ATLANTA — A legend in the Atlanta real estate industry has died. Channel 2 Action News has confirmed that Tom Cousins has passed away.
The real estate tycoon, philanthropist, and political influencer was 93.
Cousins started his real estate career selling $11,000 houses with his father in the 1960s.
But over the course of his career, which spanned over 40 years, Cousins brought NBA and NFL franchises to the city, donated the plot for the Georgia World Congress Center, and dramatically changed the metro area skyline.
Cousins was the developer behind the iconic CNN Center and the Omni hotel, and revived Atlanta’s East Lake neighborhood, restoring the East Lake Golf Club and luring the Tour Championship to Atlanta.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens shared a statement mourning the loss of Cousins:
“My prayers are with the family and friends of Tom Cousins, whose vision helped shape our skyline, his generosity helped rebuild communities, and values helped define modern Atlanta. A man of deep faith who loved his family, his legacy will live on as a guidepost for what leadership can and should be in Atlanta.”
Cousins was chief executive officer of Cousins Properties until 2002, when Tom Bell took over, and chairman until December 2006.
He was born Dec. 7, 1931, in Atlanta. His father, Isaac Cousins, was an auto distributor for General Motors in Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Atlanta.
The Cousins family didn’t have a lot of money and moved often to follow his father’s business. While in grade school, Cousins started mowing lawns and later took a paper route, as well as becoming a delivery boy for a local pharmacy.
He attended grade school in Decatur and Rome and spent his last two years of school at Rome’s private Darlington School.
He graduated from Darlington in 1948 and moved on to the University of Georgia at age 16.
Cousins would then graduate in the top 10% of his class while at UGA, earning a degree in finance.
Following college, he went into the U.S. Air Force, rising to First Lieutenant.
After the Air Force, Cousins made his first foray into real estate, starting with Knox Homes in Thomson, Ga. He quickly rose through the ranks of the company to become its top salesman and eventually vice president of sales.
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Using that experience, in 1958, he went out on his own, creating what would become Cousins Properties with his father. The company became a developer of subdivisions, apartments, and shopping centers.
In the 1960s, Cousins became the largest home builder in Georgia, taking his company public in 1962.
After that, he turned his business to office development. His first office project, the Piedmont-Cain Building, opened in downtown Atlanta in 1965.
By 1966, Cousins began buying up land in downtown Atlanta that included old train stations and other parcels. Those bits of land would become “The Gulch,” which is now being built up to become Centennial Yards, as well as the land for the Five Points MARTA station, the Georgia World Congress Center, and the Omni complex.
In 1968, Cousins, along with Gov. Carl Sanders, bought the St. Louis Hawks basketball team for more than $2 million and moved the to Atlanta, bringing the NBA to the Deep South for the first time.
In a statement on Tuesday night, the Atlanta Hawks said:
“The Atlanta Hawks extend our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Tom Cousins, a visionary builder of communities, unmatched philanthropist, and a former Hawks owner who had an enduring impact on the city’s sports landscape and the geographic footprint that now makes up our thriving Downtown Atlanta region. Developed by Cousins, the original home of the Hawks - the Omni Coliseum - shaped fans, memories and downtown for a quarter of a century.”
“He was also a transformative leader in the community, whose many projects included the revitalization of Atlanta’s East Lake neighborhood,” the statement continued.
His Omni Hotel would come a few years later, which was originally built for pro basketball and hockey teams. That same year, he brought an expansion franchise from the NHL, naming them the Flames.
The Omni Center would ultimately go into foreclosure before being swept up by Ted Turner in 1986, renaming it the CNN Center, and making it one of the most recognized landmarks in the city of Atlanta.
The following year, he announced plans for the twin-crowned 191 Peachtree Tower, a 50-story building by architect Philip Johnson that became one of downtown’s signature skyscrapers.
The 191 Peachtree Tower opened in 1990, helped draw business downtown, but a decade later, it started losing tenants as more and more skyscrapers began being built in that area.
In 1989, Cousins announced the plans for his biggest achievement yet, a new skyscraper for the then-Citizens and Southern National Bank. It would become the tallest building in the South. It is what we know today as Bank of America Plaza. The building opened in 1992, at 1023 feet high.
Cousins also got praise for his work at the East Lake Meadows housing project.
The area was known for high crime, including several homicides, hundreds of assaults and robberies.
Cousins started a housing project in the area in 1993 and also bought the land to restore the East Lake Country Club, the home golf course of Bobby Jones.
He would team up with Renee Glover, head of the Atlanta Housing Authority, to obtain $33.5 million in federal money and corporate donations to build mixed-income housing, an elementary school and a YMCA in the East Lake area.
By 2002, the crime right in the neighborhood had significantly dropped
In 2004, Cousins sold most of its marquis office buildings and reinvested the money in new projects, including Terminus, a high-profile mixed-use complex in Buckhead.
The next year, Cousins Properties entered the condo market and formed an industrial division, which it eliminated in 2008.
Cousins gave back a chunk of his own fortune, supporting through his foundation Auburn, Emory, and Georgia State universities as well as the High Museum of Art, Oakland Cemetery, and Presbyterian churches, among others.
He served on several high-profile boards of directors over the years, including the University of Georgia Foundation, Emory University, and the Georgia Research Alliance.
Cousins is survived by his wife Ann Cousins; two of their children, Grady Cousins and Lillian Giornelli, the latter a director of Cousins Properties; and several grandchildren. A third child, Caroline, died in 1999.
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