Bold but boring? Atlanta tries to reinvent itself

It's a rare day that Robert Lester finds himself downtown.

But on this day, his youngest son's appearance in the Fourth of July parade on Peachtree Street has brought him in from the boom-burg of Alpharetta to the city his forefathers watched Sherman burn.

The former private-school principal is typical of many Georgians who've turned their backs on Atlanta's shiny skyline. To Mr. Lester, this beachhead of the New South has grown cold and strange in its success. And trucking in water to build a faux waterfront in the guise of a 5-million-gallon aquarium - part of the city's vaunted renewal - seems, to him, a showy farce.

The enduring challenge for Atlanta, as for other Southern cities striving to revitalize their urban cores, is how to ease the crush of traffic and panhandlers, so that business districts attract suburbanites, tourists, and businesses themselves.

"You don't catch families downtown," says Lester. "Look at me: I was born here and I don't want to come here."

Certainly, Atlanta is no slouch in tourism: From the CNN Center to the Margaret Mitchell House, from Martin Luther King's neighborhood to Fat Matt's legendary rib shack and blues dive, it can seem an urban adventurer's paradise. And beyond the bustle of downtown, insist the city's advocates, are hidden jewels. "Atlanta has very interesting, well-defined neighborhoods that tourists don't see," says Mike Meyer, a Georgia Institute of Technology civil engineer working on the city's problems. "That's where the best restaurants are, where the more interesting clubs are."

But today, much of the buzz surrounds Midtown and Buckhead, two core enclaves north of downtown. The financial center, in contrast, seems forlorn. Despite 8 million visitors annually, there isn't much to do, as even city boosters acknowledge, and most tourists wander out of the area by dusk. Businesses, too, are leaving. A high-profile law firm recently packed up its ledgers and statute books, and carted them north to Midtown. Ditto the Federal Reserve Bank. And Centennial Park, which boosted Atlanta's international status with the 1996 Olympics, has largely failed to draw crowds. Even Underground Atlanta - a hub of shops and eateries on cobblestone streets, and a tourist fixture - is in one of its worst slumps.

All this - and Atlanta's future - is on Bernie Marcus's mind.

The Home Depot cofounder and philanthropist is putting up the $200 million for the ark-shaped aquarium, which will hold 50,000 fish - one for every eight residents. The aquarium trend has been lucrative elsewhere. Here, though, the question is whether tourists will choose Atlanta's aquarium over Chattanooga's, 90 minutes north.

"People don't say, 'Let's spend the weekend in Atlanta,' " Mr. Marcus told a crowd at last month's groundbreaking.

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