Letter from Bill Adams

I am a native Atlantan who grew up in a house built by my grandparents in 1902 across the street from one of the City’s largest and oldest parks, Grant Park.  As a result, I have always loved the City’s historic intown neighborhoods.

As a child growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I witnessed and mourned the decline of those wonderful old “close-in” neighborhoods and their business districts. During college in the late 1960s, I volunteered with revitalization efforts in the Grant Park neighborhood under the auspices of a federal program known as “Model Cities.” After a tour of duty in the Army and graduate business school at Georgia State University, I joined the forerunner of the Grant Park Neighborhood Association in late 1974.

In the early 1970s, most intown neighborhoods were “redlined” by banks and neglected by the local government. The neighborhood revitalization movement in Atlanta was in its infancy. Banks refused to make real estate loans in these “high-risk” neighborhoods. The level of city services was poor, and to make matters worse, the city had rezoned many of these neighborhoods from single-family to multifamily residential in the 1950s.

I became a neighborhood activist in Grant Park in the 1970s and, along with many dedicated volunteers, helped to bring about one of the largest “down zonings” in City history, converting the area back to single-family/duplex zoning from apartment zoning. I was also a community representative and later President of the Neighborhood Housing Services program, which helped local lenders understand the housing market in the City’s neighborhoods and helped end their practice of redlining in these communities. I later served as President of the Grant Park Neighborhood Association and Chair of Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) W, as well as a founding board member of historic Oakland Cemetery, Inc.

All these experiences have had a profound effect on me and the company that I founded in 1979. I had a commercial real estate background but came to realize that strong neighborhoods are vital to a city’s quality of life and its commercial core. Adams Realtors’ approach to real estate has always reflected the values of neighborhood activism. Our transactions involve people, not just numbers. As we approach 50 years of service, our goal is to complete our clients’ purchase or sale while at the same time building a community through that transaction.

I hope that you find our website to be a helpful tool whether you are planning to buy, sell, or just trying to get a good feel for the state of the residential real estate market in Atlanta. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at wtadams@adamsrealtors.com.  If you have an interest in commercial real estate, please visit our Adams Commercial Real Estate website at www.adamscre.com.  I can also be reached at (404) 688-1222.

Thanks,

Bill Adams, MBA, CCIM, ALC, CRB
President
ADAMS REALTORS