Ryan Gravel Shows Ryan Millsap 'Where We Want to Live'

Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing, and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people, and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.

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Ryan: I'm Ryan Millsap, CEO of Blackhall Studios in Atlanta, and this is the Blackhall Studios Podcast. Why does a busy Hollywood studio do a podcast, you might ask? Blackhall is the home of great movies like Jumanji: The Next Level and fan-favorite series like HBO's Lovecraft Country. But for me, hosting a podcast is an amazing way to meet people and to connect to the community. I learn from each interview and from each person. My roots are actually in America's heartland. My mother's from Nebraska. My father's from Missouri. And though some folks might think I've ‘gone Hollywood,’ I'm now just an Atlanta boy who loves to meet new and interesting people. And yes, some of them will just happen to be famous Hollywood types.

I'm a dad; a businessman. I live on a farm out in Social Circle, and I love the peace and quiet there. But I also love to learn about the philosophy of human nature. So why a podcast? That's why. Thank you for joining me on this journey. I appreciate you.

Ryan Gravel came up with the now famous idea of the Atlanta Beltline, an ambitious project that started as his master's thesis at Georgia Tech and now consists of 22 miles of transit greenway that connects all of Atlanta. Yes, it's the most transformative element added to the Atlanta urban landscape in two decades. Known locally and nationally as an urban thinker – we'll figure that one out during the interview – Gravel is a talented designer, author, and builder. Let's listen to Ryan Gravel, founder of the company Sixpitch, as he tells us ‘Where We Want to Live,’ which also happens to be the title of his book. An interesting man, Gravel’s imagination for the urban life knows no bounds.

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Ryan Millsap: Hi, this is Ryan Millsap. Welcome to the Blackhall Studios Podcast. Today on the program, we have Ryan Gravel, who is world-famous in Atlanta for the Beltline. He's an urban thinker, a designer, an author, a builder. And he's the founder of Sixpitch, which is his company that does all sorts of different things. We'll ask him about it. Ryan, welcome to the program.

Ryan Gravel: Hey, Ryan, it's great to be here.

Ryan Millsap: So, we were talking just before this about the pandemic, and your soul-searching. Tell me a little bit about that.

Ryan Gravel: Well, I don't know. At first, I didn't really know what we were doing, and I just went through a series of phases. I went through my urban exploration phase. And I went through my home improvement phase; and whatever. But eventually, with all of the... not just the pandemic, but the protests for social justice, racial justice – there's just so much going on right now that you can't help but put yourself in context a little bit.

I'm generally introverted, anyway. And this is my work. I do a lot of work that overlaps with spaces for exploration, and social and racial justice, and all kinds of other things. It's interesting to put yourself, your life, in there. I got a note from a relative saying something about the slaves; the enslaved people that were in our family. You can't be white, and from the South, and not assume that there's something like that somewhere in your history.

But it got me going down this rabbit hole of figuring out that, not only was that true, but if it is, how do I reconcile myself with that? And it makes personal the sort of story of white privilege, and white supremacy, and all that, that is so much at the forefront of our national discussion right now. One thing is to understand all that. Another thing is to think about what we do about it. So, I'm really, in my work... I mean, the Beltline is a great example of taking something that nobody was thinking about – taking the problem, and making it into the solution.

And so, I'm really interested in how we... especially white people, specifically; in my case, anyway. White Southerners. How do we reconcile that awful thing, and then somehow write a new narrative about our future that not just allows us to feel better – which is part of it, maybe –but also helps us work toward the solutions? Not that we're going to solve it; it’s certainly not that I'm going to solve it. But I can help in my own way, and participate in that. You didn't know we were going to go so deep, right? In the first question?

Ryan Millsap: No; I love this. That's fantastic. What did you find out about your family?

Ryan Gravel: Oh, all the awful stuff.

Ryan Millsap: Okay. Let's imagine all the awful stuff. So, then, what do you do? What do you do if your family has a history of... I'm taking it as a history of owning slaves. What do you feel like your responsibility is today in society?

Ryan Gravel: Well, I mean, that wasn't me, right? And all kinds of people have all kinds of other terrible things in their histories, too. So I'm not alone. But it does emphasize our need to not just sort of passively go through life and assume that we got everything that we got because we did such a good job. We have to acknowledge that we got here for reasons, and that we can make sure that other people are also getting where they need to go.

That's just about love, and thoughtfulness, and empathy, and caring about people. And it translates into your work, depending on what kind of work you do; who you hire; where you work; what you support; what you vote for; all those kinds of things. And so, I don't have an answer. I mean, this is very mid-stream.

Ryan Millsap: I mean, if you had answers, we'd really be solving problems. It'd be amazing.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah.

Ryan Millsap: Well, I think I think it's incredible you're doing that work. I've always enjoyed, in our conversations, how self-introspective, curious, about yourself, and curious about the world, you are.

Ryan Gravel: I think a lot of people are focused on the future. And if you want to know where you're going in the future, you need to know who you are, and where you come from. And I have one thing that's along those lines, but very different. I've learned that I'm a terrible project manager. I hate managing people. I'm bad at it. They're frustrated; they're miserable; I'm miserable. If I can get away with not having to manage people, then I'll be better, and they will, too.

So, if you know yourself, and you know what you're good at, then you can focus your energy on doing good in your best way. And I’ve been lucky that, with the Beltline and everything else, I've been able to put my life and my work in what I do best. It’s really rewarding and fun, but I want to continue to do that. I'm not done.

