How Tom Cousins practiced “golf with a purpose”

The term “Renaissance man” gets thrown around a lot these days. But if there’s anyone who undoubtedly met the definition of a Renaissance man, it’s Tom Cousins, an Atlanta icon who died on July 29 at the age of 93.

Cousins is probably best known as the real estate developer who, along with John Portman, helped shape the modern downtown Atlanta skyline in the 1970s and 1980s. But Cousins also played a major role in the city’s professional sports scene, purchasing the St. Louis Hawks and bringing them to Atlanta in 1968.

In 1995, Cousins purchased East Lake Golf Club, the historic home course of Bobby Jones that had fallen into disrepair. Cousins had a vision not only of restoring the golf course to its former glory, but also rejuvenating the community around the club that had become known as “Little Vietnam” due to its high rate of violent crime.

To do so, Cousins created the East Lake Foundation to build mixed-income housing and provide more education and job opportunities for residents. Profits from the East Lake Golf Club go to the East Lake Foundation to fund initiatives like this.

It didn’t take long for Cousins’ vision to start to become a reality: East Lake Golf Club hosted the prestigious Tour Championship season-ending golf tournament in 1998 and became its permanent home in 2004.

Meanwhile, the East Lake Foundation partnered with the Atlanta Housing Authority in the late 1990s to replace the run-down East Lake Meadows public housing project across the street from the golf club with the Villages of East Lake, a mixed-income apartment complex. Half of the apartments are rented to middle-income families at market rates and the other half are rented to low-income families that pay a fixed percentage of their income in rent, with the balance government subsidized.

Photograph courtesy of East Lake Foundation

More community development soon followed, including a charter school, a pre-K learning center, and the East Lake Family YMCA. “Tom’s mantra was always ‘golf with a purpose,’” says Ilham Askia, President and CEO of the East Lake Foundation. “His purpose in East Lake was not just to rebuild a golf club, but to serve the people in the community who have historically been denied access to the resources that we all deserve by building quality housing and providing job and educational opportunities.”

Cousins was big on innovation and on measurable impact when it came to the projects he led, says Askia. “He was very resident-centered and resident-focused. It was important to Tom that the partners he worked with shared his same core values of serving the community.”

Tour Championship Executive Director Alex Urban says Cousins’ vision of using the sport of golf to create a foundation that helps make the community a better place to live is unique. “To be able to work alongside Tom and help achieve that vision has been really special,” says Urban. “Without his vision, there probably wouldn’t be a Tour Championship in Atlanta.”

Since hosting the first tournament at East Lake in 1998, the Tour Championship has contributed more that $63 million to the East Lake Foundation and other Atlanta-based nonprofits. In 2011, Cousins and Warren Buffett partnered with other business moguls to found Purpose Built Communities to revitalize other neighborhoods across the country with the same successful formula used in East Lake.

In recognition of his lifetime achievements, Tom Cousins was inducted into the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2018. In addition, he was named philanthropist of the Year in 2015 by the Greater Atlanta Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

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