2024 Most Respected Leader: Mike Plant, From Blades to Bricks

Mike Plant, President and CEO of Development, Atlanta Braves. | Ben Rollins

What do you call the combination of tenacious commitment and infectious energy in the present and a vision of the future that turns the momentous into a sustained path of success? That’s special leadership, and the Atlanta Braves and the Cobb Chamber of Commerce are reaping the rewards, thanks to Mike Plant.

“It’s an honor to work with him,” says Sharon Mason, president and CEO of the Cobb chamber. “He personally has been a major driver behind this entire development [The Battery Atlanta]. And the Atlanta Braves have been such an economic driver. We have continued to see tremendous growth of businesses, not just in the Cumberland area, but all in the surrounding area.”

From his youth in Milwaukee (where going to a Braves game was his first Major League Baseball experience) to competing in the 1980 Olympics as a speedskater with teammate and five-time gold medalist Eric Heiden, followed by a whirlwind career that included working with Ted Turner and taking countless trips to Europe and China – the scenery may change but Plant’s leadership values remain rock-solid: perseverance, listening and learning, teamwork, commitment and conviction.

World Champs: Cobb County leaders strike a pose with the 2021 World Series trophy, including (left to right) Greg Morgan and Mike Plant, former and current chair of the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce board of directors, respectively; Chamber President and CEO Sharon Mason; Cumberland Community Improvement District Executive Director Kim Menefee; and former Chamber Board Chairs Ben Mathis and John Loud. | Photo credit: contributed

Developing a Work Ethic

It might sound cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true: Growth happens when you venture out of your comfort zone. For Plant, it was trying the new sport of speedskating at age 12 after excelling at baseball and football. Adversity came quickly – “I was DFL: dead frickin’ last” – causing him to question the sports move. That, in turn prompted his West Milwaukee police officer father to question Plant’s commitment, asking him, “That’s it? You’re going to quit?”

“I kinda felt guilty [hearing his reaction] after telling him I should just go back to playing baseball and football where we’re winning all the time,” says Plant. “I’ve always said the one word that defines me is perseverance. I will find a way to get to that finish line one way or another. I learned that early on, getting that foundation from my parents.”

Plant stuck with speedskating and made his first junior world speedskating team a few years later. After that, he made the 1980 U.S. Olympic team.

“It helped launch my whole career, but I had to work really hard,” says Plant, who credits his parents with teaching respect, accountability and responsibility. “I benefit from my dad’s influence and work ethic to this day. I look at what I’ve been able to accomplish, traipsing around the globe 7 million miles and starting companies in China and Europe and my Olympic career. Pounding away at it 24/7 was never an issue for me.”

“See the Ball, Hit the Ball”

That old baseball axiom, coined by Pete Rose, is easier said than done. But the challenge of building a successful business may be even tougher than facing Braves Opening Day starter Spencer Strider. After all, the strike zone is way bigger. Plant understood early on the importance of seeing and seizing opportunity.

“We got put into circles of influence because we were all these Olympic athletes,” he says. “Teammates would ask: ‘What were you doing talking to those suits?’ I was learning and listening, man… All we’re doing as skaters is going around in circles with tights on. One day it’s all gonna end and we’ll be left with just a bunch of ‘attaboys.’”

“I’ve always said the one word that defines me is perseverance. I will find a way to get to that finish line one way or another. I learned that early on, getting that foundation from my parents.” Mike Plant

Plant’s “what’s-next?” mentality led to more opportunity and a new platform. While still competing, he became the speedskating representative on the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Advisory Council. Then came disappointment. Widely expected to make the team at the 1984 Sarajevo Games, Plant fell ill just a week before the speedskating trials and didn’t qualify. It was a rough time, but he says he has used it as motivation whenever he faces a challenge. In 1989, he was elected chairman of the USOC athlete’s advisory council, leading the 25% athlete voting bloc on the board of directors.

Let the Games Begin: Mike Plant, who served as U.S. Olympic Chef de Mission for the 2010 Winter Games, Nicole Detling Miller, a sports psychologist who worked with the U.S. speedskating team, and former Olympian speedskater, Eric Heiden, who won five gold medals in the 1980 Winter Games, gather in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. | Photo credit: contributed

“All those connections made possible my learning about the world of governance and sports, politics and sports, and how the business of sports really works,” he says. “Those were all great learning experiences. I saw it as a catalyst for what I was going to do when my athletic career was over.”

