"DBE: Atlanta mayor turned Hartsfield into a new airport"

Sunday, July 20, 2003

Jackson turned Hartsfield into a new airport
By KIRSTEN TAGAMI
The Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution


It took Atlanta aldermen just a week after the death of former Mayor William
B. Hartsfield to rename the airport for him, apparently with no debate. The
Atlanta Journal devoted a mere two paragraphs to the event.

Now some Atlantans want to rename the airport to honor Maynard Jackson,
Atlanta's first black mayor, who died last month. Mayor Shirley Franklin has
created a panel to study how best to pay tribute to Jackson.

Jackson is remembered for overseeing construction of the current terminal
complex, which opened in 1980 as the world's biggest, and for starting a
minority contracting program that became a model for other airports.

Jackson also is linked to two other significant improvements: Just after his
second term, the international concourse and the main terminal atrium opened
in time for the 1996 Olympic Games.

The current William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport bears little
resemblance to the airport developed during Hartsfield's tenure as mayor.

In 1961, the year Hartsfield left office, the airport was the busiest in the
country, as it is now. That year Hartsfield presided over the opening of a
trend-setting new terminal, a turquoise-paneled high-rise that was the
largest single terminal building in the country.

Air traffic quickly outgrew the new structure.

The terminal was designed to handle 6 million passengers a year and was
expected to suffice until the mid-1980s, when Atlanta's population was
expected to reach 2 million. Within the first year of operation, however, it
handled 3.8 million passengers -- and another 5.7 million sightseers, family
members and other visitors, according to "A Dream Takes Flight: Hartsfield
Atlanta International Airport and Aviation in Atlanta," by Betsy Braden and
Paul Hagan.

Planning for a bigger airport terminal began well before Jackson took office
in 1974.

The airport "master plan" was drafted in 1966 and approved in 1968 by the
Federal Aviation Administration, during Mayor Ivan Allen Jr.'s
administration.

"The development of Hartsfield has been an 80-year process and every mayor
has played a role in it, and that continues to this day with Mayor
Franklin," said George Berry, who served in a variety of key city roles
during the 1960s and 1970s, including assistant manager of the airport and
airport commissioner under Jackson.

Air traffic increased

The plan that was hatched in the mid-1960s was optimistically labeled the
1967-1972 airport expansion program, Berry said. But Hartsfield's leading
airlines, Delta and the now-defunct Eastern, decided in 1969 not to
financially support the plan, favoring instead a second airport to be built
later.

They were already committed to expansion projects elsewhere and were feeling
the pinch of a recession that was to last until 1971.

But Atlanta's air traffic kept growing through the early 1970s. Within a few
months of his inauguration in 1974, Jackson, business leaders and the
airlines decided to go ahead with a new, larger terminal at Hartsfield.

Jackson added a new wrinkle: He insisted that 25 percent of contracts be set
aside for minority-owned firms.

"We were in uncharted waters, but the program later became a model for the
rest of the country," Berry said. At first the airlines and much of the
city's white business community resisted the requirement. Some even believed
the demand was illegal, he said.

Jackson "provided leadership of the first order in this regard. He was not
at all intimidated by the difficulty of achieving that. In fact, he seemed
strengthened by the challenge," Berry said.

The mayor threatened to stop the airport expansion unless the white business
establishment agreed to accept his terms. "He said, 'We simply won't build
it if you don't agree to this. You can have 75 percent of this project or
you can have 100 percent of nothing. What is your choice?' " Berry recalled.
"There was a certain amount of brinks- manship."

Agreement reached

Infuriated white businessmen enlisted the support of the governor and state
lawmakers to bring back long-standing proposals for a state takeover of the
airport.

The standoff ended in 1976, when Jackson agreed to a more loosely defined
goal of 20 percent to 25 percent participation by minority-owned firms.

Business leaders, meanwhile, agreed to support Jackson's 1977 bid for
re-election and oppose any effort to wrest the airport from city control,
according to "Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public
Investment" by Harvard University scholars David Luberoff and Alan
Altshuler.

By this time, they write, Atlanta was the nation's 19th biggest metropolitan
area but had its second-busiest airport, after Chicago's O'Hare
International.

The delay in the expansion project turned out to be a stroke of luck, said
Dave J. Miller, who managed airport operations and airport development in
both of Jackson's terms and was Atlanta's director of purchasing under Mayor
Andrew Young.

"The time was being used wisely," Miller said, to continue to refine plans
for the terminal. It turned out to be essentially the first passenger
terminal in the country conceived as primarily a connecting hub.

The delay also gave Jackson's administration time to cajole white
businessmen into accepting the requirement of forming joint ventures with
minority-owned businesses, and to convince black businessmen that they would
be treated fairly, Miller said.

Jackson pushed for minority participation in every aspect of the airport
project. When cars for the airport's underground people mover train had to
be shipped from Pennsylvania, Jackson wanted to know if there was a
minority-owned trucking company that could do the work. One was found, said
Miller.

Personal benefit later

All told, Jackson elevated the percentage of city contracts awarded to
minorities from less than 1 percent in 1973 to nearly 39 percent five years
later.

Other cities and airports modeled their programs after Atlanta's. "Most
major airports did pick it up," said H. Lamar Willis, chairman of the
Atlanta City Council transportation committee, which oversees Hartsfield.
Jackson's program was not without controversy. After his second term ended,
his small investment banking firm and a restaurant company he founded
registered with the city as "minority business enterprises." City law
defined such firms as disadvantaged, which, when applied to the powerful
former mayor, outraged critics.

Then, in the administration of Mayor Bill Campbell, news reports showed that
some minority contractors were mere "fronts" for white partners. One
minority contractor, a close friend of Campbell's, admitted to such a scheme
and went to prison on tax charges.

In spite of the scandal, Jackson remained proud of the affirmative action
program he created. In his final months, he even discussed collaborating on
a book about the program, Miller said.

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