Author Archives: Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

As currently envisioned, Georgia Tech would redevelop the Crum & Forster block and keep more than the historic building’s facade but would want to tear down part of the building.

Lisa Grovenstein, Georgia Tech’s director of media relations, sent SaportaReport a couple of emails on Tuesday to elaborate further on the university’s conceptual plans for the block bordered by Spring Street, Fourth Street and West Peachtree Street and Amstead Place.

“In regard to your column on Crum & Forster, after checking with a number of people, I wanted to provide additional insight on future plans for that block of Technology Square,” Grovenstein wrote.

By Maria Saporta

The Walton Family Foundation announced today that it is investing $25.5 million in the KIPP Foundation over the next five years with the goal of doubling the number of students who attend the public charter schools across the country.

The grant will help families of 59,000 students attend KIPP’s schools by 2015. It also will assist the KIPP network’s goal to increase its college completion rates.

Since the KIPP Foundation’s inception, KIPP has grown to a national network of 109 public charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia. During the

By Maria Saporta

Sixty years. That’s how long the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta has been a conduit between philanthropists and local charities and initiatives.

The foundation celebrated “the Community that Philanthropy Built” at its annual meeting Monday at the Temple — complete with a hilarious improvisation act with two leading Atlanta actors and playwrights — Tom Key and Rob Cleveland.

It also was an opportunity for the community foundation to look back to its inception.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta and the Coca-Cola Co. can be described as having a “great love story,” according to Muhtar Kent, the chairman and CEO of 125-year beverage company.

Kent was the keynote speaker at the World Affairs Council of Atlanta Friday at the Commerce Club where he shared both super-global and super-local thoughts on the current state of affairs.

But Kent devoted much of his talk to reiterating the company’s devotion and appreciation of its hometown.

Back in 1886, the first Coke was served at Jacob’s Pharmacy at Five Points just a few blocks south of the current location of the Commerce Club at 191 Peachtree St. Back in May, Coca-Cola lit up its

By Maria Saporta

An Atlanta nonprofit will be entering into a major partnership with Hilton Worldwide in an announcement that is to be made on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

The Atlanta-based Global Soap Project, a nonprofit organization that recovers and recycles soap from hotels that otherwise would send the product to landfills.

Hilton Worldwide expects that in its first of the partnership with the Global Sap Project that it will result in the donation of more than one million new 4-ounce bars of soap to people in need around the world.

By Maria Saporta

Change certainly is underway at the Atlanta Regional Commission.

Not only does it have a new executive director — Doug Hooker, who officially will start Nov. 14. But soon there will be another key vacancy within the organization’s most high profile areas.

Kellie Brownlow, chief of ARC’s local government services division, will be leaving the metro organization on Nov. 18 to become director of economic development for the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, reporting to Nick Masino.

By Maria Saporta

One of the benefits of the annual, two-weeks-long France-Atlanta program is that it has revived the sister city relationship between Atlanta and Toulouse.

Toulouse Mayor Pierre Cohen, led a delegation of Toulouse dignitaries to participate in a number of France-Atlanta events that are underway. It was the first visit that Cohen, who has been mayor of Toulouse for more than three years, has made to Atlanta.

Although he had intended to come to the inaugural France-Atlanta event last year, Cohen said there was a conflict with the opening of a new tramline in Toulouse and transit workers who had gone on

By Maria Saporta

In grand style — with the largest green and white sign to ever adorn an Atlanta city street, Harris Street was renamed John Portman Boulevard at ceremony at the corner of Spring and Harris streets Wednesday morning.

A heated transparent tent was installed at the corner where attendees could see many of the buildings that John Portman Jr. had designed and developed along and besides the Peachtree ridge downtown.

In fact, the tent was only a few yards away from where Portman got his start — creating a market center in a former parking garage.

The event was kicked of by Albert Maslia, one of the champions who worked tirelessly to get Harris Street renamed in honor of Portman.

By Maria Saporta

Monday was an important day in the life for Atlanta — from multimodal to a transportation sales tax campaign to a new executive director of the Atlanta Regional Commission.

It started at 10 a.m. when U.S Rep. John Lewis, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Georgia Department of Transportation board member Dana Lemon celebrated the signing of an agreement for the initial development plans for the Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal (MMPT) in the railroad gulch in downtown Atlanta.

The two-year, $12.2 million agreement is between GDOT and the three-member development team that includes Cleveland, Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises, Atlanta-based Cousins Properties and Atlanta-based Integral Group.

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Women’s Foundation’s annual “Numbers Too Big to Ignore” luncheon on Thursday was exactly that.

The keynote speaker was Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., who spoke about women being the economic drivers of the 21st Century.

And then in a most dramatic fashion, at the end of his talk, Kent announced that the Coca-Cola was giving $500,000 to the Atlanta Women’s Foundation — half as a grant to help empower women and girls and the other half as a challenge grant — a challenge that the hundreds of women attending the lunch at the Georgia World Congress Center seemed more than willing to meet.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta’s civic leaders are standing by, ready to help provide services to the homeless men currently living in the Peachtree-Pine shelter in downtown Atlanta.

The United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta Thursday announced that it has established Operation RESPECT, a community plan to provide services and resources to the homeless men who have been staying in the shelter.

Operation RESPECT stands for: Respond. Educate. Serve. Protect. Effective. Care. Transition.

The Peachtree-Pine shelter has been

By Maria Saporta

The second annual France-Atlanta symposium opened Wednesday — forging partnerships in business, technology, education and culture between the French and Georgians.

France’s ambassador to the United States, Francois Delattre, said such a comprehensive partnership does not exist anywhere else in the country. In fact, Delattre said the France-Atlanta event could become a model and an inspiration for other U.S. regions and France.

France-Atlanta was the brainchild of Pascal LeDeunff, the French consul general in Atlanta.