illustration by author

At least four public-property arrangements deserve a hard estate-for-years audit

Georgia law does not say a private business gets a property-tax holiday merely because the government keeps title to the land. The General Assembly has declared that leaseholds and interests less than fee are subject to ad valorem taxation, unless a lawful exemption applies. And when a lease runs for more than five years, Georgia law begins with a rebuttable presumption that the tenant received an estate for years rather than a mere usufruct.

That distinction matters because an estate for years is taxable private property, even when the underlying fee remains publicly owned. In Delta Air Lines v. Coleman, the Georgia Supreme Court held that a private leasehold carved out of public airport property could be taxed. In Jekyll Development Associates v. Glynn County, the Court of Appeals held that a 55-year private hotel lease on state-owned Jekyll Island created a taxable estate for years despite restrictions designed to protect the government owner.

The Georgia Constitution also requires uniform taxation within a class and makes unauthorized tax exemptions void. So if a private stadium operator has received an estate for years, the question is not whether local officials like the project or consider it economically important. The private estate belongs on the tax digest.

1. Mercedes-Benz Stadium: the no-tax treatment is in the Supreme Court record

Mercedes-Benz Stadium is owned by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, while Atlanta Falcons Stadium Company, LLC, known as StadCo, received an exclusive right to use and occupy the stadium through February 28, 2047, subject to extension or renewal. Before the final stadium agreement was executed, StadCo’s lawyers asked the Fulton County Board of Tax Assessors to confirm that its interest would be treated as a non-taxable usufruct.

The Board agreed. The Georgia Supreme Court later recorded the result in unusually direct language: StadCo “was not required to nor has it paid ad valorem taxes on its right to use the stadium.” Taxpayers challenged that classification and argued that the arrangement was actually a taxable estate for years, but the litigation ended on procedural and mandamus issues rather than a final merits ruling that the stadium interest could never be an estate for years.

That makes Mercedes-Benz Stadium the clearest example of the policy problem. A private, profit-making stadium company has decades of exclusive use while the tax board has formally kept that stadium-use interest off the ad valorem bill. Whether the agreement’s substance truly justifies the usufruct label deserves periodic, independent review rather than a tax classification effectively locked in before the final agreement was signed.

2. Truist Park: 30-plus years of exclusive commercial control, but no visible private leasehold tax

Truist Park presents another serious question. The Stadium Operating Agreement between Cobb County, the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority, and Braves Stadium Company, LLC expressly calls the Braves’ interest a “usufruct.” But labels do not decide Georgia property law. The substance does.

The agreement runs through December 2046 and gives the Braves a unilateral option to extend through December 2051. It grants exclusive rights to use, manage and operate the stadium, permits sub-licensing and third-party use, allows the Braves to retain broad categories of stadium revenue, and permits the company to pledge or collaterally assign its agreement rights to institutional lenders. The Braves’ 2025 SEC filing describes those rights as exclusive operating rights and confirms the long term.

The tax provision is also worth attention. The public parties are responsible for ad valorem taxes, if any, on their taxable interests in the stadium property, while Braves Stadium Company is assigned taxes on its operations and its own property. Public-record data for the stadium parcel classifies it as governmental/public use with no tax year shown, and the public sources reviewed do not show a separately assessed Braves Stadium Company leasehold.

That is not the same thing as a court ruling that Cobb is illegally omitting a taxable estate. It is, however, enough to justify a mandatory estate-for-years audit. Thirty-plus years of exclusive operation, commercial revenue rights, sub-licensing and financing rights are exactly the kinds of substantive facts that should be tested under Georgia law instead of being disposed of by the word “usufruct.”

3. Coolray Field: a 30-year stadium lease on tax-exempt public property

Gwinnett County owns Coolray Field. The original arrangement was formally called a Stadium Lease and Use Agreement, and contemporary reporting on the deal described the Braves as operating the county-owned facility under a 30-year lease, controlling ticket sales and concessions. After the minor-league club was sold, Gwinnett approved a 2022 amendment naming the new private operator, DBH Gwinnett, LLC, while the same stadium agreement remained in place.

