Georgia-Pacific comes home to Georgia

1f FTER spending almost 30 years rin the Northwest, GeorgiaPacific Corp. has come home to Georgia, recognizing that their major markets have shifted South.

"The reason we decided to move," explained Robert E. Flowerree, chairman of the board, "was so that management could get a better handle on what is going on. You can't find out what's going on from 3,000 miles away. This is where the action is. "

Over four years of planning went into the move which brought employees across the country from Portland, Or., with 250 vans of corporate baggage. The Augusta, Ga., office also moved with alrnost 150 employees.

Home for Georgia-Pacific now is a 52-story reddish-brown granite tower on Peachtree St. at Margaret Mitchell Square in Atlanta. On the site of the old Lowe's Grand Theater, it is the tallest office structure in the Southeast.

Costing more than $150 million, the headquarters took three years to build. Georgia-Pacific Center has 1.2 million sq. feet of office space with two restaurants, a 250 seat theater and an exhibition hall. A full-scale health club and outdoor jogging track built on the roof of a parking garage for over 800 cars is located behind the main tower, joined to it by a pedestrian bridge over Ivy St. Georgia-Pacific will occupy about 5590 of the structure.

Attracted by the growing plywood business in the Northwest, the company, which was founded in Augusta in 1927,left the south in 1953. At that time the annual sales were $66 million. Employees numbering 3, 500 handled 14 plants and 37 wholesale warehouses. Now G-P has 44,000 employees, 24O mills and plants and I 50 wholesale warehouses.

Much of this growth has been based onSouthern operations. When the company developed bonding agents for Southern pine plywood, they began a shift from the Northwest back to the South and now make seven times as much plywood and l0 times as much lumber from Southern

Sfory at a Glance

G-P Center called ultimate office environment in Atlanta relocation completed desplte recession company comos to "where the action is."

pine as from Douglas fir. The building products division, the world's largest manufacturer of plywood, also produces lumber, roofing materials and wall board at I l0 plants. Sales were $3.1 billion in 1981.

At present, Georgia-Pacific is feeling thepinch of therecession as much as other housing-activity oriented firms, but most economic forecasters feel that the combination of the company's history of aggressiveness and Chairman Flowerree's energetic "operations" approach will keep the company alive and well.