Ryan Millsap: Well, let's think about the Beltline just for a second. I know you've talked about it a lot, and we won't spend the majority on it. But the Beltline was a conceptual idea that you imagined. Walk everybody who might not know this story through a little bit of that conception, and then how it came to be – because obviously, you didn't want to project-manage it, right?

So, there's been countless people involved. And then, taking this idea and turning into something that exists – which is no discredit to the idea, because nothing exists without ideas. And that's why we pay these entrepreneurs who own intellectual property so much money; because the ideas are so important. Walk us through the birth of the Beltline – the short version, because I want to talk about other stuff.

Ryan Gravel: My favorite part of the story starts years before the Beltline itself. I grew up in Atlanta. I grew up in the suburbs, and lived a typical kind of suburban life in the 70s and 80s and 90s. I was at Georgia Tech in the 90s and studying architecture, and I did a year abroad in Paris, and I fell in love with cities. I'd never experienced a real city before. And I really just loved it. I lost 15 pounds in the first month of being there, because I was walking everywhere I went, and eating fresh food. The role of the city, and the physical form of city, and the opportunities that are created by that city form, became clear to me in a way that they had never really been before.

So, when I came back to Atlanta – stuck in traffic, driving on 285 – I realized that's not what I wanted to do for my life. And so I went back to school; graduate school in urban planning and architecture, and the Beltline became my graduate thesis. The idea being: how do we transform this 22-mile loop of old railroads into something that would create the opportunities to live the kind of life that we want? At a high level, that's basically what it is. It's a vision for our future. It's an idea of the way we want to live. And then it's basically the infrastructure that you have to implement to support that way of life.

I never imagined we would actually do it. You know, I just wanted to graduate – which I did. But I got involved in starting a grassroots movement of people who similarly saw that vision for themselves, and wanted that future for themselves and their lives and their children and their business – and lifted the project to life. Literally, the people of the city of Atlanta fell in love with this vision before anybody else, and they made it possible. They got the attention of the elected officials, and the regional planners, and the transit agency, and all that. And so this idea started to become real. Obviously there's a lot of complexity and soap operas and drama, and all of that in between.

But fast forward to today – where we've spent $500 million on it, and we've seen over 5 billion in private investment. And that 5 billion represents people living the kinds of lives that they want – starting businesses, getting jobs, going out and living. Entertainment, and restaurants, and art, and culture, and events, and meeting new friends. Taking this railroad – which historically was a barrier between places – and literally making it into a meeting ground where people come together.

And we're not done. We haven't built the transit. The affordable housing is a challenge. We've got a long way to go to actually implement it so we follow through on the promise. The jury's kind of out on whether we can call it a success. But it is pretty phenomenal. Even in these early stages, with all the challenges, it's definitely making that future seem possible in Atlanta, in ways that I'm not sure it would have otherwise.

Ryan Millsap: What was the very first section of the Beltline?

Ryan Gravel: There was a piece in West End that kind of predated the Beltline as an idea. It was a ‘rails to trails’ conversion idea that predated the Beltline for that part of the city. And, because it had some funding associated with it, it ended up being built first. The first part of Mainline Trail, where you're really implementing the actual Beltline itself, was on the east side – from Piedmont Park down to Krog Street Market, past Ponce City.

Ryan Millsap: Okay, so all of that was built at the same time.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah, that two-mile stretch from the east side. And, immediately following the trail being built, Ponce City Market started to be implemented, and Krog Street Market, and all this other stuff. It’s been really phenomenal.

Ryan Millsap: Where do you consider to be kind of ground zero on the Beltline right now? Like, what's the center of gravity?

Ryan Gravel: That's hard to say, because it's so complex. It's not a simple kind of thing. It's really a connection between lots of different places. And all of those different places have their own stories. So, there's certainly a lot of attention right now from a real estate development along the Memorial Drive corridor, for example. I mean, it's just transformed, seemingly overnight. The west side – Howell Mill Junction, the Howell Junction area, is pretty remarkable. But the east side, 15 years ago, was nothing like it is today. And so, everywhere is changing. Even where you don't see tower cranes and stuff, you definitely see communities revitalizing and improving.

Ryan Millsap: How have you seen... You're on the inside of this conversation about that improvement. Do you feel like there are parts of the Beltline that are doing exactly what you imagined, relative to socio-economic integration; racial integration; etc.?

Ryan Gravel: Yeah, absolutely. I think the Beltline is working. The Beltline is not alive, right? We tend to kind of personify it, but it's just a set of projects. And so, if we build out all the pieces of it, then we will get all the outcomes. But if we don't build all the pieces, then we can't expect all the outcomes. Whether it's achieving its goals geographically, from different communities, depends on whether we build those pieces in those areas.

And the major part that I'm waiting for is the transit piece – because it's both a greenway trail and a transit line for the full 22-mile loop. Transit is the thing that makes it for everybody. Right now, I live down near Krog Street, and I have an office at Ponce City Market. I can walk it in 20 minutes; I can ride my bike in 4. It's pretty great. But if it's raining, it's useless. So, I still have to have a car. I still have to rely on it.

The transit is the thing that makes it work at night; in the cold; after dark. If you're carrying a heavy load; if it's raining. It goes farther distances. For South and West Atlanta, where I was living when the Beltline came to life, the communities there thought the trail was cute and all, but what they really wanted was the transit, because it connected them into MARTA, which would take them to downtown, and the airport, and jobs throughout the region. And so, the access to jobs, and the economic activity spurred by transit – the density, and all of the other good things that come with that – we can't expect those outcomes if we don't implement that infrastructure.

