Summerhill

Atlanta's Beat Goes On (24 JUL 1972)

Nov 19, 2006

WITH enlightened civic leadership and one of the nation's fastest-climbing skylines, Atlanta rode the urban-renewal wave of the '60s with pleasing?—and well-publicized?—results. But where many other cities have grown disillusioned with their downtown business districts?—in spite of all the new civic centers, office buildings, freeways and other signs of progress?—Atlanta, which in 1970 became 51% black in population, seems determined to use the first round of renewal as the down payment on a second, even bigger round in the '70s. Moreover, the courtly businessmen and politicians who engineered the city's renaissance a decade ago are rapidly turning over their jobs to a group of men in their 30s and 40s, who should be around to oversee new rounds of expansion for years to come. The result is a business climate that is practically unparalleled in the U.S. for solid growth and sheer bullishness.

Atlanta's metropolitan population has doubled, to 1,400,000, in 15 years, and the area continues to be one of the fastest-growing in the nation. Much of the expansion is due to the fact that Atlanta is the key commercial center within a radius of nearly 600 miles. Companies eager to tap the South's expanding consumer and industrial markets headquartered their regional operations in Atlanta, making it the ultimate branch-office town. No fewer than 430 of the FORTUNE 500 largest U.S. companies have offices in Atlanta. Recent arrivals include National Distribution Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Eastern Air Lines; Americana Corp., a real estate marketing company; BP Oil Corp., a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Co. (Ohio). The comings and goings of corporate salesmen and executives help make Atlanta's airport the nation's second busiest, after Chicago's O'Hare.

Unlike some metropolitan areas, where booming satellite cities of office buildings and shopping centers have grown up outside the center city, the place to be in Atlanta is still downtown ?—if possible, right on famous Peachtree Street. The central tax base, which doubled in the '60s, is expected to grow half again as big before 1980. All together, some $3.3 billion in construction has been scheduled for the next few years, including a 70-story hotel, six office buildings, a trade mart and a $1.3 billion rapid-transit system approved by voters late last year.

Unfortunately, Atlanta's remarkably violence-free move toward racial integration in the '60s has not made economic life for its 256,000 blacks much easier than in any other big city. Black unemployment remains about twice as high as white, and the ghetto areas of Summerhill and Vine City are no less depressing than their counterparts in Brooklyn or St. Louis. Yet Atlanta supports what many blacks believe to be the most comfortable black middle class in the nation. Much of it is associated with the city's thriving black academic community in the six-college Atlanta University complex, but there are also several large black-owned businesses, including Citizens Trust Co. and Atlanta Life Insurance Co.

Just as Atlanta's median age is declining (from 27.4 to 26.3 in the 1960s), so its leadership is getting younger ?—only much faster. Some examples:

SAM MASSELL, 44, who took over from longtime Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. in 1970 to become Atlanta's first Jewish mayor. Although he won election against a more conservative Chamber of Commerce candidate, Massell has worked closely with the business community in promoting the rapid-transit proposal. He has also pressed for state legislative approval of a massive annexation plan that would expand the city boundaries to include most of the metropolitan area and, not so incidentally, stem the flow of whites from the center city. Meanwhile, Massell faces a potentially stiff challenge in next year's mayoral election from Maynard Jackson, the city's 35-year-old black vice mayor.

RICHARD KATTEL, 36, president of Citizens & Southern National Bank, the largest in Georgia, with assets of $2.27 billion. "When I'm in New York, people can't believe I'm president of a big bank," says Kattel. In fact, his longtime predecessor, Mills B. Lane, who spotted Kattel as an up-and-coming executive and named him as his personal assistant in 1966, is still the bank's chairman, though he lets the young president use his own judgment about practically everything. Among other projects, Kattel helped initiate a real estate investment trust that in 18 months has grown to $200 million. Much of it will go into downtown land investment. "Hell, it would be the easiest thing in the world for major businesses to say 'Let's get out of downtown and leave it to the blacks because there are just too many problems,'" he says. "But businessmen here are willing to take a risk on downtown."

JOHN PORTMAN, 47, architect. Made famous with his design for Atlanta's Regency Hyatt House, with its soaring 21-story lobby and see-through elevators, Portman has been the architect for $ 153 million in other Atlanta development, including the attractive Peachtree Center, a complex with vast business spaces imaginatively broken up by restaurants, sidewalk cafes and fountains. Now a multimillionaire, Portman was picked to design San Francisco's new Embarcadero Center, Detroit's $500 million waterfront renovation, and projects in Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Brussels.

A.J. LAND, 34, president of Crow, Pope & Land Enterprises, developers. Land has helped make Atlanta a mecca for swinging singles with some 4,000 apartments, half of them designed for the young and unmarried set. "When I first came here in 1956,1 planned to go back to Columbus, Ga., to practice law, but the business atmosphere in Atlanta was so exciting that I couldn't leave," he says.

TOM COUSINS, 40, real estate developer. Seven years ago, in a move ridiculed by most businessmen, Cousins acquired the air rights over 70 acres of defunct railroad yards in a blighted part of town. Today he is about to open a $17 million, 17,000-seat coliseum on the property. For tenants, he bought the St. Louis Hawks basketball team and moved them to Atlanta, and has organized a National Hockey League team, the Atlanta Flames. Cousins has some $600 million in other construction planned for his site, including apartments, offices, a hotel and a convention hall. "In the next ten years, Atlanta is going to make the last 20 years look mediocre," he predicts. "It's a real estate man's dream. To miss, you'd almost have to try."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,906175,00.html