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.
Don Nicholaisen, former chief accountant of the Securities & Exchange Commission, started off his talk at Atlanta Rotary today by addressing students in the audience.
He told them they should feel excited about the future because they can help model the new economy.
And then he spoke to the other people in the room.
“Those of you who have been around a while should be scared to death,” he said. “We are seeing something we’ve never seen
Aaaaaaagggghhh!!!!!!???!!!
Gov. Sonny Pedue’s proposal to restructure Georgia transportation bureaucracy is analagous to a surgeon performing a hip replacement when a patient needs a heart transplant.
The measure doesn’t address our long-standing, most pressing problem — congestion in the Atlanta region. In fact, it could make the situation worse.
Atlanta lost two of its great ones this past week — Margaret Munroe Thrower and Don Elliot Heald.
I was lucky to have known both of them in different contexts, but mainly I admired both from afar.
Margaret Munroe Thrower was a warm, striking woman who celebrated her 70th wedding anniversary with Randolph Thrower, a legend in his own right.
Woodruff Arts campaign slips, but is upright The tough economy took its toll in the Woodruff Arts Center’s annual corporate campaign. But the damage was less thanit could have been. After…… Atlanta Business Chronicle by Maria Saporta on June 26, 2009 Agreement will send 1,000 more kids to camp For many children with disabilities and […]
The executive committee of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce heard an outsider’s view Thursday morning of how our region is faring from an economic development perspective.
Bob Hess, managing principal of NKF Consulting which helps companies in assessing their location needs, told the executives that the economic development world has become “fiercely competitive” as there are fewer and fewer projects on the horizon.
And those competitors are not just other U.S. cities but cities from across the globe.
Again, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport clearly is metro Atlanta’s key magnet in attracting and retaining companies to the area. The region also has a young, educated workforce, cultural amenities, corporate headquarters, strong colleges and a competitive cost of living.
But our weaknesses are becoming greater.
Irony of ironies.
For nine days, new urbanist Andres Duany and his team have been in Atlanta working on ways to design pedestrian-friendly communities that welcome all generations.
And on Tuesday, the day of his last presentation, one of the out-of-town participants was hit by a car at a crosswalk at Courtland and Ellis while walking from her hotel to the Atlanta Regional Commission.
The woman was in Atlanta with the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the key sponsors of Lifelong Communities planning endeavor.
It just so happened that Sally Flocks, executive director of PEDs — an advocacy organization for pedestrians, was participating in the
People are loving the Terracotta warriors.
Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum of Art, speaking at Tuesday’s meeting of Atlanta Kiwanis Club, told the audience that “The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army,” might end up being the High’s biggest show ever.
So far, the show has sold more than 250,000 tickets, and there are still two months left to the exhibit.
Shapiro, who has been with the High Museum since 1995, said the museum started keeping good visitation records during the Olympics. The Impressionists exhibit after the Olympics attracted 250,000 attendees.
The first year of the Louvre-Atlanta partnership (a show that lasted nearly a year rather than several months of a more traditional exhibit), about 300,000 people visited the High.
Solutions, including new transportation funding, must be found to relieve this region of congestion, says Jim Maran, president of the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce.
Maran, and several of his Gwinnett colleages, met with the staff of the Atlanta Business Chronicle this morning to talk about economic development and the county’s views toward the region.
The conversation kept returning to transportation. And Maran voiced a concern that many in the metro have about Gov. Sonny Perdue’s possible restructuring of the state’s main transportation agencies.
A draft of the plan was leaked to the press last week that stated that a new transportation authority would have a seven-member board — three appointed by Perdue, two appointed by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and two appointed by House Speaker Glenn Richardson.
New urbanist Andres Duany is not much a fan of public participation in planning.
In speaking to metro Atlantans in two forums this past week, Duany made several references to how community involvement in the planning and design process can be a bother.
When unveiling plans for a site near Toco Hills, Duany described an existing apartment community with large trees that all would be razed to make way for his vision. Duany’s design included putting in a new grid street system with new residential development of 60 units per acre for a total 1,500 units.
In the question-and-answer period, local planner Don Broussard told Duany that he had been a member of the Congress of New Urbanism for about 10 years.
It just isn’t true.
The Georgia Department of Transportation is saying that if Amtrak and other passenger trains can’t use the BeltLine corridor that borders Piedmont Park, then commuter and high speed rail (including Amtrak) will not be able to serve the central city.
This position not only is without merit, but it also seems as though GDOT is trying to punish the city of Atlanta for challenging the future use of the BeltLine.
For starters, remember Atlanta’s very existence comes from the convergence of three railroad lines intersecting near the Five Points MARTA station. That’s why regional and city leaders stragically have planned to build a multimodal train station in the heart of downtown.
In presenting preliminary plans on five different communities in metro Atlanta on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 14, Andres Duany shared ideas on how to retrofit suburban shopping malls.
Duany, considered the father of new urbanism, said malls are between 120 and 180 acres. They are strategically located on arterial roads. And they have (now often vacant) big box stores that can be converted for new uses.
“All the parking lots are just building sites,” said Duany,
Nearly everything that’s wrong with our American society can be blamed on sprawl.
At least that’s what Andres Duany, the father of “new urbanism,” believes.
Duany is in Atlanta working on a nine-day planning exercise called: “Lifelong Communities.” He was brought here by the Atlanta Regional Commission, and several other partners, to help design welcome communities for our aging population.
Could transportation funding reach a stalemate yet again this year?
The politics between all the diverse constituencies at the state could torpedo progress for another year.
The state House is favoring a statewide sales tax. The state Senate is favoring a regional solution, giving metro counties the option to vote in a one-cent tax.
The big question is the role the governor will play. Will he side with the House or Senate, or will he promote his own agenda?
Welcome to SaportaReport, a site I hope will be a thought-provoking venue in making metro Atlanta and Georgia a great place to live, work, play and study.
For readers who are familiar with my writings at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this column will be similar in scope to the one I wrote for the Horizon section for about a decade.
This will be my outlet to share perspectives of our region and our state, and to weigh in on how we can do better. My topics will range from transportation, the environment, the arts, philanthropy, urban design to leadership.