Ryan Millsap: What is that going to look like – the transport side?

Ryan Gravel: It's basically a light rail or streetcar-type tram. If you're familiar with the streetcar that goes through downtown Atlanta, imagine that going through a greenway instead of a downtown street. The technology has evolved where you don't have to have the overhead catenary wires. So it's really just a train. You can walk across the tracks. I know people are nervous about it, but it doesn't really change the experience of the Beltline that much – except that every ten minutes or so, a vehicle goes by.

Before the east side trail opened, we were kind of selling an idea, right? It was just air. And there were a lot of people, of course, who were on board; otherwise, we wouldn't be building it. But the minute the trail opened – anybody who didn't get it? They got it. They're like, “Oh, I get it now.” And then, over the next few years, you saw Ponce City Market blossom, and everything else. You saw what happened. And they're like, “Oh, I get it now.” The absolute same thing will happen with the transit. I have zero doubt about that.

Ryan Millsap: Well, that's the role that people like you play in society, right? Somebody has to imagine it – and not need it to be built to imagine it. And then see it built, and let everybody else then understand. Without that, there wouldn't be a role for a project manager.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. Like you were saying – I mean, you didn't quite say it, but the idea is the easy part. And implementing those ideas is really hard. I've played a role, in different ways, in the implementation over the last 20 years. But yeah – I don't need to be in charge of it.

Ryan Millsap: Well, I mean, implementing ideas is where the rubber meets the road, right? The idea is important, but the execution is really everything, at the end of the day.

Ryan Gravel: We do still have to make sure that you're holding the implementation accountable to the vision – because, again, you can't you can't expect the outcomes that we talked about at the beginning if we don't implement what we said we would. With, of course, some room for learning, and other reality.

Ryan Millsap: Now, you're working on some development projects in Atlanta. Do they interact with the Beltline or is that totally separate?

Ryan Gravel: I'm working on the redevelopment of the West End Mall. And it is connected to the Beltline by a spur. For the transit part of the Beltline to work, it really has to connect to the West End MARTA station, which is not immediately on its route. So it has to kind of jog off course for about a quarter mile. That's where the mall is. It's not just on the Beltline. It is at the MARTA station across from the Atlanta University Center, which is a collection of four historically black colleges and universities – Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta, Morehouse School of Medicine – and the historic West End community.

Ryan Millsap: Very cool. What's the status of that development? What are you guys working on?

Ryan Gravel: We've got a COVID status going on. You know what the reality is.

Ryan Millsap: It's in COVID quarantine?

Ryan Gravel: It's a challenging enough project, because it's an unproven market. And again, unsurprisingly, we're implementing a project that is hard because it's the right thing to do.

Ryan Millsap: Tell me a little bit about the projects. Paint me a picture, in words that people can listen to, and understand what you're doing.

Ryan Gravel: Well, it's an old, small urban mall that was built in 1971. It's basically four city blocks, but it's collected into a giant superblock. And the ultimate project is, that mall will be demolished. It will be four city blocks with a little public space; wide sidewalks; street-level retail. 6 to 16 stories; office, hotel, residential.

In lots of ways, it's a conventional, mixed-use, transit-oriented real estate development deal. But the added, kind of beautiful layer is that it's anchoring this historically black community at the origin point for Atlanta's legendary black middle class – and adjacent to the HBCUs. And so, it comes with this historic character and quality – and also ambition. It’s connected to Atlanta’s kind of cultural identity in ways that I think could be a real model for the city.

Ryan Millsap: How is the neighborhood responding? This is a classic example of a white developer who has a fantastic reputation in the city for doing very community-minded, socially integrated things. Tell me about how you've been received in going into that community and saying, “Hey, let's let's transform this.”

Ryan Gravel: Well, you think that I’m a white developer. But my business partner is African-American. He actually grew up in the community right down the street from the mall. He's coming out of the music industry, and family investment technology, and media. We're an unlikely pair coming into real estate development with big ideas. We will have partners to implement – and those partners, and all the team, will certainly reflect those ideas.

Ryan Millsap: So, you feel like you, in this case, are playing a little bit of an ‘ideas’ role. And you have a partner who's also ideas and implementation.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. One of the things I've learned – in addition to not wanting to project manage it – I stay in my lane. I'm big ideas; not just big ‘pie in the sky’ stuff, but well-thought-out, well-connected community. Talk with the community; understand everything, from health to stormwater management to education. And how those things interrelate to create the lives that we want. Right? Crafting that vision; that narrative.

When the Beltline came to life, I was living in a community adjacent to West End. So, I understand that historic legacy. I understand why it happened, because it was invested in. The city of Atlanta made investments that delivered that black middle class. So, we just have to write a new narrative about that – that's aspirational; ‘next chapter.’ Or that takes into consideration modern life, and all this opportunity. Crafting something out of that – and then, in this case, manifesting it in real estate development.

I'm working on another project – my consulting practice. You're familiar with that, where you're taking the same kinds of ideas – economic opportunity; environmental stewardship, stormwater management; public health – all of the stuff. But the outcome of that is a 3500-acre park made out of landfills and truck yards and degraded urban land surrounding the studios right here. But it's the same kind of thinking. So, from my perspective, it's the same work. What the outcome is manifest as – through real estate development, through consulting, through park planning, or master planning...

