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A note from the editor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is Maria Saporta’s last column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Maria has decided to take a voluntary buy-out, ending a stellar 27-year journalism career at the AJC, 17 years as a business columnist.
The AJC is a much richer newspaper because of Maria’s ability to work her sources to get scoops about the Atlanta business community and tell stories about the leaders who shape this town.
We wish Maria the best as she moves on to new endeavors.
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We must aspire to make Atlanta as great as it can be
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If we were to time travel to 2020, would we find the Atlanta region in disarray?
Would we see a pollution-infested city with crowded highways, void of parks and natural forests? Would the region be a place of haphazard developments with multiple local governments making independent decisions that don’t relate to their neighbors?
Would there be a disconnect among citizens — either by race, wealth, ethnicity or comfort? Would we find a region within a hostile state, a metro area fractured by a division of urban, suburban and exurban communities?
An alternative vision exists.
We could travel to the future and find a vibrant region filled with people on sidewalks, hopping on street cars, enjoying parks, living in town centers connected by transit and greenways. We could find communities where all kinds of people are living, working and playing side by side — with little regard to age, income, race or ethnicity.
It’s all a matter of what we aspire to be.
One of the key builders of Atlanta — architect/developer John Portman — gave a vision shaped by philosophy and history.
“I want Atlanta to come together, not only physically but socially,” Portman said after a talk on Thursday. “I want Atlanta to realize that it’s a unique place on the planet and can be whatever it wants to be. But we have got to have the desire. We have to believe in Atlanta like we did in the 1960s. Then we had an incredible belief in the kind of city we wanted it to become.”
Back in the 1960s, then-Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. had a “Platform for Progress” — to steer the city toward the future. He called for a modern rail transit system, affordable housing, an enlightened view toward integration, the development of an international city, a home for professional sports and an area attractive to new companies and investments.
So what would be today’s Platform for Progress?
“I want Atlanta to be a 24-hour city,” said Portman, who designed much of the city’s skyline. “We have got to develop more people-friendly environments, which includes parks, streetcars and sidewalks.”
Arthur Blank, a philanthropist, co-founder of Home Depot and major owner of the Atlanta Falcons, said “We can’t give up” on projects like the Beltline, the Peachtree streetcar, ample clean water and green space.
“We’ve got to invest in Atlanta,” Blank said. “The quality-of-life issues are major, major problems. We have got to pay the price and get ahead of those problems. The choice we have is that we can become an average city or a great city.”
Blank said the state needs to help address issues in the Atlanta region, which accounts for about half of Georgia’s population and about 75 percent of its economy.
“We can’t have a state where the governor doesn’t focus on the needs of the region,” Blank said. “Atlanta is the heartbeat of this state. We need unique political leaders who have the vision and moral courage to take a long-term view on what would make Atlanta a great city.”
And that vision needs broad acceptance, according to Penny McPhee, president of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
“People outside of Atlanta have to think we are a great city,” she said. “And the least of us in Atlanta also have to think we are a great city.”
Longtime minority builder Herman Russell would like Atlanta to build upon its reputation as a “versatile city with people of all walks of life; a city where people are welcome and see an opportunity to get ahead.”
Within that vision, Russell said, we need investment in the arts, including a new symphony hall and the proposed Center for Civil and Human Rights.
When we spoke, Russell was in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. He had just visited the Black American West Museum and rode back to his hotel on Denver’s light rail system.
“It was free,” Russell said. “I thought: ‘Gee, we need this in Atlanta.’ ”
We do need streetcars, along the Peachtree spine, the Beltline and on routes connecting our city’s top attractions. We also need viable alternatives to the automobile: Commuter rail, high-speed rail and implementation of the regional Transit Planning Board’s Concept 3 plan would give us that.
On our major streets in Atlanta and our regional town centers, we need wide sidewalks with well-marked crosswalks, buried power lines and an active street life of stores, restaurants and galleries close to homes and offices.
