Buckhead CID executive director to address BBA

Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID), will speak at the Buckhead Business Association’s Weekly Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, July 12, at the City Club of Buckhead.

“Jim Durrett comes to us with a wealth of expertise in transportation, land use and creative livable communities,” notes Catherine Cattles, 2012 president of the BBA.  “We look forward to hearing from him about his mission to make Buckhead a more walkable and liveable urban environment, including his plans for improvements to the transportation network and public realm that connect people and places within the Buckhead community, despite limited resources.”

Jim Durrett

Prior to joining the Buckhead CID, Durrett was founding executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition, a not-for-profit organization formed in 2005 to promote smart growth development in the Atlanta region.  Prior to that, Durrett served for five years with the Urban Land Institute (ULI), an organization dedicated to land use and real estate development issues, as the founding executive director of ULI's Atlanta District Council. 

Durrett formerly was with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce as the vice president of Environmental Affairs, and was the senior vice president and chief operating officer of The Georgia Conservancy. 

He began his professional career as a hydrogeologist in the DeKalb County office of Golder Associates, an international geotechnical and environmental engineering consulting firm.

Durrett is actively involved in the community and currently serves on the following boards:  MARTA board of directors (which he chaired in 2011); Livable Communities Coalition board of trustees; Project Interconnections advisory board; and VSA Arts of Georgia board of directors.  He is a member of Leadership Atlanta’s Class of 2013.

From 1998 to 2005, Durrett was a member of the Georgia Environmental Advisory Council, appointed by the Governor to advise the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and the governor on environmental policy matters.  He was a member of the inaugural class of the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership and a participant in the Regional Leadership Institute. 

Durrett chaired the advisory committee for Georgia For a Lifetime, an initiative of the Georgia Council on Aging.  He also has served on numerous collaborative committees and task forces working on growth management, affordable housing and environmental issues in the state of Georgia.

An Atlanta native, Durrett attended the Westminster Schools in Atlanta and earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in Geology from the University of Georgia.  He completed post-graduate work in hydrogeology at the University of Texas.  He lives in DeKalb County with his wife, Pat.  They have two sons, James and Ryan, both attending college.