I have a nonprofit called Generator. It's about generating ideas about the future of cities. And so, the idea is, I'm a big believer in ideas. I've met a lot of other people with ideas. I think that we should be listening to them, but nobody's listening. So, Generator’s idea is to elevate those voices. Again, same stuff. Technology, entertainment, health, brownfield remediation. You know, all the stuff. I'm not an expert on anything – but I can connect the dots between them, and craft a story about not only what our aspirational future might be like, but how that translates into real, mostly place-based, either projects or policy.

Ryan Millsap: So, do you think of yourself more as, like, an urban philosopher, or an urban developer?

Ryan Gravel: I have no idea. I have a hard time putting words on that. I'm just kind of having fun. Like, I'm working on stuff that matters to me. Stuff that I'm good at; stuff that I can craft a story around. And the Beltline taught me a lot, right? It was just an idea. I never imagined we would build it. But what was special about it was watching people fall in love with this idea. They all caught on to this idea, and they made it better. And so, through a collab, or organic kind of collaboration, the idea got better. And the better it got, the more people got on board; the more constituencies you had as support; the better politics; and all of that.

So, if you can craft that kind of story that includes everybody, and they see themselves in it, and they want to be a part of it, then they actively work to make it happen. The problem is that that gets out of your hands, so you're not in control. Its success is up to other people that may or may not implement it or follow through. That's just the challenge with my work.

Ryan Millsap: Yeah. Well, you created – or, you and this nameless, faceless group that goes on and on and on in Atlanta – created the Beltline out of this idea that you dreamed up. Then there was $5 billion of capital investment that did whatever they wanted.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah.

Ryan Millsap: In many ways, they've done amazing things. And I'm sure there's other places you're like, “I can't believe they doing this.” Like, “That was not what we meant.” But, the point is, $5 billion of capital in the ground – and then it brings in all this other capital that represents all the businesses. And then it creates all this permanent income stream, of all the businesses and all the people who live along the Beltline. Then that vortex of money surrounding that... I don't know, is it 20ft across? I mean, how many feet of concrete across?

Ryan Gravel: 14 feet.

Ryan Millsap: 14 feet across of concrete that goes miles and miles and miles. That concrete is now a vortex of money.

Ryan Gravel: I mean, it's crazy, because at the end of the day, we're just talking about a slab of concrete. But what it does – and the reason why Ponce City Market and the new office building across the way from it, 725 Ponce – it's brand new. It attracted Blackrock and all these other things. The reason those buildings are getting the highest office rents of anywhere in the city, including Buckhead. It’s because that slab of concrete provides the way of life that people want, and those are the people that those companies want to hire. It's as simple as that.

And so, back down here with the South River Forest. For us, the idea is, if you take all this forgotten, degraded land, and you make it into something aspirational – something good for people's lives, which they want? They may not know that they want it, but once they see it, they will want it. It's the last chance for Metro Atlanta to have a park that large inside 285. This is it.

My urban exploration phase of the pandemic – to go back to that – was just trespassing on all this private land down here. It’s beautiful forest, in a way. But it would have to be assembled. So it's just an idea. But you go out there, and there's other people out there. They want it. So, if you can connect that to... obviously Blackhall is a big part of that vision. The economic story, and the cultural story, that Blackhall offers this part of the region is incredible. And also, it’s part of that story.

So, pull all of that together in a shared kind of vision, where you're being aspirational, you're being positive, you're growing – but also, you're including the communities around you, and bringing them up; lifting them with that change, so that they also get the benefit. I mean, that's the dream, right? I think that's what everybody kind of wants. They don't always get it, because there's so many... they just don't.

Ryan Millsap: Well, there's a lot of competing forces in the world

Ryan Gravel: Right.

Ryan Millsap: Now, you're working on something at Stone Mountain as well. Tell me about that. I don't know anything about that one.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. You know, over the summer, following... well, actually, it predates that. After Charlottesville... whenever that was, a couple years ago. If you aren’t familiar with Stone Mountain, it's a massive geological aberration. It's the largest piece of exposed granite in the world, and it has a history of human habitation to pre-history. I mean, it's an incredible natural geological kind of wonder. But it has a bunch of Confederates carved on the side of it. And it's been transformed into what they call a ‘Confederate memorial.’

Anyway, it's the largest Confederate memorial in the country. It's the largest bas relief sculpture in the world. So, it's not something you just yanked out overnight. So you see the Confederate statues coming down everywhere. And periodically, this question of what to do with it comes up.

Ryan Millsap: What's the history of it? Because that was carved into the rock.

Ryan Gravel: Well, that's the ugly part. That's the part where you really see why something has to be done with it. It started in 1915, when the modern Ku Klux Klan founded itself at the mountain by burning a cross on the top of the mountain. And the United Daughters of the Confederacy then took a lease on the north face of the mountain, which is a steep part, and commissioned the carving – of what, at the time, was a much more elaborate carving, that included flying KKK horsemen and all this stuff. It was wild.

But they ran out of money. They only finished Robert E Lee's head. And it sat on the side of the mountain for 30 years. So, imagine – we're way past the war. We're way past it, into a whole different time in the country's history. In the 1950s, the state legislature and the governor picked up the project again, and decided that now's a great time to make this into a Confederate memorial.