We need to get our major festivals — such as the Atlanta Dogwood Festival — back to Piedmont Park where they belong. We need to protect our trees and forests from overzealous clear-cutters and developers by giving our arborists the support they need.
We need to preserve our history, including special places and buildings that remind us from where we have come. And we need to conserve and maintain our green spaces to give people places where they can escape from life’s stress.
We need to support our educational institutions for the sake of our future generations, encouraging Atlanta’s emergence as a center for urban universities.
And we need state and local leaders — from political, philanthropic and business circles — who will work hard to lift our region from mediocrity to greatness.
“Atlanta has so many great people,” Russell said. “I don’t think we’ll sit back and let Atlanta go to hell.”
Let’s prove him right. Let’s transform Atlanta into an extraordinary city of the future.
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Metro Atlanta Chamber reaches membership goal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just a few days ago, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce was $300,000 short of its annual membership goal of $3 million.
And then the “Spirit of Atlanta” showed up, according to Kessel Stelling Jr., the 2008 chairman of the chamber and CEO of the Bank of North Georgia.
“It shows the confidence that the Atlanta business community has in this chamber of commerce - to see the chamber beat a goal that I thought was unreaslistic,” Stelling said.
Metro Atlanta Chamber President Sam Williams said the campaign actually came in $31,000 over the $3 million goal.
And Stelling said more money came in on Thursday.
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Dynamics have changed Atlanta Inc. over 17 years
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Inc. That’s how my first business column began. It was Jan. 8, 1991.
The news at that time was how then-Delta CEO Ron Allen election to Coca-Cola’s board represented an interlocking Atlanta business community.
The major banks were locally owned with executives who either had grown up in Atlanta or spent their careers with local institutions: Trust Company Bank of Georgia (now SunTrust), C&S (now Bank of America), First Atlanta (now the new Wachovia) and others.
Except for SunTrust, Georgia lost those banking headquarters by the early 1990s to North Carolina, a major blow to Atlanta’s power structure.
At that time, most major local companies had multiple Atlanta CEOs on their boards with interlocking relationships: Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, National Service Industries, Home Depot and all the banks.
The first family of Atlanta’s power structure was Coca-Cola, Trust Co., King & Spalding, Emory University and the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. Other players were in the mix Ñ such as Georgia Power, Rich’s, BellSouth and Delta Ñ but none was as powerful as the first family.
That point hit home when Ray Riddle, then-CEO of First Atlanta and chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, told me in 1991: “Nothing gets done in this town without first going by North Avenue.” That’s the address of Coca-Cola’s headquarters.
Now, 17 years later, the landscape has changed.
Arthur Blank, Home Depot co-founder who remembers when leaders from BellSouth, Coca-Cola and Spelman College were on his board, said governance has become more scrutinized.
“What we did at Home Depot would not happen today,” Blank said. “In fairness to Atlanta companies today, interlocking relationships and directorships are being looked at differently.”
Ron Allen is symbolic of how corporate leaders have changed, too. Allen was raised in Atlanta, attending Southwest DeKalb High School and Georgia Tech. He spent his entire career at Delta, serving in key civic roles, such as chairman of the Atlanta chamber in 1989.
No Delta CEO has served in that role since. All succeeding CEOs have been outsiders to both the airline and the city. And Delta’s only Atlanta board member is newcomer CEO Richard Anderson.
“As companies have expanded, particularly on an international perspective, you are looking at individuals who have broader experiences to help you,” Allen said. “The second factor is that many of the leaders of Atlanta-based companies today have come from other businesses, other cities and other geographic regions. They don’t have as many ties to Atlanta.”
Several companies around in 1991 have virtually disappeared, changed names or changed ownership: Rich’s, NSI, BellSouth and Georgia-Pacific, to name a few.
With few exceptions, the top CEOs are transplants. Exceptions, however, are significant: Southern Co./Georgia Power, Genuine Parts, Cox Enterprises (owner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and Rollins.
