Economist.com Cities Guide: Atlanta Briefing - September 2005

News this month

The horror to the west

Atlanta was far enough north to escape any direct effects of Hurricane Katrina, but the city nevertheless felt its impact. The most immediate consequence was a sharp rise in petrol prices, sparked when the storm took two Gulf Coast pipelines out of commission. On August 31st, two days after Katrina made landfall, petrol hit $5 a gallon in parts of Atlanta; Sonny Perdue, Georgia’s governor, declared a state of emergency. By September 5th, prices were back in line with the rest of the country, although still higher than car-bound Atlantans are used to.

Meanwhile, Atlanta, some 470 miles from New Orleans and 390 miles from Biloxi, Mississippi, emerged as a secondary housing centre for refugees. A YMCA in south-east Atlanta and the Alexander Memorial Coliseum (Georgia Tech’s basketball arena) served briefly as Red Cross shelters. Ray Nagin, New Orleans’s mayor, plans to send some of his exhausted police force to Atlanta to recover. Many expect victims of Katrina to remain in the metro area for some time: as of September 13th, over 2,000 Atlantans had offered housing on Hurricanehousing.org, a site for matching refugees with short- and long-term accommodation. Many of Atlanta’s black churches have been active in offering housing and raising donations.

Losing altitude

Surprising no one, Delta Air Lines, Atlanta’s largest carrier and the nation’s third-largest, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 14th. Northwest Airlines, another troubled carrier, followed suit minutes later. Observers had long speculated that Delta, carrying some $20 billion in debts (including more than $5.3 billion in underfunded pensions), would file before a scheduled October 1st change in bankruptcy law.

The move caps what has been a bad month for Delta, when it asked its pilots for new concessions and slashed flights to Cincinnati, its second-largest hub. Meanwhile, the airline is under fire for its handling of flights at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong International Airport on August 28th, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit. Delta was the only major airline to cancel all flights that day (except a charter flight for the local professional American football team); competitors continued to fly well into the day, with Continental, a comparatively solvent rival, even shipping in staff from Houston.

Taking shape

Atlanta's city government is finally hammering out the specifics of the much-discussed Beltline project, a 22-mile stretch of abandoned railroad tracks set to become a circular “greenway”. The Atlanta Development Authority, an agency created by the city, would link almost 50 local neighbourhoods through a series of light rails and walking trails. The project is expected to cost between $2.1 billion and $2.6 billion, of which $1.7 billion will come from property taxes that would normally go straight to the city. The city predicts that this development, which includes $240m for 5,600 affordable-housing units, will benefit the poorer neighbourhoods in Atlanta’s south-east and south-west more than those in the wealthier north-east.

But one argument has already broken out, over a proposal from Ray Weeks, a developer, to create two 40-storey condominium towers at 10th Street and Monroe Drive, near Piedmont Park. Nearby residents are up in arms, and the city’s Beltway proposal suggests no office or residential development be built over 15 storeys.

A money song for Eddie Long

Tax records unearthed in late August revealed that Bishop Eddie Long, leader of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, a city less than 20 miles east of downtown Atlanta, received more than $3m in salary and benefits from a charity associated with his church, between 1997 and 2000. This is nearly the same amount the charity paid out in donations during the same period. Federal law prohibits non-profit organisations from paying “excessive” salaries to executives.

Bishop Long defends the payments by pointing to the incredible growth of his church during his 18 years at its helm, from 300 to nearly 25,000 members, making New Birth one of the largest black churches in America. “You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering,” he told reporters.

In cold blood

DeKalb County, east of Atlanta, played host to a sensational murder trial 11 years in the making. In March 1994, Shannon Melendi, then a 19-year-old Emory University student from Miami, disappeared; despite a nationwide search, her body has never been found. On September 19th, a jury convicted Colvin “Butch” Hinton III of murdering her. He had worked as an umpire at the same softball field as Melendi.

At the time of the crime, DeKalb County police suspected Mr Hinton, but lacked sufficient evidence to charge him. New evidence, such as the testimony of witnesses who claimed he talked about killing Melendi while in prison, finally brought him to court in August. Prosecutors were quick to play up Mr Hinton's criminal history, pointing to a trend of preying on young women. (He was convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in 1982.) The jury came to its decision after deliberating for three days.

Catch if you can

October 2005

Locomotion in the Garden

Until October 30th 2005

The works in this show are not as dramatic as the glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly that graced the Atlanta Botanical Garden last year, but they have an organic charm. Paul Busse, a landscape architect based in Kentucky, has created a miniature world, with seven small trains running across a specially crafted track. The exhibition includes meticulous replicas of local landmarks, such as the Fox Theatre, the State Capitol and Turner Field, all fashioned entirely from natural materials (twigs, acorns, nuts, pinecones, moss, etc). On Tuesday nights the garden stays open until 9pm, and the miniature buildings and trains light up.

Atlanta Botanical Garden, 1345 Piedmont Ave NE. Tel: +1 (404) 876-5859. Open: Tues 9am–9pm; Wed–Sun 9am–7pm; closed Mondays. Tickets: $12. For more information, see the garden’s website.

More from the Atlanta cultural calendar