Guest column: Tour Championship’s transformative role in the East Lake neighborhood

East Lake, a neighborhood in southeast Atlanta, was a popular vacation haven for Atlanta’s affluent families in the early 1900s and continued to attract golfing enthusiasts who wanted to play at historic East Lake Golf Club, where golfing legend Bobby Jones played his first and last rounds of golf.

By the 1960s, the golf course and the neighborhood began to fall into disrepair, and, in 1970, a public housing development called East Lake Meadows was constructed on what had been East Lake Golf Club’s No. 2 golf course. Over the next two decades, East Lake Meadows continued to deteriorate and was nicknamed “Little Vietnam” by local police because of its high crime rates and notorious drug trade. Educational outcomes were bleak, and the unemployment rate was nearly 90%.

The East Lake Foundation was established in 1995 by philanthropists Tom and Ann Cousins to help transform the East Lake neighborhood and create new opportunities for the families who lived there. Working with residents in East Lake Meadows, led by Eva Davis, then president of the Tenants Association, government, and public and private partners, the foundation developed a holistic model for community revitalization (mixed-income house, cradle-to-college education, and community wellness). A new mixed-income community, The Villages of East Lake, was created on the site of the former public housing development, and Atlanta’s first-ever charter school, Charles R. Drew Charter School, opened in 2000. It is a high-quality K-12 school that serves more than 1,900 students each year. Families in East Lake enjoy the proximity to the East Lake Family YMCA and the Charlie Yates Golf Course, a public, nine-hole executive course. Charlie Yates Golf Course provides equitable access to golf for many lower income families who might not have had the opportunity otherwise.

Around the time the East Lake Foundation was beginning its work in the neighborhood, the Cousins family purchased and carefully renovated the historic East Lake Golf Club, which had suffered from disinvestment for many years. Tom and Ann’s vision was to establish a private, corporate membership golf club that would have a nonprofit purpose. Corporate members were encouraged to make a financial contribution to the East Lake Foundation at the time of initiation, and a portion of all proceeds from operations would benefit the East Lake Foundation. The club coined its motto, “Golf with a Purpose," early in the process when it was realized that golf at East Lake Golf Club would play a pivotal role in the remarkable revitalization of the East Lake neighborhood.

The Tour Championship was first played at East Lake Golf Club in 1998 and has been held at East Lake 20 times since then. The East Lake Foundation has been the primary beneficiary of this high-profile tournament, which has raised more than $37 million to support the work of the foundation, First Tee of Metro Atlanta and other Atlanta-area nonprofits since 1998.

East Lake is now a beautiful and thriving community where people of all economic means choose to live. Violent crime has decreased by 99%, and all residents who qualify for public housing subsidies at The Villages of East Lake are employed. Drew Charter School students continue to outperform their peers in Atlanta Public Schools and across the state of Georgia, and our youngest children have equitable access to high-quality early learning at two early learning academies and two top-ranked pre-K programs. Drew Charter’s first graduating seniors, the Class of 2017, had a 100% graduation rate,100% college acceptance rate and more than 70% persistence rate into their second year of college, the highest in Atlanta Public Schools.

Golf instruction at the Charlie Yates Golf Course, through the First Tee of Metro Atlanta and through physical education programming at Drew Charter School, provides access to college scholarships, business connections and employment.

In 2019, Drew Charter School’s boys varsity team, all members of The First Tee of Metro Atlanta, made history winning the Class A Public State Championship. They are the first Atlanta Public Schools team to win a state championship in golf and the first all African American team (players and coaches) to win a state championship in golf in Georgia and perhaps in the country. All three seniors are attending college on golf and/or academic scholarships.

The success of the East Lake initiative has served as the blueprint for a national model of holistic community redevelopment through Purpose Built Communities. Today, there are 26 additional Purpose Built Communities across the country — all of which are successfully creating opportunities for residents and building strong, economically diverse communities.

The East Lake Foundation could not have accomplished this level of success without the generous support of the Tour Championship, its proud partners, Coca-Cola and Southern Co., and its media partners, NBC and Golf Channel, and for that we are incredibly grateful. Their support has provided a foundation for student achievement, an international platform to share the foundation’s work with the world and a vital fundraising tool to sustain our work for the families and children in the East Lake neighborhood and at Drew Charter School.

We have been in conversations with Augusta National and their partners about our model and our partnerships, notably with East Lake Golf Club and the Tour Championship, and look forward to developing a relationship and sharing our best practices in holistic community revitalization.

Daniel Shoy is president and CEO of the East Lake Foundation.