Now, imagine what's happening just a few miles away in downtown Atlanta. As Atlanta emerges as a cradle of the civil rights movement, the state decides to... following Brown v. Board of Education, following adding the Confederate battle emblem onto the state flag in the 50s, they decided to make this a Confederate memorial. And literally, in 1963, when Doctor King, in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on Washington Mall, said, “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia,” the state legislature approved the funding to finish the carving.

So they funded it. It was built following the Voting Rights Act and the assassination of Doctor King. The carving wasn't finished until 1972. And so, you can't look at that and think, “Oh, yeah, this is a memorial to the Confederacy.” It has nothing to do with the Confederacy. The symbols of the Confederacy have been weaponized by white supremacists. And when you read the statements of the governor at the time, it was very clearly carved as an intimidation and oppression tactic to black people of Georgia. There's no getting around that history. And, if that's true, then something needs to happen with it.

Anyway, back to Charlottesville. This had come up, and my friend and I were talking: “What would you do?” Because right now, everybody's like, “Just blast it off the side of the mountain,” or “Keep it exactly like it is.” There's no middle ground. So, he was like, “Well, they clean it all the time, and if you just stopped cleaning it, then it would start to grow with moss and lichen, and trees would start grow out of it.” And it's true. When you walk up the mountain, any crack in the mountain has a pine tree growing out of it. If they didn't clean it, all the nooks and crannies of the sculpture would start to grow.

And so, we're like, “Well, that's a great idea.” And we say you could do the same thing to this lawn, because right now, there's this giant memorial lawn that that puts it in this very triumphant position. You just let the lawn grow back into a forest. And so, the sculpture is still there. And the Civil War is part of our history. The Lost Cause propaganda campaign; all the terrible things that have happened ever since then – including the carving itself in the 1950s – all that's part of who we are. But it fades into the past. It's no longer our aspirational focus. Let's rethink the park as a place of natural beauty; the restorative power of nature, for healing and reconciliation, and all that. That's a beautiful, aspirational, positive outcome.

Anyway, I wrote an op-ed that ran in the Guardian back in June following the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and everybody else. It got picked up, and I got introduced to some people who were simultaneously organizing this sort of ragtag group of people who wanted to do something. We met over Zoom, and we kind of self-organized. Again, I play my role. I can do the placemaking, physical design piece of ‘what do you do with this thing?’ But obviously it takes a lot more than that.

It takes management. Like we said, it takes organizing. It takes reaching out to the companies that do work with the park, like Marriott. It takes the legal team to look at it – because the sculpture itself is protected. And they hide behind the law, but the law doesn't really protect the flags and the street names after the Confederate generals, and all that. All that could change right now. But they hide behind the law. The only thing the law actually protects is the carving itself, which is fine. We'll change public sentiment, and then that law will change overnight.

Anyway, it's been fun to be a part of. We met with the board that manages the mountain on the state’s behalf. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association works for the state; they’re an agency of the state, and we met with them. We're being really reasonable, because we're not saying “You have to blast it off.” All we're saying is, “We should do this stuff, because it's hurtful.” It's not only hurtful to people. People won't come to the park because of it. Events aren't held at the park because of it. So it's hurting the economics of the park.

We're being really reasonable. And they can't help but agree that it's a good idea. They won't say that. But then, we continued. The other day, we had a prayer vigil on Tuesday afternoon randomly, in the middle of day, for it. And we had a bunch of different faith leaders come out for it. Who knows? It feels like something is going to happen, because it's a good idea, and because the timing is right. The national narrative around this is just so powerful that, if you have a good idea, and the people who are trying to defend it can no longer defend because it's indefensible, then something is going to happen.

So, I feel pretty good that something substantive is going to happen. The group is called the Stone Mountain Action Coalition. You should check it out. StoneMountainAction.org.

Ryan Millsap: When you describe these things, it sounds like you are a moral philosopher. And I mean that in the more classical sense of just, you care about the soulful consequences of our collective actions. Do you see this as a spiritual enterprise? You were talking about people gathering for a prayer meeting.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. I definitely have some kind of spirituality. I'm not sure I would name it quite that. I mean, certainly, there's a moral piece to it. I'm not really sure, to be honest with you. Part of my soul searching, and all this, is to figure out how I fit in and why I ended up this way. It took me a while to realize that I see the world differently than other people.

And so now, I kind of feel a bit of an accountability to that – because I love the way that I see the world, and I love the projects that I'm able to work on. And so, I feel like, if other people don't see it, then I have a role in trying to help them to see it in case they're interested. I'm not trying to force my ideas on anybody, but if other people like them enough to see something better, then I'm definitely up for trying to make them real.

Ryan Millsap: I mean, if that's not spiritual, I'm not sure what is. What is it that is not spiritual about trying to cast a vision for a better life?

Ryan Gravel: Yeah.

Ryan Millsap: Now, the question is, why do you think that's important.

Ryan Gravel: A better life?

Ryan Millsap: Trying to lead others to a better life?

Ryan Gravel: I don't know. I don't feel like it's a leadership thing, exactly. I guess I'm not really sure how to say that. I have taken a kind of a different turn. I have a lot of... I've maybe put a bit of pressure on myself about living my best life. Life is short. I've lost several people in my life. And I just don't take it for granted. When I was seven... I'm a twin. And when we were seven, our older brother died of leukemia. He had his whole life that he didn't get to live. And his death changed our family dynamics substantively, in ways that I have not yet quite reconciled.

