Cousins Properties Founder Tom Cousins Has Died at 93

You can’t tell the story of Atlanta’s skyline — or its rebirth — without Tom Cousins.

Cousins, the developer behind some of Atlanta’s most iconic buildings and one of the earliest champions of mixed-income housing revitalization, died this week at age 93, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported.

A titan in the city’s commercial real estate and philanthropic communities, Cousins founded Cousins Properties in 1958, and it grew from a local homebuilder into a national development powerhouse.

The firm shaped Atlanta’s skyline with marquee projects like 191 Peachtree, the Omni International Complex (later the CNN Center) and NationsBank Plaza, now Bank of America Plaza, which was, at the time of its 1992 completion, the tallest U.S. tower outside New York and Chicago.

Cousins also developed the Wildwood Office Park in Cobb County and donated the land that would become the Georgia World Congress Center. But his ambitions went beyond bricks and mortar. Cousins partnered with former Georgia Gov. Carl Sanders in 1968 to buy the St. Louis Hawks and bring the NBA to Atlanta. The team played in the Omni Coliseum, an arena Cousins built atop a defunct railroad gulch downtown.

Later in life, he turned his attention toward addressing poverty and housing inequality.

His most celebrated legacy may be the transformation of East Lake, once one of Atlanta’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Working with the Atlanta Housing Authority and federal agencies, Cousins redeveloped the area with mixed-income housing, a YMCA, an elementary school and the restored East Lake Golf Club, birthplace of golf legend Bobby Jones. The project became a national model and helped launch the Purpose Built Communities initiative Cousins founded with Warren Buffett and Julian Robertson.

As much a force in civic life as in real estate, Cousins left an indelible mark on Atlanta. He spent his final years in Florida. He is survived by his wife, Ann, two children, Grady Cousins and Lillian Giornelli, and several grandchildren. His daughter Caroline died in 1999.

— Judah Duke