Although its top executives are not from Atlanta, Coca-Cola’s local roots still run deep. All its CEOs have grown up in the Coca-Cola system and have always known Atlanta as home base.
Yet the strings that once tied the first family of Atlanta together are looser. For the first time, Coca-Cola’s CEO does not serve on SunTrust’s board, and SunTrust is in the process of selling its treasure trove of Coke stock. The chairman of Emory University’s board of trustees is Ben Johnson of Alston & Bird, the top competitor to King & Spalding.
Pete McTier, president of the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation from 1988 to 2006 and still a member of its board, said the focus of Atlanta’s top companies is no longer Georgia or the Southeast, or even the United States.
“We really have become a global community, and we have a better understanding of global business than we did then,” McTier said. “It can’t be as intimate as it used to be.”
Still, McTier said, Atlanta requires great involvement from its executives, who now convene on the boards of the metro Atlanta chamber, the Commerce Club and the Atlanta Committee for Progress.
One example is Tom Bell, CEO of Cousins Properties, who became chairman of the Metro Atlanta chamber only three years after he moved to town in 2002.
“As Tom Bell will tell you, you learn very quickly what the Atlanta spirit is all about,” McTier said. “There’s an expectation to serve the community.”
Longtime Atlantan, William Clement, who became CEO of Atlanta Life Financial Group in May, said the untangling of old interlocking relationships has “allowed new blood and new thoughts” in the local business community.
The business community still comes together on key issues.
When US Airways tried to acquire Delta when it was in the middle of bankruptcy little more than a year ago, Allen said he saw the Atlanta community galvanize to keep the airline’s headquarters here. He credits current CEO Anderson for the pending “great” merger with Northwest, which would help solidify Delta’s base in Atlanta.
So Atlanta Inc. still manages to respond when needed. As Allen said: “You’ve got to give people like Richard Anderson some time to get involved.”
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Sen. Johnny Isakson hoping for a “Gang of 51”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, (R-Ga.) in a talk before the Atlanta Kiwanis Club today, used his platform to sell a national energy policy.
Isakson has belonged to a “Gang of 10” — five Democrats and five Republicans — in the U.S. Senate that is pushing for a new energy bill to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Isakson was pleased that as of today, the “Gang of 10” has now become a “Gang of 16” with three more Republican senators and three more Democratic senators. And he hopes that group will increase its ranks to a “Gang of 51,” which would be a majority in the Senate.
The senator told members of Kiwanis that the United States faced similar energy issues in the late 1970s, but the nation didn’t put the policies in place to make the country more independent from other oil-producing countries.
“This is not our second chance,” Isakson said. “This is our last chance.”
If the United States does not enact a sound energy policy, Isakson said that “America will become a second-class country.”
Isakson did summarize the Gang of 16’s energy policies: be able to extract natural resources with the U.S. borders, ie: off-shore drilling for oil; develop nuclear energy by using France as a model; encourage the use of bio-fuels; provide incentives for wind and solar energy; and encourage innovation and new technology.
Until we reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we will continue subsidizing nation’s unfriendly to the United States, Isakson said, mentioning Venezuela, Iran and Russia.
“We are funding a lot of things that are going on the world because they are rolling in money,” Isakson said of those countries.
Isakson left a substantial amount of time for questions, but no one asked him about the current presidential election or the possibility that he will change his mind about running for governor.
A special moment of the luncheon was when the senator was introduced by his daughter: Julie Isakson Mitchell.
“He’s always been just that — ‘Dad,’” she said, adding that he always attended his children’s middle school dances and sporting events no matter whether he was running a company or running for public office. “He always was a family man and continues to be one today.”
When Isakson took the podium and thanked his daughter, he told the group that being a father was the “second best thing in life.” Then he quickly followed up with: “The best thing in life are grand-children.”
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