The Olympics shaped Plant in other ways and continued to echo throughout his life. He was a leader in the resistance to the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow by President Jimmy Carter, with whom he discussed the decision years later at Braves games. In Calgary in 1988, he met Billy Payne and learned of his “crazy idea” to bring the Olympics to Atlanta. Plant would later serve on the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games (ACOG) board of directors.

The circle of influence led Plant and his friend and Olympic team member Heiden to San Francisco and a dinner meeting with the chairman and CEO of Atari. Coming out of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games when “sponsorships didn’t exist,” Plant had pushed for more emphasis on athlete commercial strategy, including brand ambassadorships. Now they found themselves pitching the head of the leading video game maker with a presentation typed on Plant’s parents’ electric typewriter, complete with Wite-Out edits. They left with a $400,000 sponsorship commitment.

Best of Times: Plant was in high spirits after the Braves won the 2021 World Series. | Photo credit: Daemon Baizan

It was a turning point in Plant’s career – and his life. “Someone had to run it all, so suddenly I’m now an athlete and a businessman at 21 years old and drinking from a [fire] hose and working with Atari’s marketing people about how to activate this and do brand awareness for that,” Plant says. “So I took all of that and decided, yeah, I’m going to try to build a career in the business of sport. I love it, I’ve always loved it. Fortunately, I’ve been at it for 45 years of my life with great, great experiences all around the globe.”

Some of his stints include being executive director of U.S. Canoe and Kayak and the associate executive director of the United States Cycling Federation, where he refocused the sport toward the East Coast’s larger urban markets. From there, he founded Medalist Sports, Inc., where he partnered with former President Donald Trump, NBC and Jefferson Pilot sports to create the Tour de Trump bicycle race. When Trump discontinued sponsorship after two years, Plant signed on the DuPont corporation as a sponsor and renamed the race the Tour DuPont. He later organized the Tour of China bike race, after years of negotiations and 22 trips to China.

Plant’s work on the Atlanta Committee came in between two eight-year stints on the United States Olympic Committee’s board of directors and executive committee. Those experiences, in addition to leading the Goodwill Games, and many other leadership roles would help prepare him for the biggest move Braves Country had even seen.

Hitting Curve Balls

By any measure, Truist Park and The Battery have been a smashing success, from the record fan attendance to the nearly $40 million in tax revenues generated for the county, state and school district. But before the big numbers came big challenges.

Up to Bat: Mike Plant, left, and Chris Britton, right, are the current and future chairs of the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce board of directors. | Photo credit: contributed

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because it just owned us, it owned every waking minute of the day,” Plant says. “I told everyone to bring their A game every day. It’s going to be one of the hardest things you’re ever going to do, but it’s also going to be one of the most rewarding moments of your life.”

Between the November 2013 announcement of the Braves’ move to Cobb County to Opening Day in their new home in 2017, Plant and his development team were tasked with doing their year-round day jobs of running the organization and operations at Turner Field while also overseeing the building of the massive new enterprise that is Truist Park and The Battery. Those day-to-day responsibilities included managing Turner Field’s operations, game attendance, security, finance, personnel and overseeing the operations of the Braves’ minor league clubs. Plant remembers that time as thousands of decisions per day, noting that with his name on “40,000 documents” his neck was on the line.

The Braves battled more than the clock. Atlanta leaders were surprised by the announcement that the team was moving to the suburbs, and the move was heavily criticized. And then team missed the postseason for four straight years, from 2014 to 2017.

“I told my wife when it started that I’m going to take some personal shots and we’re all going to take some professional shots because people had the negative implication of ‘They did this in secret’ and didn’t like or respect that,” Plant says. “And then we hit the reset button as a team after 2013 and we weren’t very good. We knew that we’d move quick, swift and fast – it wasn’t going to be a six- to eight-year rebuild – but it was [still] going to be a little painful, especially now that you’re in selling mode of saying, ‘Hey, wanna buy some season tickets to SunTrust Park?’ and [the questions come back], ‘Hey, think we’re ever gonna win more than 65 games again?’”

Plant could draw on his experiences dealing with big announcements. The questions about the new stadium didn’t surprise him.

“When you get done dancing in the street with the euphoria of ‘We’re going to host the Olympic Games!’ there are two questions that get asked, and they get asked for seven years building up to the games: ‘How much is it going to cost? And is traffic going to be terrible?’” Plant says. “So that was us [with then-SunTrust Park]. It was all about the money and how we were going to fleece the taxpayers and traffic was going to be horrendous.”

