Maria Saporta, executive editor, is a longtime Atlanta business, civic and urban affairs journalist with a deep knowledge of our city, our region and state. From 2008 to 2020, she wrote weekly columns and news stories for the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Prior to that, she spent 27 years with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, becoming its business columnist in 1991. Maria received her Master’s degree in urban studies from Georgia State and her Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Maria was born in Atlanta to European parents and has two young adult children. She launched SaportaReport in February 2009.
Riding on the bus as part of Tom Houck’s Civil Rights Tours Atlanta is sobering.
Whether it is Auburn Avenue or Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the message is two-fold. These are sacred places. It was here in Atlanta where some of the most significant moments in U.S. history took place – the Civil Rights movement.
The outgoing CEO of CARE – Helene Gayle – will become the inaugural CEO of the McKinsey Social Initiative, a new nonprofit arm of the consulting giant.
Gayle, who had announced in October her intention to step down as CARE’s CEO at the end of June, sent an email to her colleagues Thursday morning informing them of her next career move.
“MSI is a new nonprofit organization founded by the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co.,” Gayle wrote.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on March 13, 2015
The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation recognized that the best way to trigger reinvestment in a community would be through creating job opportunities.
So when Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank declared that the revitalization of the Westside neighborhoods would be equally important as building a new stadium for professional football and soccer, it was a given that new job opportunities would be part of the solution.
Oh the irony.
The Midtown Neighbor’s Association and its Historic Midtown Committee are looking into designating one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods into a “Local Historic District.”
But as the neighborhood is pursuing the establishment of a Midtown Historic Overlay District, significant parts of its history are being torn down for new developments.
As dignitaries and Clayton County residents gathered Saturday morning for a ceremonial ribbon-cutting of MARTA beginning bus service on March 21, Angel Lemond was trying to find out when buses would start serving Clayton State University.
“It costs me between $35 and $40 a day for a taxi to get and forth to Clayton State,” said Lemond, who found out that service to the university will start in August – the same month she is set to graduate.
By Doug Sams and Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on March 13, 2015
Atlanta’s Major League Soccer team has launched a search for a site to house its new training facility — a project that could galvanize an urban community and become a magnet for the world’s most talented players.
The site could range from a minimum of 15 acres with four fields to as many as 40 acres with more than a dozen fields, said Darren Eales, the former English Premier League executive hired last year as MLS Atlanta president.
The forever-young Xernona Clayton showed her life on the big screen Saturday night to a “small” group of 600 of her closest friends at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. They came to honor a woman who was born in Oklahoma and made it to Atlanta in 1964 after stops in Chicago and Los Angeles – becoming a close friend and associate of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on March 6, 2015
The Atlanta-based CDC Foundation has received the largest grant in its history — $29.9 million — from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The grant aims to help eliminate malaria on the island of Hispaniola by 2020 — through a consortium of several partners working in the region. Hispaniola includes the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is the only remaining island in the Caribbean where malaria is endemic.
It can be done.
To all the naysayers who view dilapidated older buildings as lost causes, stop by the Atlanta Daily World building at 145 Auburn Ave.
The attractive red brick building today stands as a testament of what a sensitive developer who has a passion for the historical integrity a place in time can accomplish.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on March 6, 2015
It is highly unlikely someone from Atlanta will be the controlling owner of the Atlanta Hawks when the sale of the basketball team is completed.
According to multiple interviews and other published reports, all the leading members of interested bidders are from other cities. In fact, one report in the New York Daily News has said that Chinese conglomerate Fosun is bidding.
SELMA – Thousands of people over the weekend descended on this small Alabama town with a population of less than 20,000.
Never before had Selma attracted these kind of crowds for the annual commemoration of Bloody Sunday – the re-enactment of the Selma-to-Montgomery March of 1965.
SELMA – A beaming Meria Carstarphen – Atlanta’s still relatively new superintendent of schools – was right at home.
Carstarphen was receiving the inaugural Phoenix Award from the Sullivan and Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson Foundation Sunday morning – on the same weekend as all the 50th anniversary events of the Selma to Montgomery March that made such an impression on this nation and was a driving force behind the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on February 27, 2015
The Atlanta-based Points of Light — the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service — has named Tracy Hoover as its new CEO.
Neil Bush, who chairs the Points of Light board, announced that Hoover would be succeeding Michelle Nunn in that role. Hoover has served as president of the nonprofit for the past 18 months while Nunn was on a leave of absence to run as Georgia’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
Forever 21. Atlanta now will have a new statue honoring one of its true sports legends – forever.
Dominique Wilkins was immortalized Thursday when a statue of him getting ready to lift his right arm to make a slam dunk was unveiled before of a Who’s Who of basketball legends and Atlanta dignitaries.
A running theme of several speakers – including former teammate Kevin Willis – was what took Atlanta so long.
The memorial mass for Donald R. Keough Tuesday morning resembled one for a head of state.
Actually, it was a fitting comparison. Keough actually was a head of many states – liberally defined.
So many of his various countrymen showed up Tuesday that there were overflowing crowds at the Cathedral of Christ the King as people came to pay their respects.
Listening to John Hope Bryant, one word comes to mind – destiny.
The myriad of coincidences and serendipitous encounters in Bryant’s life have led to this moment – the 150th anniversary of Freedman’s Bank.
For many, Freedman’s Bank is a footnote in history. But for Bryant, Freedman’s Bank is the biggest unfinished business left over from the presidential administration of Abraham Lincoln, who he calls the greatest president in America’s history.
By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on February 27, 2015
A couple came into Manuel’s Tavern in early February wearing stickers showing they had just toured the Carter Presidential Library.
Former President Jimmy Carter had recommended they go to Manuel’s for lunch, they told Brian Maloof, the owner of the tavern.
Such stories never cease to amaze Maloof. A former leader of the United States is telling people to eat at the tavern that his late father, Manuel Maloof, made famous.
One of the most colorful and significant murals in Atlanta is no more.
An astute reader of SaportaReport, Joseph Hopkins, sent us an email wanting to make us aware that the Freedom Quilt Mural and the building that it had been painted on had both been demolished.
All Things Considered Host, Amy Kiley, in a conversation with Maria Saporta >>Original Story An Atlanta landmark is closing its doors for a short time in early 2016. Green Street Properties has agreed to buy the one-and-a-half acres on North Highland Avenue that Manuel’s Tavern sits on according to a report by the Atlanta Business […]
By Maria Saporta and Doug Sams
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on February 27, 2015
Manuel’s Tavern, Atlanta’s signature gathering spot for journalists, politicians and community activists, is being sold.
But don’t panic.
Manuel’s will remain — in a refurbished condition — and it will still be operated by the Maloof family.
