Some employers fear that heavy traffic and smog may drive potential employees away  ALSO: Read the "smart growth" report RELATED VIDEO CNN's Aram Roston explains how one company is taking action to ease the pains of urban sprawl. (June 16) Windows Media 28K 80K

June 16, 1999
Web posted at: 3:38 p.m. EDT (1938 GMT)

In this story: 'Smart growth' Examples Job sites put next to mass transit Red tape RELATED STORIES, SITES

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Businesses hope that pumping new life into a city's "downtown," making it more appealing to employees, is a quality-of-life decision that can boost their bottom line. Call it anti-urban sprawl.

Across the country, more and more executives are joining the fight, according to a report released Monday.

Increasingly, they are worried about traffic jams, air pollution and a lack of open space -- conditions often created by business in the first place -- will rob their companies of the best workers, the report says.

"If companies want to attract the best and the brightest, they pay attention to quality-of-life issues," says Clayton Hering, president of a Portland, Oregon, real estate services firm and an advocate of limiting growth.

Brown says many business executives are finding that urban sprawl hurts their long-term profitability

The study was done by the National Association of Local Government Environmental Professionals, which represents 120 local governments in 35 states.

Based on interviews with more than 50 executives, the study profiles 19 "smart growth" initiatives by businesses.

"Businesses are increasingly finding that urban sprawl harms their long-term profitability and economic competitiveness," report co-author Ken Brown told CNN.

As a result, some executives are backing ballot issues and attending planning meetings to promote growth boundaries, build mass transit and spend more money on downtowns.

Even so, says Brown, most executives still are so focused on daily business that they do not think of the problems of sprawl.

The report credits several firms for their actions:

• DaimlerChrysler is building a $1.6 billion engine plant near downtown Detroit.
  
  
• Florida developers Pulte Home Corp. and Arvida Co. are trying to draw growth away from the environmentally sensitive Everglades.
  
  
• 45 businesses in York County, Pennsylvania, are directing investment into old urban cores.
  
  
• The Bank of America is spending $350 million to revitalize Charlotte, North Carolina.
  
  
• The Providence Energy Corp. has begun trying to manage sprawl in Rhode Island.
  
  
• The largest Silicon Valley employers in California are trying to make more affordable housing available.

"Regions that do a good job of protecting their quality of life will become magnets for new capital and economic growth," Tracy Grubbs, a director of the Sierra Business Council in Truckee, California, says in the report.

In Atlanta, BellSouth is relocating its business centers so they're close to subway stations

Businesses sometimes find they can save money when they expand in urban areas where mass transit, roads, sewers and the like are already in place, the study says.

In Atlanta, for example, where traffic congestion costs an estimated $1.5 billion a year in lost time and wasted fuel, BellSouth is trying to adapt.

Trying to get more of its 23,000 Atlanta-area employees to commute on mass transit, the telecommunications firm is consolidating its 75 work sites into just three.

"We're actually putting our business centers at (subway) stations," BellSouth's Richard Gilbert told CNN. "That's where the work will be."

The effort reportedly is costing BellSouth $750 million.

But the "smart growth" policy may not necessarily bring success. The report says:

• Dayton & Hudson Corp. did not put a Target store in downtown Minneapolis because there was not enough land to support the store and parking.
  
  
• Urban governments often have too much red tape for businesses to go through, and roads and other services can be in disrepair.
  
  
• Consumers may resist. On one hand, they are worried about traffic congestion, air pollution and loss of open space, says Roy Rogers of the Arvida Co. "On the other hand, they still want their dream house in the suburbs, with a big yard and a two-car garage."

So, for now, no one expects any quick end to urban sprawl.

In Atlanta, where the average work commute by car is 37 minutes, there is one estimate that in 20 years it will stretch to 45 minutes.

Correspondent Aram Roston and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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