Public-record data drawn from Gwinnett County tax records identifies the Coolray Field parcel at 2500 Buford Drive as “Taxexempt” for 2025. I found no separate publicly visible assessment of DBH Gwinnett’s stadium leasehold interest.

Again, public ownership of the underlying fee is not itself suspicious. The question is whether the private operator’s long-term possessory and commercial rights amount to a separate taxable estate for years. A 30-year private stadium lease is precisely the sort of agreement Georgia law says should receive close scrutiny.

4. State Farm Arena: an 18-year extension through 2046 on a “verified exempt” parcel

Fulton County itself states that the Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority owns State Farm Arena and leases the site to the Atlanta Hawks organization. The Hawks and arena operator received an 18-year lease extension through 2046, and the City of Atlanta’s final agreement required the arena operator to make lease payments while imposing a potential breakup payment if the team left before the 2047-2048 season.

The current operator, Arena Operations, LLC, is an active Georgia limited liability company, not a charity. Public-record data sourced from Fulton County tax records describes the arena parcel as “VERIFIED EXEMPT”. I found no separate publicly visible assessment of the private operator’s long-term arena interest.

As with Truist Park and Coolray Field, that does not by itself prove the private interest is taxable. It does show why the private leasehold cannot simply disappear inside the government owner’s exemption. If the Hawks or arena operator possess an estate for years, that private estate must be analyzed and taxed separately from the public fee.

This is bigger than four stadiums

Taken together, these deals reveal a troubling pattern. Local and state entities can keep legal title to valuable property, call a private company’s decades-long interest a “license” or “usufruct,” and then treat the entire site as though public ownership ends the tax inquiry. Meanwhile, the private company may enjoy long-term possession, commercial revenue, operational control, sub-licensing rights and other benefits that look increasingly like an estate in land.

That pattern looks less like an occasional bookkeeping mistake and more like a deliberate policy choice to protect favored economic-development deals from a tax question that ordinary property owners never get to avoid. The government may have legitimate reasons to build a stadium or recruit a business.

However, it does not follow that officials may create an unauthorized property-tax exemption for the private interest.

The burden does not vanish when taxable property is left off the digest. The tax base becomes smaller.

To raise the same revenue, the remaining taxpayers must carry more of the load, or public services must be reduced. That means homeowners, renters whose landlords pass taxes through in rent, and small businesses can wind up paying more than they otherwise would while politically favored enterprises receive the benefit.

Georgia already has the legal tools to prevent that result. What appears to be missing is a uniform enforcement mechanism.

Every long-term private use of public real property should be periodically reviewed under the same estate-for-years standards, with the classification and supporting analysis placed in the public record. If a private interest is taxable, it should appear on the digest regardless of the lessee’s size, political influence or economic-development importance.

This issue likely extends far beyond large stadiums. Across Georgia, publicly owned property is leased to private businesses in many different settings. If any of those arrangements create a taxable estate for years rather than a mere usufruct, but the private interest is nevertheless treated as tax-exempt, the result could be millions of dollars in unlawfully uncollected ad valorem taxes - with ordinary homeowners and other taxpayers left to make up the difference.

Georgia lawmakers should act in the 2027 session.

Contact your state representative and senator and ask them to support legislation requiring periodic state review of public property leased or licensed to private entities, mandatory reporting of every long-term private interest, and written classification of each interest as a usufruct or estate for years, to ensure that all taxes owed are paid by those private entities.

The law should carry real enforcement consequences when officials knowingly leave a taxable private estate off the digest.

Big business should pay the same legally required share as everyone else, instead of shifting an unfair portion of the tax burden onto Georgia citizens who do not have government officials negotiating special deals on their behalf.

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