Charles Barton, 84: Real estate savvy, plus a spiritual side

Real estate investor and developer Charley Barton had a love for the land, said his longtime business partner, George Johnson of Atlanta. "He got a kick out of driving for hours around Atlanta and beyond to look at properties and think about their best uses."

Both optimism and real estate acumen served him well. Together, the partners developed Powers Ferry Landing, assembled the land for the first phase of the Cobb Galleria, built a host of hotels and strategically located banks, restaurants, gas stations and other businesses in and around Atlanta.

"Charley was a visionary in every sense of the word," said Ray McPhail, a former Atlanta developer now living in Highlands, N.C. "He had the uncanny ability to breathe life into a dead deal and make it fly. He was one of the great icons of Atlanta's commercial real estate booms during the '70s and '80s."

Mr. Barton and his partner also established hotels and restaurants in Florida and secured financing for their Atlanta and Florida projects from as far away as Europe and the Middle East.

Charles Coggins Barton, 84, of Atlanta, died Wednesday at Hospice Atlanta following a brain hemorrhage. A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at H.M. Patterson & Son, Arlington Chapel, 173 Allen Road N.E., Sandy Springs.

After he earned a degree in accounting at Babson College in Massachusetts, Mr. Barton began his business career as a junior accountant for an Atlanta firm, said his longtime CPA, Robert Arogeti of Atlanta. "But one day Charley's boss told him he had too much personality to be an accountant and ought to choose a line of business where he could put his people skills to work," Mr. Arogeti added.

And so he did. For more than a decade he worked for Burroughs Corp., mostly managing sales but also helping to install the first computers at the George C. Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Ala.

While still working for Burroughs, Mr. Barton received a lot of encouragement from his late father-in-law, Bill Amsie, to take up a career in real estate investing, Mr. Johnson said.

"Bill and Charley would drive around the city, and Bill would point out properties with promise," Mr. Johnson said. "One piece of Bill's advice I still recall was: Always buy the property on the far corner of a stoplight; it will be easier for customers to exit by car than the property on the near corner."

Mr. Barton prospered once he went into real estate full-time and was "enormously generous" as a longtime benefactor of Communities in Schools in Georgia, said its president, Neil Shorthouse of Atlanta.

"Charley enjoyed meeting the schoolchildren we serve and hearing about their struggles to succeed. He would give them incentives, like a dollar or two gift for memorizing an inspirational poem," Mr. Shorthouse said.

While he devoted time and money to organizations like the Atlanta Union Mission and Habitat for Humanity, Mr. Barton preferred to remain an anonymous donor. "Charley didn't want any recognition. The less that recipients knew about the giver, the better he liked it," Mr. Arogeti said.