Ask why a South Atlanta neighborhood keeps reappearing in the biggest, most painful chapters of Atlanta's history — the answer starts with Summerhill. Summerhill was home to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, which opened in 1966 and was demolished in 1997, the year after Turner Field opened adjacent to the Olympic Stadium built for the 1996 Games. Turner Field, which had been the Braves' home, was itself abandoned in 2017 when the team moved to Truist Park in suburban Cobb County — a relocation that left a massive stadium footprint in the middle of a neighborhood that had already been scarred by urban renewal clearance in the 1960s, when thousands of residents were displaced to make way for the original stadium.
Henry Aaron, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama, made his career in the stadium that once stood near here, hitting his record-breaking 715th home run there in April 1974. Georgia State University has since redeveloped Turner Field into a campus, and the Summerhill neighborhood has been the subject of a community development initiative. The story of stadiums and South Atlanta neighborhoods is the story of who the city decided to serve and who it decided to sacrifice.