Later... we were very close to our extended family, and my cousin Hank, who was our same age, died in an accident in Ireland. And he was an incredibly talented musician. We used to talk about all the things that we were going to accomplish in our lives. He didn't get to do that. I'm not trying to live his life for him, but he was the kind of person who always was living his best life. And I just feel like I want to do that.

That was of course, before the Beltline, and all this. Now the Beltline is real, and it's opened doors for me. I love it, and I just want to keep going. And if people like what I have to say – or the kinds of ideas that I have in the world that I'm imagining and working on – then that's great. And not everything is. Everybody doesn't like everything I like. So, it's not all going so great. But, I mean, it's sufficient. And I'm happy about it. It's fun.

Ryan Millsap: How did your older brother's death affect you and your twin brother differently?

Ryan Gravel: We're twins, but we're fraternal. We're very different. And we just responded very differently. I don't want to speak for him. We're close. We're brothers. But we are different, in terms of our interests and skill sets. I don't know. It's hard to say.

Ryan Millsap: Are there other siblings, or was it just your older brother and then the twins?

Ryan Gravel: The three of us.

Ryan Millsap: And so, then, it was just the two of you. Where does he live?

Ryan Gravel: He lives... My father has a construction company. He works with my dad, and will take over that company. And so they’re out in Powder Springs.

Ryan Millsap: With the Rock. The Rock bought a big farm out in Powder Springs.

Ryan Gravel: Oh, I didn't know that. They're on the Silver Comet, so I don't know if he's on the Silver Comet or not. But anyway, his wife lives in South Carolina – from a previous marriage. And two little girls. So he has a bit of a commute.

Ryan Millsap: Well, let's say – just for the sake of my imagination – that this is a spiritual argument. And I say to you, “Cast me a spiritual vision of the transformation that happens over the next ten years in Atlanta.” What are some of the things you'd love to see?

Ryan Gravel: Well, actually, when you started that question, I didn't think I would have anything, but I do. I think, with all this going on right now in the world... and I guess what I mean is, it's certainly happening across the world. But I mean in this country – in terms of our kind of ‘late to the game’ reckoning with a lot of our history and realities – I think that... If we survive it – and I think that we will. Assuming we survive it, I think that we have, over the last eight months, or whatever, been going through something together that has really changed us. And, I think, for the better. I'm optimistic about that.

I don't quite know what that looks like yet, but I do think that a lot of people – including myself, as we started out; my search back into my own family history. I think a lot of people have seen some realities that they weren't seeing before – especially regarding racial justice. And I think that we will be better for it. I think it's been hard and painful for a lot of people, but I'm really optimistic that whatever it is that has allowed what's happening to happen is kind of a ‘last gasp’ to the people who would who would continue to fight for that very different and unjust vision for this country. So, I'm actually really optimistic that, as we pull ourselves out of it – and it's going to be a lot of work – we will make changes that will make life better.

Ryan Millsap: What are some of those changes?

Ryan Gravel: Like I said, I think largely around racial justice. I think that white people – one of our challenges is that we don't know how to talk about these issues. We know how privilege works. We know how the tools work. We know it instinctively. And you saw that story of the woman in Central Park with the dog, and the birdwatcher, and all that. She knew exactly what she was doing. She weaponized her telephone and her voice against that black man. She may not have done it consciously, but she knew exactly what she was doing. And so, we know how it works, but we don't know how to talk about it. We're uncomfortable talking about it, because it's unseemly. So, I think, we are learning. A lot of us are learning how to talk about that in ways that will translate into change.

The second thing is, I think that we know that good intentions are not good enough. There's a lot of people with good intentions, but the problem with these sorts of structural problems is that it's not about you and me, and what we think; it's about ‘can we do it?’ And so, if the structure is structured against people who are not white, then the best intentions of white people aren't good enough – because it doesn't allow change. You have to actually do the hard work to change the structures. Personally, I think there's a fair amount of attention to that. And if – again, assuming we survive – then you’ll start to see changes done sort of structurally to that.

The third part is about reparations, and the fact that that is even a topic that comes up without everybody just falling out of their chairs anymore... I mean, I'm not saying it's a super popular idea right now, but I do think that it is on the table in a way that it hasn't been before. And I think that that is a really productive step forward – because I think that, if we change all the structures to be more inclusive, but you still don't have the resources to work on your dream, or your vision, or send your kids to college, then you still don't get to enjoy the benefits of that change. I don't know what that really means, or how that would actually be implemented. But it's definitely something we should be talking about.

And the last thing is about that narrative, back to the beginning of our conversation. I think that we need... We've been resting on our... I don't know what the expression is. But it's like we've been following along this sort of story about who we are for so long. And we need a different story. We need something better that includes everybody.

Ryan Millsap: You mean as Americans?

Ryan Gravel: As Americans. And I think, especially, white Americans. I think it's hard for people to see... if you acknowledge our past, and the and the atrocities that are part of our history, then it’s hard. You don't want to be always blamed for things, and you don't want to always see that history, your ancestry, in such a negative light. You want to acknowledge that they were complex humans like everybody else, and that the world is complicated – and that we are also now complicit in all of these problems.

So, you want to contextualize that story in a way that is still aspirational – so that we are motivated to do the work, and move forward, and celebrate life again. Maybe one day we can be happy again. I think that's not super clear, I guess. But that narrative – that idea – I think, is something that I am really interested in and, and working on. And I think that's kind of what Stone Mountain is about. I mean, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not psychoanalyzing myself. I don't know, but I'm assuming that I'm interested in that project especially because I think it will help us move toward whatever that idea is; whatever that narrative is.

