Center Parc Stadium

Center Parc Stadium (also commonly referred to as Georgia State Stadium or GSU Stadium, formerly Turner Field) is an outdoor stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. The stadium is the home of the Georgia State Panthers football team as of the 2017 season, replacing the Georgia Dome which had served as their home stadium from the program's inception in 2010 until 2016.

It was originally built for the 1996 Summer Olympics as Centennial Olympic Stadium. Following the 1996 Summer Paralympics, the Olympic Stadium was reconfigured as designed into the baseball-specific Turner Field, serving as the home of the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball from 1997 until 2016. After the Braves' departure for Truist Park in Cobb County, Georgia State University acquired the stadium and its surrounding parking lots for a large scale expansion of the university's campus, including new private and student housing, academic, and retail space, in addition to the stadium redevelopment.

Center Parc Stadium is the second former Braves ballpark to be converted to a college football stadium, the first being Boston University's Nickerson Field.

The stadium was originally constructed as the 85,000-seat Centennial Olympic Stadium and used for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Private entities, including NBC and other Olympic sponsors, agreed to pay a large sum of the cost to build the Centennial Olympic Stadium (approximately $170 million of the $209 million bill). It was complete and ready for the opening ceremony in July 1996, where it hosted track and field events and the closing ceremony.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) designed and built the stadium in a way that it could be readily converted to a new baseball stadium, and ACOG would pay for the conversion. This was considered a good agreement for both the Olympic Committee and the Braves. The 71,000-seat Georgia Dome had been completed four years earlier by the state of Georgia to become the home of the National Football League's Atlanta Falcons, so there was no need for another large stadium in downtown Atlanta. Furthermore, the Braves had already been exploring opportunities for a new stadium.

Immediately after the 1996 Summer Paralympics, which followed the Olympics, the stadium went through its first conversion. In the multimillion-dollar renovation covered by the ACOG, much of the north end of the stadium was removed in order to convert it to its permanent use as a 49,000-seat baseball park. This involved demolishing the temporary stands that had made up nearly half the Olympic stadium and replacing them with outfield stands and other attractions behind them.

The Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority continued to own the stadium and leased it to the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball from 1997 to 2016. The Braves operated the stadium. As Turner Field, the stadium hosted notable events such as games 1 and 2 of the 1999 World Series and the 2000 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The end of the Braves' most recent lease in 2016 coincided with the team's departure for Truist Park.

In November 2013, the Atlanta Braves announced that they would vacate Turner Field upon the expiration of their lease in 2016 after negotiations between the team and the city of Atlanta to extend the lease broke down. According to then-Braves vice chairman John Schuerholz, Turner Field required $350 million in renovations—$150 million for structural upkeep and $200 million to improve the fan experience. Then-Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed stated that the city could not afford the cost of the renovations desired by the Braves while also partially funding the construction of Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Falcons and the renovation of Philips Arena (now known as State Farm Arena) for the National Basketball Association's Atlanta Hawks.