Inside The Mets

Mets' Steve Cohen planning largest entertainment district in MLB

New York's billionaire owner is taking direct aim at the Braves' The Battery Atlanta, but plans to spend billions of his own dollars on the development.

Lindsay Crosby

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen sits courtside during the third quarter between the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors at Madison Square Garden.
New York Mets owner Steve Cohen sits courtside during the third quarter between the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors at Madison Square Garden. / Brad Penner-Imagn Images
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New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is working on an $8 billion development plan to build a best-in-MLB entertainment district around Citi Field in Queens.

Cohen, who has said in the past that he views his ownership and investment of the team as a civic duty - he's not here to make money, he's here to bring a World Series championship back home to the people of New York - is extending that mentality to the larger community of Queens.

Cohen is working on an $8 billion development district called Metropolitan Park that would combine public parks with bars, restaurants, and a hotel surrounding Citi Field. Modeled after Atlanta's successful ballpark-adjacent development, The Battery Atlanta, it's a wildly ambitious plan that would set a new standard for MLB development.

The Atlanta Braves have received not only significant acclaim for The Battery Atlanta, which features 400,000 square feet of leasable retail area among 2.25 million square feet of mixed-use development, but financial rewards as well. Constructed for over $400M and entirely privately financed, publicly-available financial statements reveal that The Battery Atlanta's revenue has grown to over $49M per year as of the end of 2024's quarter three.

Steve Cohen is thinking bigger.

While a large contingent of The Battery Atlanta is lodging and corporate office spaces, with tenants such as Comcast, the global headquarters of Papa Johns, and the North American headquarters of TK Elevator, Cohen's plan is more focused on the community.

As part of released renderings of the $8 billion plan, Cohen has proposed over 25 acres of public park space, community athletic fields, playgrounds, and tailgating spaces for Mets fans. Unlike The Battery Atlanta, which is ten miles north of Atlanta proper and not serviced by the city's MARTA transit system, Cohen's proposal includes mass transit, improved parking access, and a bike network to connect to the local community.

Another unique feature: Steve Cohen isn't asking for any public money to construct it.

Read More: Mets Owner Steve Cohen Assesses David Stearns' 2025 Offseason

While there are steps the city and state need to take to pave the way for the construction, including permitting the casino and sportsbook that Cohen plans to partner with Hard Rock International to put in the development, contributing public funds is not required for the construction of Metropolitan Park.

It's a sharp contrast to most sports-adjacent development that happens in the major sports leagues, one where the public has spent over $30B on stadiums over the past 35 years for North American sports franchises.

The new stadium for the Buffalo Bills, slated to open in 2026, was partially financed with $850 million in subsidies from the state of New York. A new stadium for the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, Tennessee, is being constructed thanks to a combined $1.2 billion from state and local funding.

It is not just NFL stadiums necessitating large dollar contributions from cities and states. Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX, home of the Texas Rangers, was built using $500 million in taxpayer-subsidized funds. Renovations to American Family Field, home of the Milwaukee Brewers, are currently underway thanks to $546 million in public funding.

The Brewers organization is spending only $150 million of its own money to assist with the renovations to the ballpark, which opened in 2001. The city of Oklahoma City has approved a $900 million arena for the NBA's Thunder in a bid to keep the team from relocating at the expiration of their current lease.

The owners of the Thunder, who bought the franchise in 2006 for $350 million and have seen the valuation rise to just under $1.9 billion after relocating to Oklahoma in 2008, are being asked to contribute just $50 million of their own money to the project.

In an age of ever-increasing publicly-borne construction costs for sports stadiums and their adjacent developments, Cohen's commitment for 100 percent private financing is a welcome change.

With the recent success of the Mets, who made a push to the National League Championship Series last season and followed that with signing free agent outfielder Juan Soto to the largest contract by total dollars in MLB history, the Metropolitan Park project has begun being pushed through the necessary approval stages.

The team brought scale models of the proposed development to last month's Amazin' Day and has received approvals by all five Queens Community Boards in the land use review process.

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Lindsay Crosby
LINDSAY CROSBY

Lindsay is a contributor for Mets On SI. He is an IBWAA award-winning baseball writer and podcaster living in the Southeast, covering Auburn University baseball since 2021 and the Atlanta Braves since 2022. He can most commonly be found in a baseball press box and you can follow him on Twitter/X at @CrosbyBaseball."

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