Ryan Millsap: Psychologically, certainly, I think it's healthier to allow things to grow over rather than try to destroy. You can't destroy the past.

Ryan Gravel: There's an elegance to it. I think blasting it off the side of the mountain would feel good for a minute, but that's more like revenge than it is about healing. And so, I personally like that idea a lot.

Ryan Millsap: Well, lichen and moss and pine trees is not necessarily revenge; it's just letting go.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. It's an artful kind of neglect. It's amazing – if you if you see the sculpture... Sculptures like that, they're called bas relief sculptures. The way they work is through shadow and contrast. It relies on that. You have to have shadow and contrast to be able to see it. And so, if you destroy that contrast with lichen and moss, and you destroy the shadow with messiness and flowers and trees and stuff, then it really disappears fast. It won't take long to disappear.

Actually, after the op-ed in the Guardian, I got an email from a guy. He's an ecologist. He says, “You want to make that vegetation grow? Spray it with cow manure.” And he's like, “It would be appropriate. And it would be instantly covered with vegetation.”

Ryan Millsap: Now, that might feel a little too symbolic in that other way. You don't want to incite problems.

Ryan Gravel: That’s true. I think it's important to not be naive about the resistance that there will be to any change. But the but the reality is that that resistance is there at the park already. The symbols of the Confederacy attract violence and hate. Just about a month ago, they shut down the park because there was going to be a big demonstration. The people just went into the city of Stone Mountain, and they wreaked havoc on downtown streets. That violence is here, and we have to address it; just from a pragmatic standpoint at the park, something needs to be done.

Ryan Millsap: Now you've gotten to work at the innermost regions of Atlanta, and the state of Georgia, and seen the inner workings. How do you think that Atlanta, as an incredibly integrated city, can serve as a model for a lot of growth in this country? And where do you see the places where even Atlanta – that's probably far more progressed in racial integration than any other city in America? – the places where Atlanta can continue to grow?

Ryan Gravel: Sure. Actually, when you asked a spiritual question earlier, I meant to kind of go in this direction. I worked on a project called the Atlanta City Design a few years ago with the planning commissioner for the city of Atlanta – so only the city, which is a 10th of the regional population. But we're looking at an aspirational vision for the future of the city.

And again, in order to know where you want to go, you’ve got to know who you are. Digging around in Atlanta's kind of well-known history, what's less kind of articulated a lot is that, what separated Atlanta from other cities in the South for national and international investment; what made it palatable for investment, was the civil rights movement. That's the thing that made it different. That's the thing that made it okay to invest in this region that had so many problems with racial injustice, and everything else.

So, if you see that the regional prosperity stands on the shoulders of the civil rights movement, then you see that we've accomplished a lot by doing the right thing. So I think that, if we doubled down on that history – if we follow through with those commitments to justice; to equity; to inclusion, and to diversity – then we have something. We will create another model for our future city – whatever we are becoming.

I think that Atlanta is uniquely suited to that, because the civil rights movement didn't happen here for no reason. There were reasons that it happened here. There's something in the DNA of this place that makes things possible. We also have an incredibly diverse population. In a place like Silicon Valley, I think the statistic is one in every 50 tech workers – people who work in technology – are African-American. I mean, they have other diversity. But if you're talking about African-American, 1 in 50 – that same number in Atlanta is 1 in 4.

So, if you're looking to diversify your workforce; if you're looking to address racial justice, and inclusion through your company; where they invest; where they locate – all of that kind of stuff? Atlanta is a great place to come, because we have a natural talent pool of people who can provide that resource – but also bring a perspective to the table that, frankly, is what a lot of the country and a lot of the world is looking for. I think there's a lot of opportunity in that.

Another way – kind of an answer to the question regarding the sort of bigger, statewide kind of issues – is that the same is true for the South generally. Right? Atlanta is often called the capital of the South, but that diversity – that sense of opportunity; that cultural contribution of our diverse population – is true for a lot of places in the South. And so, if you start to draw the lines between the urban city parts and the rural and agricultural parts of the region, then you tell a bigger, more inclusive story. You're breaking down the rural/urban divides. You're opening up new connections, and breaking the social and political polarization that we have. So, I think that there's a way that the South – through Atlanta – can lead that conversation forward, in a way that would be really great for the country as a whole.

Ryan Millsap: What are some of the ways you think Atlanta can improve in this regard?

Ryan Gravel: Well, I think that we have to follow through. I think we've rested on our laurels a lot since the civil rights movement. We’ve had black elected leadership for a long time now. We have a lot of black leadership in the corporate world; in the nonprofit world. And there's a lot of diversity at multiple levels. That has not necessarily translated into the policy changes that are needed to protect the people who are still at the bottom of the economic spectrum.

We have massive challenges for income inequality, for example – at the top of the list in the country. You look at an issue like gentrification – the combined issue of gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty – then you start to see how that kind of inequities translates to not just being an urban, ‘downtown’ kind of problem, but a but a regional and statewide issue that combines with our lack of investment in transportation and other things to create real, real challenges ahead of us. It's not too hard to paint a dystopian picture of the metropolitan region. I don't think that we’ll go that way, but it's certainly a possibility.

Ryan Millsap: So, you think that Atlanta itself could lead the way in trying to figure out how to care for the least, right? Care for the ones who have the least; the least among us, if you will.

