Mon, Sep 29, 2008 page20

• ‘Crazy’ real estate mogul brings golf to the ghetto

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  When Tom Cousins, an Atlanta commercial real estate mogul, first floated his radical ideas to build a mixed-income housing community, using golf — of all things — as a cornerstone to help resurrect the decaying, crime-ridden neighborhood of East Lake, most of his colleagues and friends — even the mayor of Atlanta — said the same thing.

  “They told me I was crazy,” Cousins said last week, smiling as he sat on the porch of a home across the street from East Lake Golf Club, where 30 of the world’s best golfers are competing for a US$7 million purse in the Tour Championship, the last of four events in the playoffs for the FedEx Cup.

  Crazy was not the worst word Cousins heard to describe him and his plan to raise up a neighborhood from one of the worst crime zones in the US. He was opposed by many of the people he sought to help and by many government agencies.

  But Cousins, whose company had built much of the skyline of Atlanta, and who had been instrumental in bringing the NBA and NHL to the city, was not easily dissuaded.

  He did what all great entrepreneurs do when confronted with seemingly insurmountable barriers to their ideas. He first surrounded himself with the best people he could find, then broke down the walls, literally and figuratively.

  Twelve years later the revitalized community is not merely thriving, its vision is spreading across the South. This week in New Orleans, the Bayou District Foundation will announce that it has financing in place for the first phase of a five-year, US$233 million revitalization project that replicates much of Cousins’ blueprint for East Lake.

  The revitalization of East Lake began with the restoration of the golf club, but the two were not related when Cousins bought the club for US$4.5 million in 1993. The club, where Bob Jones learned the game and where Cousins grew up playing, had fallen into disrepair, and Cousins wanted to restore it.

  It was not until later that year, after reading a newspaper article describing how eight New York City neighborhoods produced 70 percent of prison inmates in New York state, that Cousins learned that a similarly disproportionate percentage of state prison inmates in Georgia came from East Lake.

  “East Lake had the highest crime rate in the city of Atlanta,” Cousins said. “You would drive through there and see just hundreds of kids on the streets. They had no control over where they were born.”

  Soon after, East Lake Golf Club became a means to an end. Cousins decided to seek out 100 corporations willing to take a corporate membership for US$50,000 and to also donate US$200,000 each, all of which would go toward rebuilding of East Lake. That first US$20 million went toward the demolition of the East Lake Meadows housing project, the source of most of the criminal activity in East Lake.

  At the soul of the East Lake model is education. Where once stood a windowless bunker that looked more like a cellblock than an elementary school is the Charles L. Drew Charter School. Before the school opened in 2001, only 5 percent of fifth-graders at the school could pass the state math exam. Last year, 78 percent met or exceeded state standards in math.

  Golf is a big part of the program. Children are exposed to the game by the fourth grade, and some of their physical education classes take place at the adjacent public course named for the Georgia golf legend Charles Yates, where a 10-year-old First Tee chapter has also served more than 1,500 East Lake children and teenagers.

  On Thursday, Martavious Adams, 14, stepped up to the first tee at East Lake to hit the second ceremonial tee shot to open the Tour Championship. He smashed it 293 yards down the center line. The crowd exploded with prolonged cheering.

  “I’d like to play on the PGA Tour some day,” said Martavious, who added he had become an A student. “Soon as I started playing golf, and saw how relaxing it was and how focused it made me feel, I was like, I can do this.”

  The Tour Championship produces US$600,000 for the East Lake foundation every year. The Foundation itself raises another US$1 million to fund the programs.

  Because of all this, it is possible to make the numbers work so that half of the residents in the Villages have their rents paid through government funds and the other half pay market rates.

  Tom Cousins has personally financed more millions, but he would rather not say how many. He would rather pass around the credit for the success, and pass the plan on to other cities.
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