From the Governor’s Mansion to the Gold Dome and Atlanta City Hall, cousins were also influential in politics, providing financial support and advice to elected people. He co-chaired former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin’s first mayoral campaign in 2001 and was an early supporter of the former mayor.
According to a family member, Cousins passed away on Tuesday following his hospitalization in Florida.
Source: COPY
Source: COPY
Cousins served as Cousins Properties’ chairman until December 2006 and its CEO until 2002.
According to A.J. Robinson, CEO of Central Atlanta Progress, the powerful downtown business alliance, his influence on the city as a developer and community leader was incalculable.
According to Robinson, he was one of the few significant pillars upon which the entire town had been constructed for the previous forty years. He claimed that without him, downtown and the neighborhood as a whole would have been completely different.
However, according to his buddy Billy Payne in 2006, Cousins’ greatest legacy is found in a completely other context: friendship.
According to Payne, the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games organizer and former director of Cousins Properties, Tom’s greatest gift to Atlanta has been his example of kindness, great business acumen, love for his community, and faith in his Lord, all of which can inspire future generations. Numerous individuals will remember him today and for many decades to come, and his contributions will have a significant impact on their careers.
Credit: AJC/Jason Getz
Credit: AJC/Jason Getz
In Atlanta, Thomas G. Cousins was born on December 7, 1931. With limited resources, the family frequently relocated to follow his father, Isaac W. Ike Cousins, a General Motors auto distributor.
In elementary school, Tom began mowing the yards of his neighbors. Later, he delivered newspapers and fulfilled orders from a drugstore.
After graduating from Decatur and Rome high schools in 1948, he enrolled in the University of Georgia at the age of sixteen. In 1952, he earned a degree in finance, placing him in the top 10% of his class. He became a first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from college.
After serving in the military, he worked for a company in Thomson, Georgia, that supplied home builders with building material kits. He advanced quickly, gained knowledge of the fundamentals of land development, and started his own business in 1958. Cousins, who was in his 30s at the time, was Georgia’s biggest home builder by the 1960s. In 1962, he went public with his business. Three years later, he focused on office development, which became his specialty. In 1965, the Piedmont-Cain Building, his first office structure, debuted downtown.
AJC file is credited.
AJC file is credited.
By 1966, Cousins had started purchasing ancient properties in the Gulch, along with the air rights above them. The Georgia World Congress Center, the Omni arena, which Cousins constructed as a home for his professional hockey and basketball teams, and the Five Points MARTA station were among the properties that were included.
The NBA made its debut in the Deep South on May 2, 1968, when Carl Sanders, a former governor and cousin and partner in the legal firm Troutman Sanders (now Troutman Pepper), purchased the St. Louis Hawks for over $2 million. He purchased a National Hockey League expansion team in 1972 and called it the Flames.
In 1976, he built the Omni International Hotel, which would later become the CNN Center.
The $5 billion Centennial Yards project, which is currently being built and promises to transform downtown for future generations, was started by Los Angeles developer CIM Group as a result of their vision to piece together the Gulch and its air rights.
The developer of the Westin Peachtree Plaza, Peachtree Center, AmericasMart complex, and what is now Truist Plaza, John C. Portman Jr., was another well-known Atlanta developer with whom Cousins had a frequently behind-the-scenes battle during his career.
Both sought to reshape the city by attempting to draw the district’s center toward their projects and becoming the dominant force downtown.
In 1986, Ted Turner purchased the Omni International Hotel complex from Cousins. He changed its name to CNN Center. Before CNN left the building in early 2024, it was one of the most identifiable landmarks in the city for decades. The Center is the new name for the complex.
The time that Cousins owned a sports franchise ended. After losing millions, he sold the Flames to a Canadian investor in 1980 and the Hawks to Turner in 1977. Later, the Flames moved to Calgary.
Like Atlanta, Cousins had a stronger run in the 1980s and 1990s, when he had the biggest influence on the city’s skyline and social structure.
He established Wildwood Office Park, a historic complex in the Chattahoochee River forests, in 1987 after converting his business into a real estate investment trust. He revealed plans for the twin-crowned 191 Peachtree Tower the following year. Designed by architect Philip Johnson, the 50-story structure became one of downtown’s iconic buildings. Rival Portman revealed his 60-story SunTrust Plaza, which is now called Truist Plaza, a few days later.
Cousins unveiled his greatest real estate accomplishment in 1989: a brand-new skyscraper for Citizens and Southern National Bank (referred to as C&S in the area), which would be the tallest structure in the South.
Bennett Brown, the chairman of C&S, described the $200 million structure that would eventually be known as Bank of America Plaza as more than just a statement; rather, it was a declaration of audacity and confidence for the bank and the community.
Thank you to CP Group.
Thank you to CP Group.
In the late 2010s, Cousins Properties became one of the biggest office landlords in the Sunbelt through a number of mergers and acquisitions. With its present leadership optimistic about the city its founder helped create, it has the largest office portfolio in Atlanta.
His work at the East Lake Meadows housing project, formerly known as Little Vietnam, earned Cousins equal recognition. The 54-acre housing project saw hundreds of assaults and robberies and three homicides annually on average between 1987 and 1996.
When Cousin learned that the once-grand East Lake Country Club, the home golf course of golf icon Bobby Jones, was up for auction, he became involved with the housing project in 1993.
Cousins informed The Atlanta-Journal Constitution that a junkyard was one of the bids. Oh my god, what else could possibly happen out here, I wondered. Having a closed golf course nearby was one thing. A junkyard, though?
After purchasing the club, he started to restore it. East Lake Meadows located across the street, and Cousins quickly focused on revitalizing the area rather than repairing a golf course.
Together with Renee Glover, who was the president of the Atlanta Housing Authority at the time, he raised $33.5 million in government funds and corporate donations, most of which came from golf club memberships, to demolish the housing project and construct a YMCA, mixed-income housing, and an elementary school. Additionally, cousins arranged for members of nearby churches to assist former tenants of housing projects. East Lake’s homicide rate had fallen to nil by 2002, and narcotics arrests had decreased.
In 2001, Cousins told Fortune magazine that creating beautiful homes alone does not transform a town. People need to be given a new way of living.
The PGA Tour’s yearly playoffs would eventually include professional competitions at East Lake.
The East Lake Meadows redevelopment effort, meanwhile, led to the founding ofPurpose Built Communities, a nonprofit that helps redevelop low-income areas across the country.
“There is a solution to poverty,” he told the AJC in 2013, which is currently my biggest focus.
B.S. I understand what you’re thinking. I can show you, though. I can’t see where we can’t, can you? You can t say it s preposterous. It s happened here, and it needs to happen across the country.
Franklin, the former Atlanta mayor, became the first chairperson of the foundation s board, which is currently led by Greg Giornelli.
After retiring, Cousins spent much of his time in Florida and North Carolina.
Cousins gave away part of his fortune, supportingthrough his foundationthe University of Georgia and Auburn, Emory and Georgia State universities as well as the High Museum of Art, Oakland Cemetery and Presbyterian churches, among others. He also was one of many high-profile donors who contributed $32 million to secure the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. s personal papers for the city.
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.
Details about funeral arrangements were not immediately known.
This is a breaking news story. Return to AJC.com for updates.
