If leaders of Midtown’s highway-capping park initiative were sports franchise owners, and appointing a coveted CEO was landing a free agent, they may have just signed a game-changer.
In a move that Atlanta’s mayor and Chick-fil-A’s influential chairman are applauding, The MCP Foundation announced Monday that longtime Atlanta Regional Commission leader Doug Hooker has been appointed CEO of the Midtown Connector Park project.
Hooker’s long resume includes a decade-long stint as ARC executive director, where he helped coordinate projects across an 11-county region and engage community leaders and the general public on issues related to metro Atlanta’s growth. He holds an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, which the 17-acre park over the Connector would neighbor.
The greenspace would boost the area's street network connectedness by 150 percent, its proponents say.Courtesy of MCP Foundation
Hooker also received a master’s degree from Emory University, has worked with Georgia Power, and served as Atlanta’s commissioner of public works during the 1996 Olympics. Prior to the ARC, he led the State Road and Tollway Authority. He’s chaired the board of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and has served with the Georgia Conservancy, the Atlanta Music Project, and the Fox Theatre.
He currently serves as a Senior Fellow and Professor of Practice at the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University.
“I’ve dedicated my career to helping Atlanta reach its full potential, and the MCP has the ability to transform this city and region like no other project I’ve seen,” Hooker said in a prepared statement. “I'm honored and grateful for the opportunity to help deliver this remarkable park project to my city and see the impact it can have on future generations.”
To get the most ambitious and largest of three highway-capping proposals in Atlanta out of the ground, Hooker will be tasked with closely working with funding partners, the foundation’s board, and MCP’s chief strategy officer Taylor Morison. Similar, but smaller, projects moving forward with new leadership and funding include downtown’s Stitch and Buckhead’s HUB404.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens praised Hooker as someone who “knows Atlanta” with deep knowledge of public and private sectors.
“He knows how to bring people together to get big things done,” said Dickens in Monday’s announcement. “Connecting East and West Midtown on this scale is no small task, but [Hooker] is the right person for the job, and both he and the entire Midtown Connector Park have the city’s support.”
Billionaire Chick-fil-A chairman and former CEO Dan Cathy—a Jonesboro native and Trilith founder who’s advocated for a park to bridge the gap between Midtown and Georgia Tech for years—also weighed in on news of Hooker’s appointment. Cathy is now chairman of the MCP Foundation’s board, which he said is “thrilled” to have Hooker involved.
“We are incredibly grateful for [Hooker] dedicating this next chapter in his career to a project that means so much to me,” said Cathy, “and one that will have an incredible impact on this city and the region.”
A shaded common area with views to the NCR Global Headquarters.Courtesy of MCP Foundation
According to this week’s announcement, plans for the Midtown Connector have been scaled back from 25 acres initially envisioned when it was unveiled in 2021 to 17 acres. Plans generally call for creating a “world-class” deck park over the Connector’s urban gash that would span from North Avenue up to 5th Street.
Above Connector traffic would be playgrounds, a dog park, cafés, a children’s garden, and an amphitheatre for local, regional, and national events, among other facets, according to conceptual plans.
The MCP Foundation called Hooker’s hire “another significant step” toward bringing the project to fruition.
The foundation completed a three-year feasibility study in late 2021. MCP Foundation leaders revealed this week they took “vision trips” to similar highway-capping projects “around the globe” in 2022, while hosting stakeholder events with city and state officials.
In December, the Midtown Connector secured $3.2 million from 2023 House and Senate U.S. Department of Transportation appropriation bills. That funding will help the initiative complete a 30-percent design and engineering package in 2023—a process that’s taken several years—and position it to compete for federal construction grants next year, project leaders have said.
Early Midtown Connector cost estimates have ranged from $800 million to $1.2 billion.
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