Buffett, Cousins and Julian Robertson co-founded Purpose Built Communities, an effort to take the East Lake formula and replicate it all over the United States. The three investors gave $25 million over five years to cover the costs of Purpose Built, and they recently renewed their commitment for another five years.
Golf Channel talks with Tom Cousins to learn more about the transformation at East Lake, including the success of Drew Charter School’s first-ever graduating class.
East Lake, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Atlanta has much to show us about how to revitalize an impoverished community without pushing out current residents.
As part of Atlanta Public School’s strategy to turnaround struggling schools, Thomasville Heights was in its first year of operation by Purpose Built Schools. The nonprofit group had entered a long-term contract with APS to transform Thomasville Heights into a high-performing school and forge ties with the community it serves.
Carol Naughton has been a leader in community revitalization for more than 20 years and was a founding staff member of Purpose Built Communities. As president, she leads the consulting teams that support revitalizations in 16 cities, as well as the teams currently vetting opportunities in additional cities, including several in metro Atlanta.
With unbridled enthusiasm, Jonathan Ashford arranged nine plastic foam cups around the rug of the Columbia Parc community center and sank putts on his makeshift course as if his dinner that night depended on it. A day earlier, Jonathan, 9, and his friends in the First Tee of Greater New Orleans, a program that introduces young people to golf, played three holes on the South Course at Bayou Oaks. It is a public golf facility that opened on April 21, several hundred yards from where Jonathan and his mother live. His days of having to putt into coffee cups are numbered.
Atlanta’s first charter school will celebrate its first high school graduating class on Saturday—82 seniors who are the proof that sometimes the long game pays off.
On Saturday, May 20, a transformation 20 years in the making will be complete when the first-ever senior class graduates from Charles R. Drew Charter School, Atlanta’s first public charter school. Out of 82 students, 100 percent are not only expected to graduate, but have already been accepted to college.
With its Frank Lloyd Wright-like glass and stacked-stone architecture, the $45 million Drew Charter Junior and Senior Academy looks more like a high-end resort than an inner-city school in what was once Atlanta’s worst neighborhood. The front door is just a pitching wedge from the 13th tee of East Lake Golf Club, the home course of Bobby Jones that has hosted the Tour Championship since 2004.
Engineering students at Drew Charter School are putting the final touches on a device designed to prevent hot car deaths. They’ve been working for months to develop a three-step warning system that uses a temperature gauge, infrared technology, ignition and weight sensors to detect the presence of a baby left alone in a hot car.
