ATLANTA - Former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young says he thinks Amazon won’t come to Atlanta.
Young thinks Atlanta’s choking traffic will drive the company to another city, while he also links the 2001 political fight over Georgia's flag to what he thinks will be Amazon’s reluctance to build a new headquarters here.
We start with what Young seems to view as Atlanta’s fatal flaw in the competition for Amazon's new HQ2.
"I think we can’t really handle another big client like Amazon until we get an outer perimeter. Because we can’t take any more trucks here," Young said in an interview with 11Alive News.
Atlanta has a perimeter. Young is talking about another perimeter highway, outside of I-285. At one time, the proposed outer perimeter would have stretched from Forsyth County in the north toward Henry County to the south. Governor Roy Barnes was a backer of the outer perimeter project.
It went nowhere following another Barnes-era controversy.
"We got to fighting over a flag, and we lost the outer perimeter," Young said.
Barnes was the governor who successfully did away with Georgia’s segregation-era flag, the one dominated by a Confederate battle flag. In hindsight, Young says that fight 17 years ago embittered conservative lawmakers – who shut down the outer perimeter partly in retaliation.
"Fighting over the Confederate (state) flag was a fight over a symbol and not substance. And we think we won the symbol. But (it cost) the substance... of an outer perimeter and what it does to our (commute) time," Young said.
Young adds that Georgia lawmakers likely spooked Amazon when they killed a valuable fuel tax break for Delta Air Lines after the Atlanta-based carrier pulled airfare discounts for members of the National Rifle Association.
"Nobody in their right mind would pick on Delta or Coca-Cola. I mean, come on! Where did you grow up? What do you know?" Young asked, posing the question to lawmakers during the 11Alive interview.
"I mean, it’s not in your own interest to punish Delta. And if people in the state legislature think they want to punish Delta for guns? They need to get the hell out of here. Because you cannot shoot your way into heaven. And they’re all old enough now to start thinking about that," Young said with a smile.
Young is a former member of Congress, Ambassador to the United Nations, and an ordained Congregational Church minister. He was also a top aide to Martin Luther King, Jr.
