Bob Barr

Atlanta's Core All Too Close To Meltdown

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 10, 2006

For years, political candidates have been on to the fact that there are two Atlantas, one that exists within a few miles of downtown and the rest that sprawls in a mostly northern arc above the top of the city.

Unfortunately, the corporate leadership of the first Atlanta that centered on downtown does not seem to have caught up with reality.

In their minds, the Atlanta of City Hall, the Commerce Club, the High Museum of Art and the Coca-Cola headquarters is still what matters most. Everyone else is a carpetbagger at worst or a mostly irrelevant nonentity at best. The reality, however, is that much of Atlanta's economic future is taking place outside the city limits.

Companies such as Home Depot, ChoicePoint, Waffle House, UPS and countless others are growing like wildfire. They're discovering they can continue to grow nicely without being plugged into the traditional Atlanta power structure. They are headquartered in our suburbs, but their business takes place largely elsewhere. Their destinies are not shaped under a looming, dusty portrait of Robert Woodruff in a boardroom somewhere, but in the international marketplace and in cyberspace.

What Atlanta's existing power structure doesn't seem to be grasping quickly enough is that these are the companies that represent our state's future.

In the past year, Atlanta has lost — or almost lost — three of its most stalwart corporate anchors: BellSouth, Delta and Georgia-Pacific. Our two major metro Atlanta auto manufacturing plants are shutting down. In short, the thundering herd that once made up the traditional power structure of our metro area is falling one by one.

Of course, this is not to say that all is doom and gloom. Exciting new commercial frontiers are being pioneered every day by corporate executives, marketing geniuses and award-winning researchers in companies across the metro area. The key point, therefore, is not that innovation and growth have stopped, but that they have simply shifted outside the power structure that has dominated metro Atlanta for 50 years.

The most current manifestation of this schism has been the persistent rumor that Home Depot may be considering a new corporate home, partly in response to what many perceive as a failure by the traditional Atlanta power structure to assimilate Home Depot's leadership. The pounding that Home Depot has taken at the hands of our news media here certainly doesn't help matters.

Unless the old Atlanta's leadership is able to address this and other similar situations with the corporations that are building our region's future, the city itself risks becoming "drive-through country." The region's economic leaders will only see downtown on their way to and from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. And, unfortunately, even Hartsfield-Jackson may cease to be the cash cow it has been in recent years if the massive airport expansion under way is not matched by growth in the corporate community that will primarily utilize all of that new space.

Even worse, the real pinch will be felt as we work to recruit tomorrow's corporate leaders, who, assuming something must be wrong with Atlanta, will cast a longing eye to places such as Charlotte and Jacksonville. One fixed, immovable fact of economic development is that the competition never stops working.

In chamber of commerce boardrooms across the Southeast, very smart people are looking for new ways to lure industry away from metro Atlanta; a bifurcated metro area plays right into their hands.

Already, the northern arc that is growing Atlanta's economic tomorrow has its own convention centers, office space, concert venues, sports arenas and civic organizations. In terms of political leadership, our governor, both of our U.S. senators and most of the leaders of our state Legislature all hail from outside the Perimeter.

The old Atlanta had better wake up to this reality and find a way to make itself relevant. Unless R&B recording moguls who spend time in Atlanta start creating thousands of jobs to make up for those we are losing, Atlanta can sink many more millions into hip-hop marketing campaigns and it will not reverse this growing trend.

What will achieve the goal of bridging this divide is an open question. But one thing is for sure — unless leaders squarely confront the problem and move to solve it, Atlanta will slowly but surely lose its position as the capital of the South.

Mr. Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.