Atlanta Committee for Progress united in supporting Andre Dickens and the city

It’s been two years since then Mayor-elect Andre Dickens first met with the powerhouse civic group of leaders — the Atlanta Committee for Progress (ACP).

Based on the turnout at ACP’s December meeting on Dec. 8 at the headquarters of King & Spalding, Mayor Dickens’ relationship with Atlanta’s business and civic leaders is as strong as that of any mayor since Shirley Franklin, who founded the group in 2003.

“Today was great because everybody was there. I mean, just about everybody was there,” Dickens said in an interview after the meeting. “What’s good about it is they are extremely engaged. They were volleying and lobbying ideas with suggestions and challenges as well as how they can help.”

Over the years, ACP has been the best barometer of how a mayor can lay out his or her agenda and how well he or she can work with Atlanta’s leadership.

For example, the meeting last Friday included Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, UPS CEO Carol Tomé, Georgia State University President Brian Blake, Emory University President Greg Fenves, Spelman College President Helene Gayle, Clark Atlanta University President George French and all but five of the impressive list of ACP members. (link)

“It’s part of the special sauce of Atlanta,” said Colin Connolly, CEO of Cousins Properties and the 2023 chair of ACP. “What makes Atlanta unique is the political, business, educational, healthcare and civic communities all coming together to support our city and help the mayor and his team continue to propel Atlanta.”

During his year, Connolly instituted a new ACP event – board dinners on the night before the ACP morning meeting, as a way to strengthen the relationships between CEOs and Atlanta’s civic leaders.

“Part of the recipe in Atlanta is that there have been friendships and relationships across all those different communities. That builds trust, and that builds confidence. It helps facilitate conversation. The goal of kind of creating those dinners again is to get people together without a specific agenda — just spend time to deepen those relationships.”

The big news out of the Dec. 9 meeting is that the 2024 chair of ACP will be Carol Tomé of UPS. She is the first woman to ever chair ACP in its 20-year history. That said, the executive director — Kathy Waller — is the third woman in that role, following Duriya Farooqui and Shan Cooper. The founding executive director was John Ahmann, now president and CEO of the Westside Future Fund.

When asked why she agreed to take that role, Tomé was quick to say it was because she’s a big fan of Mayor Dickens.

“At UPS, we deliver 25 million packages a day to over 200 countries around the world, so we are pretty busy. And we are a global company,” Tomé said in an interview at the HOPE Global Summit on Monday. “But Atlanta is our hometown, and we always have wanted to be engaged in this town.”

Tomé then added that she supports the mayor’s agenda because it is aligned with UPS’ values — strengthening the next generation, public safety and economic empowerment. 

For Dickens, the value of ACP is to be able to share his agenda with some of the most powerful leaders in Atlanta and Georgia. Many of ACP’s members run companies or operations that are not even based in the city, but Dickens said they still care about Atlanta’s ability to thrive.

Dickens said a key part of his agenda is housing affordability and neighborhood revitalization — Grove Park, English Avenue, Thomasville, to name a few. That includes the city having a greater ability to turn blighted areas into thriving communities and replicating the East Lake and Purpose Built Communities model.

“We need stronger laws from the state that allow us to condemn properties and demolish them,” Dickens said, adding that ACP members were engaged in helping the city work through various issues, such as homelessness. 

Because of the relatively soft office market, Dickens said the real estate market is pivoting to build more residential developments.

“We want more residential, and we want to keep it mixed-income,” Dickens said. “People want everything in a [community] now. You want your great fitness center, you want retail, you want to open spaces and you still want it to be affordable.”

During the meeting, which was closed to the press, the mayor said they “talked about how this group can be helpful in communicating Atlanta’s interests to the state whether it’s for upzoning or inclusionary zoning.”

Matt Bronfman, CEO of Jamestown, helped explain inclusionary zoning and made a case to the group. “They received that well,” Dickens said. “We talked about a lot of things to get more density out of developments on key corridors so that would enable us to have more affordable housing and also just more activity in these areas. ACP members are interested in that, too.”

ACP is also providing a bonding opportunity for top executives and civic leaders, especially with the quarterly board dinners.

“I was told when I took the CEO job is that it’s a very lonely job,” Tomé said. “When I heard that, I’m like, how lonely can it be? But I’ve learned it’s very lonely. So that’s why when the CEOs actually come together in a community of fellow CEOs, we can talk about the issues that are facing our companies because the issues are actually the same.”

Tomé, who has been part of ACP since becoming CEO of Sandy Springs-based UPS in June 2020, said the members are “super energized right now because we’re moving the city forward in the right direction. It’s important to us as employers to be moving the city in the right direction.”

As an Atlanta native, ACP’s 2023 Chair Connolly said it is a special organization.

“We’re here to support the mayor and his ambitious agenda,” Connolly said. “As the calendar closes on 2023, I think the mayor and his team are leaving the city better than it was in 2022. And I think they left 2022 better than the city was in 2021.” Twelve months ago, the city was in a very different place. For one, it was fighting efforts to create a City of Buckhead.

Waller said the energy was felt by the number of CEOs and leaders who attended the in-person meeting, which is unique to Atlanta. Dickens has told her that when he meets with other mayors in the country, “other cities would like to have something similar to this.”

Historically, Atlanta has had different ways to solidify its business and civic leaders. There was the Commerce Club board from the 1960s that convened leaders monthly for more than five decades. There was the Atlanta Action Forum. And there’s always been the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

But ACP has always been tied to promoting the agenda of the current mayor. Mayor Shirley Franklin used ACP to launch big ideas — those that would help shape Atlanta in 50 years — fixing sewers, developing the Atlanta BeltLine, helping eliminate chronic homelessness, etc. Mayor Kasim Reed was more focused on getting ACP’s help during his administration, such as implementing pension reform. And Mayor Keisha Bottoms was saddled with having to lead during the pandemic, coupled with the unrest caused by the murder of George Floyd. That took a toll on ACP’s ability to meet in person and build the kind of relationships that clearly exist with Mayor Dickens.

When asked how his relationship compares to his predecessors, Dickens said he is focused on both short-term initiatives, like providing summer employment for young people, and long-term initiatives like neighborhood revitalization.

When asked the same question, Connolly simply said: “Leadership matters.”

“The city has united around a terrific new leader, who not only shows up every day around the city but is also starting to provide real tangible results,” Connolly said. “ACP will continue to support the mayor and other organizations that are critical to advancing the city.”