ARC's new leader ‘a visionary thinker’

By Dan Chapman

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tall buildings have always held Tad Leithead in their thrall.

As a lad, watching “An Affair to Remember,” the Empire State Building loomed large and luxuriant. As a builder, he developed the Terminus building, one of Atlanta’s most distinctive edifices.

And, last week, Leithead, the newly elected chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission, sat in a conference room on the top floor of a Perimeter high-rise and wistfully declared all but over Atlanta’s love affair with the building of tall buildings.

Leithead (pronounced Leeth-head) may no longer get his kicks from remaking Atlanta’s skyline, but monumental challenges await.

To wit: an Atlanta choking on traffic with little money for new roads or mass transit; a region in danger of running out of water; and Georgia’s politically shaky firmament that makes improbable near-term resolution of Atlanta’s myriad problems.

In addition, Leithead, as the first nonpolitician to head up the regionwide planning agency, could have trouble cobbling together consensus among mayors, commissioners and other elected officials. And there’s the age-old gripe that the ARC is toothless, good at drawing up plans but ineffective at solving the region’s woes.

“We have teeth,” said Leithead, 54. “They may be in a glass on the bedside table, but we have to step up and do our job.”

Sam Olens, the outgoing ARC chairman, said Leithead’s expertise in transit and planning, along with a politician’s knack for comity, made his fellow Cobb County resident the right choice.

“Tad says, ‘Give me a responsibility and I’ll do it,’ and he always did it well,” Olens said. “Board members felt Tad had put the most time into the ARC the last several years and that he deserved the opportunity to lead.”

Leithead, a developer with 26 years experience in Atlanta’s building boom, has spent nine years on the ARC, the last three as chairman of the key Transportation Committee.

He is keen to resurrect the North Cobb to Akers Mill to Perimeter light-rail line that would alleviate congestion along interstates 75 and 285. Commuter lines from Atlanta to Macon and Athens rank high too. The so-called Northern Arc, connecting interstates 75 and 85, deserves serious reconsideration, Leithead said.

Marta needs a steadier flow of money to maintain, let alone upgrade, its system. Public-private partnerships could turn HOV lanes into toll lanes.

Leithead said the General Assembly must give the 10-county metro region the financial tools to solve transportation woes. A penny sales tax would raise $7.9 billion, he said, with federal matching dollars adding another $5 billion.

“To be a great metropolitan city, we must have that great transit system,” Leithead said. “But costs are growing and money is lessening. Still, building a transportation system is like eating an elephant: You’ve got to do it bite by bite.”

Water, though not historically an ARC agenda-topper, will compete with transit for Leithead’s time. A federal judge ruled last summer that metro Atlanta has no legal right to continue tapping into Lake Lanier.

Olens said Leithead “has some catching up to do on the water issue.” Leithead acknowledged he doesn’t have all the answers.

“The best piece of advice I got came from my grandfather in a dream after he died,” Leithead said of Barry T. Leithead, a good friend of Dwight D. Eisenhower. “He told me, ‘Remember Tad, you’re right most of the time.’ ” I live by that. You can’t have the arrogance of believing you’re right all the time.”

Son of an Air Force bomber pilot turned businessman, Leithead bounced from Bangor, Maine, to Atlanta (and the Lovett School) to Greenwich, Conn. He graduated from Washington & Lee University, where he majored in philosophy. He trained and rode horses competitively until age 26.

He sold computers for IBM in North Carolina, where he met wife Susan. Trammell Crow hired him in 1983 to lease office space at the Galleria in Cobb County. Five years later he helped establish Childress Klein Properties and continued to develop the Cumberland-Galleria area.

Leithead stepped aside in 1998 to create a development and transportation consulting firm. He helped birth numerous community improvement districts, or CIDs, in Fulton, Gwinnett and Cobb counties. He’s credited with, and takes pride in, the Kennedy interchange, an I-75 exit that boosted development in the Cumberland CID.

“He really is quite a visionary thinker — he gets the big picture,” said Malaika Rivers, executive director of the Cumberland CID that Leithead chairs. “And he has charisma, charisma, charisma, which is why people respond to him so well.”

Leithead joined Cousins Properties in 2002, first as a top Atlanta developer, then as the point man lining up governmental approval for projects. He left in September, yet retains Cousins (and Grady Hospital) as clients of his consulting firm.

With a house on Lake Chatuge in North Georgia and a penchant for cowboy boots and monogrammed shirts, Leithead personifies the successful businessman eager to leave a public legacy. But the comfort belies family trauma. Barry, his oldest son, survived a bout with cancer. And a young man he mentored died from a heart attack.

Leithead, a fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republican, said he has all but ruled out elected office some day. Besides, as the first nonpolitician to head up the ARC, his political instincts will be needed to corral the parochial interests of the region’s mayors and commissioners.

“It’s a Catch-22 that the ARC has faced since its inception and it absolutely poses a challenge,” Leithead said. “But because I don’t have a political constituency I’m in a more comfortable position to take a more regional approach.”