Super Bowl, Summer Olympics Host Goes for Gold in Seeking New Business : The Georgia city’s goal is to attract 200,000 new jobs, 750 U.S. firms and 250 international companies by 1996.
The city that thinks it can is at it again. Having won the sports battles to host the 1994 Super Bowl and the 1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta now seems to be trying to lure all the world’s businesses.
Olympic fever is feeding relocation fever.
The city is aggressively pursuing a goal of attracting 200,000 new jobs, 750 new U.S. firms and 250 international ones by 1996.
More than two dozen companies have announced major relocations and expansions in the past year, which puts Atlanta in the front rank of cities at the unloading end of the moving van.
UPS is relocating its Greenwich, Conn., headquarters here, moving 1,000 jobs. Holiday Inn is shifting its North American headquarters from Memphis, Tenn., to Atlanta, bringing about 200 employees and hiring about 700 locally.
Hewlett-Packard, the computer company based in Palo Alto plans to double its Atlanta work force of 1,300 in 10 years through transfers and local hiring. Lockheed, another California-based company, is transferring several hundred Californians and hiring another 2,000 people because of the new jet fighter contract.
What’s the attraction? Robert Ady, president of PHH Fantus Corp., a worldwide business-location consulting firm, said Atlanta has more success than many cities because “it shows well. You really have to search around to find bad areas” here. The city also has “a very strong coalition” of leaders in business and politics. “They let you know the entire leadership is there to help you,” he said.
That leadership touts Atlanta’s transportation, communications, plentiful labor and lower taxes. There is also that indefinable attribute, “quality of life,” which may be a euphemism for “house that costs less than your lifetime earnings.”
At a recent Chamber of Commerce lunch, Sara Warren Miles, marketing director for Wickeshire Realty, pointed to local homes that would cost four times as much if they were located in comparable California neighborhoods.
The campaign is proceeding despite some notable drawbacks. There’s the rain, for example. It’ll no doubt surprise many of the newcomers to learn that this city averages about 49 inches of rain a year, 10 inches more than Seattle. But the rain does make the dogwoods and azaleas grow, and all that wetness may even sound good to some drought-parched Westerners.
Then there’s the crime. FBI crime statistics consistently rank Atlanta among the nation’s most violent cities--a point underscored Tuesday as a gunman shot three people in the main downtown subway, killing one on the spot.
Gerald Bartels, the chamber president, apparently keeps the relocation fires going by noting simply that crime is “a common problem of urban areas.” Atlanta’s leaders are concerned, he says. “We’re working on it.”
Some new employees also worry about race relations. Hewlett-Packard employees on the West Coast, for example, “still tend to see and think of Georgia as very backwards,” said John Salyer, general manager at the company.
It is true that when it comes to corporate leadership, where the power and the money are, Atlanta is just about monochromatic. Few black people or Latinos, very few, are among the rich and powerful here.
But that situation, like crime, is not likely to be any different for any of the newcomers, regardless of where they are coming from.
Overriding all the negatives, apparently, is the Olympics.
An economic impact study prepared for Olympics officials has projected that the Games will pump about $3.5 billion into the area’s economy.
The Games and the worldwide exposure they will bring will mean priceless publicity for hotel chains, package deliverers, aircraft and computer manufacturers and just about every other business you can imagine. And some of these will reap direct profits from the zillions of folks who will come here to work and play.
In words immortalized by a character on the television show “In Living Color,” the Olympics mean “mo’ money and mo’ money and mo’ money.”
Timothy Williams, senior vice president for finance at Holiday Inn, described his company’s move as “An Olympic brand coming to an Olympic city,” no doubt presaging one of many such boasts to come from myriad businesses.
Some cities may accuse Atlanta of trying to steal their employers, but A. W. Dahlberg, president of the Georgia Power Co., and one of the movers and shakers in the relocation effort, is unrepentant.
“People accuse Atlanta of boosterism,” he said, adding that does not matter “as long as we have the ability to back it up.”