Ryan Gravel: We could. But we have to do it. I mean, we have Doctor King's dream. We have it all spelled out. I say this all the time. I'm not an expert on housing. But we have them. There's a lot of them. We should listen to them, in most of these issues – whether you're talking about housing affordability, or transit implementation, or cost of living, or economic opportunity, or job creation, and all that stuff. Wealth building; all of that. It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that we're not doing it.

So, that's more of a political equation. And I don't mean, like, City Hall kind of politics. I mean, we all, the rest of us, sit out here in our homes, living our lives. We have to speak up, and we have to vote for things – and we have to support that kind of shared vision. That happens in the voting booth. That happens when we hire somebody for some service. We can be intentional about how we do that.

And so, back at the project in West End. If you're intentional about who you hire as your architects, or engineers, or the housekeeping companies that will work in the hotels, and what stores are opening in the retail spaces. What companies lease buildings? What companies manage the leasing of those office buildings? What companies? If you're thoughtful about that... what we're really talking about is just intentionality in all the decisions that we make about our lives. What are the downstream implications for not holding on to that stormwater, if it's flooding out downstream communities; if those communities are low-income communities of color? Or, if we just made a bunch of investments downstream, how do we make sure that we're protecting them? It's just about making sure.

And cities are complex, right? So it's just about making sure that we're thinking through all that complexity as we make decisions about our own path forward. Because, anybody who tells you that they know what the future looks like? They're wrong, because we don't know. In the same way that my grandparents didn't know what the urban sprawl, and all that, would be like today. We don't know where we're going, but we can make the best decisions we can along the way. We can make sure that we – the people who are most impacted by change – get to be part of the decision-making process; that they benefit it. All that kind of stuff.

Ryan Millsap: One of the areas where I struggle in trying to think through how cultural transformation and political change fit together is that... fundamentally, I want my politicians to be very, very lazy. And the reason is that I believe that part of the genius of America is just fundamental freedom. So, I want to elect politicians who, at the top of their list, is to protect my freedom.

Now, I want a society that then educates my choice in that freedom. Right? That teaches me how to be a good human being; that challenges me to make better decisions for my own soul, my own spirituality, my own goodness – and for the goodness of my neighbor, and all those in my society. So, when I hear you say our vote is important, I think, “Yeah, our vote is really important.” And then I get scared, because I don't want us to all depend on the government to figure out how to make us good people. I really want the government to give us the freedom to be as bad as we want, and as good as we want, and hopefully we all choose to be good. And that's what it means to be an American.

It's not that we have a government that's so good, and forces us into goodness – but that, instead, we have this beautiful whole ecosystem. The government's only job is to protect the freedom. And then, that's our job as human beings – as American human beings – to then choose what's right and good, and figure that out.

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. And I think the place of focus for me on that is, you said government's role is to protect that freedom. Because what that means is governance. Right? That's the rules and laws and things that frame; that create the space for us to live the lives that we want. And right now, still, after all these years, those rules and laws that frame are written in ways that benefit some people more than other people.

All we're talking about – when I say vote for people, I really just mean vote to fix. Make those fixes, so that that frame is truly equitable. So that lives up to America's promise that all men are created equal, and all that stuff. I don't think it's that hard to agree that that’s the goal. When you start pointing at things that happen – that end up in with inequities in an unequal society – then those are the things that we should be focusing on.

And we'll disagree about what those things are. It’s not to say that we have to get everything right, because ‘right’ is a question. There's a range of what is correct in that story.

Ryan Millsap: The range in our ability to actually discern what is correct. There might actually be a ‘correct.’

Ryan Gravel: Right. But it will also change over time. So, it's an evolving kind of thing. And I really just mean... I kind of agree with you. I think that, if we created a frame with that legal framework, or whatever you want to call it – policy framework – and if it did result in true kind of equality? Then imagine the beautiful, wonderful things that people could do. Or they could just disappear and be terrible people, too, I guess, if they wanted to.

Ryan Millsap: Which, within some limit, is fine, right?

Ryan Gravel: If you're not hurting anybody else, then do whatever you want.

Ryan Millsap: Yeah. Live in whatever level of hell you'd like. I mean, Dante doesn't define them all. But don’t drag the whole society there. Right? We have to have boundaries around that. But apart from that... I want to see more people do what you're doing at Stone Mountain, where you say, “I want to see this changed. What are the things I can proactively do to get it changed, that don't require me to elect all new officials? I just need to go make good arguments that are good for society.”

Ryan Gravel: Well, to that point actually, I think Stone Mountain is a great example – because historically, the path of least resistance for government regarding Stone Mountain is to leave it the way that it is. And this group is putting pressure on that, so that their ‘path of least resistance’ is going to be to do something – because it's not right, and it needs to change. But there has to be political pressure for it to change, and to be corrected. And I think that if it is corrected in a beautiful way, then they'll do it, and everything else will just sort of fall back into balance.

So I don't think it has to be... You’re right. We don't need another government agency to oversee this. The tools are already there. It's just about getting them to do what we now think is... I don't want to say ‘what we now think is our job.’ But it is our job to create a different outcome.

Ryan Millsap: We're out of time.

Ryan Gravel: It's been fun.

Ryan Millsap: It has been fun. You have a wonderfully creative and active mind. I appreciate you sharing it with us today.

Ryan Gravel: Great to be here.

Ryan Millsap: Thanks for the time, and I look forward to more conversation in the future.

Ryan Gravel: Excellent.

Ryan Millsap: I'm Ryan Millsap, and this is the Blackhall Studios Podcast.

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