Georgia Loses Sun Trust HQ

AJC, 2/24/19 page A1 article, The Banking Capital that Georgia Lawmakers created in Charlotte” is an indictment of how wrong things can go in the Gold Dome. It tells a tale of how Ga Banking Regulations restricted branch banking, favored the big banks and allowed the small banks to fail.

The merger of Sun Trust Bank with BB&T will result in the headquarters leaving downtown Atlanta and going to Charlotte.

Atlanta is a good place to live if you don’t have to go anywhere. We live in continual traffic gridlock, because we ignored expanding our road and highway systems to establish a highway grid. Instead of a grid, we have a circle.

The circle is I-285 that was built as a bypass that wasn’t far enough out of town. This worked well in 1983 when the population of Atlanta Metro was 3 million. We were able to handle local and interstate traffic sharing the highways.

But when I-75 and I-85 were built through downtown Atlanta, it was clear that population expansion was going to cause gridlock.  Now at almost 6 million, we are using roads designed for 3 million. The Gold Dome failed to continue highway development in Atlanta Metro for 40 years and now we’re playing catch-up with toll roads.

Charlotte NC Metro population is 2.4 million with 3,198 square miles of land area.  Atlanta GA Metro population is 5.8 million with 8,376 square miles of land area.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader