Sound familiar?

[iheartthed]

AJC: Engine for growth has run out of fuel

Time was when a company’s move to Atlanta meant finding a spot on Peachtree Street. But Georgia-Pacific was the last Fortune 500 company to move its corporate headquarters downtown from another city. That was in the early 1980s.

Even some of Atlanta’s biggest cheerleaders worry.

“It’s this simple: If I was the CEO of a major company, I would not open a place in downtown Atlanta,� said Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who four years ago spent $250 million of his fortune to build one of downtown’s biggest attractions, the Georgia Aquarium.

Marcus predicts Atlanta will lose “a lot of taxes and a lot of jobs� if leaders do not step up and address crime and quality-of-life issues. “I just don’t understand why they are afraid to address this problem,� he said. “It’s self-defeating.�

In 2004, Franklin, tired of seeing other cities outwork Atlanta in wooing business, revamped and enlarged the Atlanta Development Authority, pledging a “multi-pronged effort to increase Atlanta’s ability to attract, retain and grow� businesses and increase housing for the middle class.

Part of her reasoning was obvious. For Atlanta, the trend of big companies — Home Depot, UPS, NCR — locating in the city has been something like a game of horseshoes: close but not quite.

As recently as August, Fortune 500 firm First Data Corp. announced it was relocating its global headquarters to Atlanta, bringing up to 1,000 jobs. However, the actual destination was Sandy Springs, the city’s neighbor to the north.

Too many ‘negatives’?

In fact, nine Fortune 500 companies list Atlanta as their headquarters’ location. But just four — Coca Cola, Delta Air Lines, Southern Co. and SunTrust — reside within the city limits. Ten more in Fortune’s next 500 also list Atlanta, but just three are actually in the city. With its newest addition, Sandy Springs has eight Fortune 1,000 companies — one more than Atlanta.

Sandy Springs Councilman Rusty Paul said companies moving to his city may still demand an Atlanta address, “But they don’t want the taxes and bureaucracy that come with the city. The perception of crime, the perception of politics. All that hurts the city in attracting businesses.�

Many companies also find the cheaper, available land in the suburbs more conducive to creating campus-style headquarters, development experts say.

Regional rivals, such as Charlotte, point to recent recruiting coups. This month, it landed health care provider Premier Inc.’s headquarters.

Tony Crumbley, a Charlotte Chamber of Commerce official, said the Atlanta area is still attractive to business, but the city’s downtown has many “negatives� to overcome. “We did not allow our downtown to go to shambles,� he said.

Atlanta officials shrug off those statements, arguing the city competes with major cities like Dallas and Denver, not upstarts like Charlotte.

“Charlotte has Atlanta envy, and has had for decades,� said Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce President Sam Williams.

“We’re after jobs,� Williams said. “The corporate headquarters is a little icing on the cake. But the cake is jobs.�

Mayor Franklin said that no part of the metro area can survive alone any longer, but argued that historically, Atlanta’s contributions to the region “dwarf the reverse.�

“The Atlanta region thrives because generations of Atlantans have invested in infrastructure to create a healthy and economically viable city and region,� she said in an e-mailed comment. “Those who think the [metro] region would thrive without Atlanta are wrong.�

Atlanta Development Authority president Peggy McCormick said her agency measures success differently than do counterparts in many cities. While ADA officials travel to other cities and overseas to woo businesses, they also work to build ongoing relationships with local firms, checking on their progress and troubleshooting to ease bureaucratic problems. She said the city’s actions have spurred a resurgence in many neighborhoods and brought national and international investment.

“I have been around the country and heard too many presentations from cities that are shrinking,� she said. “Being a growing city is a good thing. We measure our success in residential growth, job growth and investment growth.�

While Atlanta does do well at fostering high-tech startups, some 40 percent of them move away after three years “and reach their potential elsewhere,� says a new study by Danny Breznitz, a Georgia Tech professor of public policy. It’s a pattern, he says, that threatens the city’s continued success.

“Atlanta has a lot of Fortune 500 companies, but they are not connected to the high-tech [startups] and they aren’t connected to each other,� Breznitz said in an interview.

“The [new] companies are not socially embedded here,� making it easy to leave if they get a better offer elsewhere.

City officials say they haven’t turned their backs on large companies. The city successfully kept Southern Co. from moving its headquarters away from downtown with a 2005 bond issue, retaining 900 jobs in the city. About $2.3 million in bond funding went toward the $41 million project, the ADA said.

Charles Brewer, who founded high-tech firm Mindspring and more recently developed a new urbanist project in East Atlanta, believes the city still has enormous potential for economic growth, but also huge problems it must confront. Public safety is first on the list.

“If that’s not dealt with at some acceptable level, none of the other stuff matters,� said Brewer, an Ansley Park resident. “People with a choice will just leave, and it will lead to a downward spiral regardless of what we do about transportation and things like that.�

When his Internet service provider company was young, Brewer said, he went downtown looking for office space. But after being accosted by a phalanx of panhandlers, “I said, ‘No way.’ I was not going to subject my employees to this,� Brewer said. He located in Midtown.

Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank said his company’s headquarters was located outside the city more because of proximity to highways and area stores than any reservations about downtown.

But Atlanta faces big challenges, he said, and there’s no single magic bullet that will solve them.

“The next mayor has to be the mayor of the region,� the Atlanta Falcons owner said. “He or she has to have a good relationship with all of the counties that make up the Atlanta region.

“The city of Atlanta, and the region, is the heartbeat of the state,� he said. “Without a heart the body will not live.�

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/engi...as-173667.html


Is Detroit headed towards becoming the next Atlanta, or is Atlanta headed towards becoming the next Detroit?

[jbd441]

While I have limited knowledge of business Atlanta, I can tell you their tourism industry is doing just fine. The city core is beautiful, the aquarium and other such areas are very nice. I didn't see the crime problem downtown but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Because the city lacks any kind of real nightlife may be one big reason the residental population is on the decline.
I hardly doubt Atlanta will become the next Detroit. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

[Detroitnerd]

While I have limited knowledge of business Atlanta, I can tell you their tourism industry is doing just fine. The city core is beautiful, the aquarium and other such areas are very nice. I didn't see the crime problem downtown but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Because the city lacks any kind of real nightlife may be one big reason the residental population is on the decline.
I hardly doubt Atlanta will become the next Detroit. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Or apples to peaches?

[jbd441]

Or apples to peaches?

Ha ha I get it.

[iheartthed]

It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Yeah, you're right. I've never seen any Detroit area examples of the problems that the article mentioned...

[Detroitnerd]

Actually, am I crazy for thinking you could better compare Peachtree-based businesses to, say, Tysons Corners or Troy?