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Sunday, July 27, 2008
A conversation with Jim Jacoby, master developer of Atlantic Station
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As soon as we meet in his conference room at Atlantic Station (complete with a built-in aquarium), Jim Jacoby asks what I want to talk about.
“We’ve got whale sharks, dolphins, turning trash into gas, turning waste treatment sludge into energy, the Ford plant, e-Learning, Atlantic Station…,” Jacoby says.
In short, Jacoby has no deficit of interests, causes, business projects and philanthropic pursuits. Spending several hours listening to him talk about his ventures is exhausting. How is one man able to juggle so many interests at once? How does he define himself and all his interests?
The questions stump him. We spend several minutes drafting a definition of what Jacoby does. “I’m a developer of renewable energy and green real estate,” he finally says.
It didn’t start out that way. Jacoby, a native of Miami and son of a contractor, moved to Atlanta in 1973. He got involved in real estate as a broker and leasing agent. That led him on the development path.
“I had a reputation as a strip-center developer,” says Jacoby, who brought Wal-Mart and Publix and other big box stores to the suburbs. “For so many years, we spread everything out. We wanted to keep everything separate — our houses, our offices.”
Jacoby, who likens his evolution to a dimmer slowly brightening a room rather than a light-bulb going on, then began to help smaller Georgia cities revive their downtowns with new retail.
“I’m not sure whether it was the world that changed, or that I changed to more sustainable development,” Jacoby says. “It was a transformation from greenfield development to redevelopment. We came back into the city in the early 1990s.”
No project was as transformational as Atlantic Station, a former steel mill near downtown. The 140 acres were plagued with environmental problems and soil contamination. It was an extremely complicated, multi-faceted development needing strong federal, state and local support.
Jacoby became interested in the project in 1996. He got an option to buy the property in early 1997, and soon after, he got the land rezoned to allow for 20 million square feet of development.
But later that same day, the federal government declared Atlanta was out of compliance with clean air standards and froze federal transportation dollars — jeopardizing plans to build the 17th Street bridge linking the project to Midtown.
“We literally had champagne in the morning and Advil that night,” Jacoby says. But in the end, Atlantic Station and the 17th Street bridge got the government green light because it was viewed as a mixed-use development that could improve Atlanta’s air quality.
Twelve years later, Jacoby is amazed at the $4 billion development on 140 acres, which he says is only half built.
“Who could not be pleased with what we ended up with?” Jacoby asks. “It’s a collage of ideas. Nobody talks about Atlantic Station being a brownfield anymore.”
Instead, developers all over the region say they want to build the next Atlantic Station, even though there are few opportunities to develop a project of that scale.
And Jacoby snagged the next big one himself. In January 2006, Ford Motor Co. announced it would close its plant near the airport, leaving 122 acres for redevelopment. Ford began negotiating to sell the land to Jacoby’s firm because of its experience with brownfield redevelopment and its Atlanta ties.
Jacoby closed on the sale in June. (He and his partners had to do a cash deal because bank loans are so tight.) Now they are demolishing and doing environmental cleanup on the site, which should take nine months.
“We are zoned for 6.5 million square feet, and we could have a $2 billion project, half as big as Atlantic Station,” says Jacoby.
The development, a combination of offices, retail, industrial and possibly a hotel, will be built to green standards and use solar energy. Jacoby also wants to take the airport’s garbage, clean it and turn it into energy. “We want to get rid of some of the air quality issues around the airport,” he says.
That leads to Jacoby’s other major business interest: alternative energy. He is working with major utilities, including AGL Resources, on to come up with alternative energy opportunities. The rising cost of fuel suddenly all of a sudden has made these ventures viable.
So Jacoby is on a project designed to reclaim methane gas from Georgia’s largest landfill — Live Oak in DeKalb County. “We can run 400 MARTA buses a day with that gas,” Jacoby says.
He has other clean energy plans in metro Atlanta, Florida and elsewhere, including cleaning up landfills and converting sewage sludge into energy. Jacoby says this side of his business could end up being bigger than his traditional developments.
But those two sides of Jacoby still only scratch the surface. Jacoby owns Marineland in Florida, which allows visitors to view or even swim with dolphins. He also is working with the Georgia Aquarium and Bernie Marcus on a proposed dolphin exhibit.
“I have three baby dolphins,” Jacoby showing off pictures as would a new dad. He starts talking about how dolphins are the “canaries of the ocean,” critical to the health of the planet. Then he reluctantly talks about another dolphin project, worried he might come off as strange: “I want to work with inner-species communications,” he says. “Who knows what we can learn from animals.”
There’s also his involvement with medical technology research at Georgia Tech. Could there be a pacemaker for the brain that helps prevent seizures?
“I have a special-needs daughter who has seizures,” he says of his youngest daughter who, at 21, is home-schooled. “That’s one of the reasons I’m out here looking for answers.”
Jacoby also has been working with school systems from Atlanta to Hawaii, giving or selling small computers to stimulate learning.
Jacoby credits his ability to work on so many diverse projects to his small team of co-workers and partners. He sees himself as an explorer in life’s challenges, as well as an orchestra leader.
“There are issues out there that need a champion. It’s exciting to be able to make a difference,” says Jacoby, 64, who shows no signs of slowing down. Despite the tough economic climate, he considers the Ford development “a pretty safe deal” that could lead to him working with Ford on other former plant sites.
“I’m fortunate that I don’t have to go out to pasture,” he says. “I can still play with my erector set and build communities.”
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