the time to start." In the article appearing that day, the Constitution, in its usual manner of accurate reporting, increased the cost of the study to $300,000. Spring of 1972 was also the time that new officers were elected to the Board of Directors of CAP. Portman rival Thomas Cousins, developer of the off-Peachtree Omni complex, was made 1st Vice President. A public hearing in late April was held to discuss the proposed plan, at which there was much discord over the proposal, with demagoguery reaching such heights that one speaker called it "an expensive and totally inappropriate tombstone to a city that committed suicide." The opponents were led by Kathryn Thompson, chair of the Virginia-Highlands Action Committee, and consisted of many environmentalists. It is worth noting that the plan would have converted over 15 square miles of Central Atlanta into pedestrian malls and parks if it had been fully implemented. Citizen complainants maintained that the Study would not solve the "traffic mess", that there should be more mass transit, that it "Paves Atlanta" when it should "Save Atlanta", that there was no citizen involvement in the plan, only reaction, that the money should be used for neighborhood parks, and that the urban design restrictions were too lax. Those endorsing the Central Area Study were a diverse sample of the planning community including Larry Gellerstadt who was President of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, a Vice President of MARTA, a representative of the state DOT, and a city Traffic Engineer, Clyde Robbins, a Vice President of Georgia Tech, and Steve Fuller, the chair of Underground Atlanta in its previous incarnation. Voting to delay the approval or disapproval of the plan for two weeks on the sixteenth of October, the council avoided making a potentially controversial decision. This move disagreed with project supporter and member of the study's policy committee, Alderman Wyche Fowler, so much that he said "I don't think political pussyfooting on the part of some aldermen is going to win the day." The aldermen he was referring to were Chuck Driebe and Buddy Fowlkes, who offered an amendment that would receive the study as a guide for development with "no designated priorities", and subject to modification after the release of the then upcoming Atlanta Regional Commission's Regional Transportation Plan. Alderman Wade Mitchell moved to change the words "receive the plan" to "approve the plan", at which point Driebe