Winning Couple: Mike Plant with wife Mary T. Meagher, an Olympic medalist in swimming in the 1984 and 1988 Summer Games. | Photo contributed

In a way, though, all the questions about financing the stadium and the move itself were background noise. Plant had an “aggressive timeline – a deadline that was not going to change” to get the stadium ready for Opening Day, April 14, 2017. That meant not only pulling together a team of architects, program managers, consultants, contractors and trade contractors that could work towards a common goal, but also making sure all of them knew how to hit a curveball.

Chris Britton, regional president for Brasfield & Gorrie, the chief contractor for the mega-development, saw firsthand how Plant handled construction problems, such as a two-month delay related to soil compaction.

“I believe that a person’s true character is revealed when they are going through tough times,” Britton says. “When you tackle tough projects together as a team and figure out a way to overcome adversities, you can’t help but develop trusting relationships. I would follow him anywhere and build anything that he wants to build because I trust him. I think this is part of the reason why he has been so successful in closing major deals with companies moving into The Battery.”

Plant and his team’s exhaustive planning yielded enhanced stadium logistics with 360-degree access and 12 more points of entry than Turner Field offered so that fans could get to and from the stadium without gridlock. (The exception is one that Braves fans probably are willing to endure – so many people packed both the stadium and The Battery for World Series games in 2021 that traffic jams were inevitable.)

State VIPs: Cobb Chamber President and CEO Sharon Mason, Gov. Brian Kemp, first lady Marty Kemp, Atlanta Braves President and CEO Derek Schiller, Mike Plant, Brasfield & Gorrie President Chris Britton, and Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick (R-Marietta). | Photo credit: contributed

Building More Than a Destination

Passing the Torch: Plant (left) with President of Croy Engineering Greg Teague (right), who led the Cobb chamber board in 2023. | Photo credit: contributed

Financially, Plant was confident Truist Park and The Battery would be a “game changer” for both the Braves and Cobb County. According to the report given to the Cobb County Board of Commissioners each year, The Battery Atlanta complex hit a major milestone in 2022 when it generated more property tax revenue than the amount taxpayers were required to pay for that year’s debt service. The complex paid $2.5 million in property taxes, while the county’s portion of the debt service was $2.1 million, giving the county a net gain of $400,000.

Overall, it resulted in $38 million in tax revenue to the county, state and school district in 2022; Plant projects that number will eclipse $50 million in two more years once the new headquarters of Truist Securities and The Henry, a two-tower mixed-use development including a 250-key hotel, come online.

“This is the greatest example of public-private partnership you’ll find anywhere,” says Plant, adding that around 200 teams from all over the world have toured Truist Park and The Battery. “That’s a conviction that we all had and believed in to do what no one has ever done before, but you have to stay committed and make sure all of the team is committed. There’s no how-to manual or blueprint that you can rely on that says here’s how you can connect the dots [on such a massive project]. So we kept our heads down and used all of our professional skills. We had incredible confidence that as a team we were going to achieve these tremendous results, and it’s proving to be just that.”

Raise a Glass: Mike Plant and his team celebrating in 2017, when SunTrust Park (now Truist Park) received its certificate of occupancy. | Photo credit: contributed

The fruits of Plant’s leadership are indeed “tremendous,” according to the Cobb chamber’s Mason. She points out that 26% of Braves ticketholders are from out of state, and the 10.3 million visitors that came to The Battery in 2023 topped the annual total of Epcot at Walt Disney World. She notes that when Truist Park hosts the All-Star Game in 2025, it will put the area on a global stage.

“And all the companies coming here [to The Battery] – Papa John’s global headquarters, TKE, Truist Securities global headquarters and Comcast – wouldn’t be here without his leadership,” she says.

Cobb County Manager Jackie R. McMorris first met Plant in 2017 and speaks frequently with him about the shared focus of the Braves and the county to deliver a safe and high-quality resident, visitor and fan experience. She uses the words “strategic” and “genius” to describe his accomplishments at Truist Park and The Battery. She says Plant’s leadership never wavers, whether planning for the 2021 World Series when “the eyes of the nation were on Cobb County” or his regular collaboration and coordination with community, government, business and nonprofit partners.

In 2024, The Battery Atlanta is counting down the days to the addition of another new corporate headquarters, Truist Park is counting down the days until the All-Star Game, and Cobb County and Georgia are looking forward to welcoming millions of dollars in resulting tax revenues. But even as Plant racks up business wins, he remains a sports competitor at heart: “The core objective every year,” he says, “is to win the World Series.”