Author Archives: Maria Saporta

Just to keep everybody up to date, I did hear back from John Carter, president of the Georgia Tech Foundation about whether his organization will keep trying to get a permit to demolish the historic Crum & Forster building.

In a 3-0 vote last month, the City of Atlanta’s Board of Zoning Adjustment upheld a decision by the Bureau of Planning that denied Georgia Tech’s request to demolish the building at 771 Spring St.

“Yes, we plan to appeal,” Carter wrote me in an email last week (sorry to be so late posting this). ”Georgia Tech is still evaluating all its options for expansion of Technology Square, which includes

The urgency of now.

That could be the theme of the Get Georgia Moving Coalition, which held a press conference today in the rotunda of the state capitol.

The coalition, which represents about 100 different organizations advocating for new transportation funding, is hoping that a constructive compromise between the Senate and House bills will emerge this week.

One compromise that’s being floated would first give voters an opportunity to approve a statewide sales tax (vote would likely occur in 2010); and

Dr. Marie Csete, one of the leading stem cell researchers in the country, calls proposed legislation in Georgia to outlaw such research as “nonsense.”

When similar legislation came up a couple of years ago, Dr. Csete vehemently opposed those restrictions. As one of Emory University’s top researchers, she was trying to protect her institution’s position (as well as Georgia’s place) in the field of bioscience.

It should have come as no surprise that Dr. Csete would leave Georgia. She was offered, and took,

The top four Atlanta mayoral candidates had four distinct answers on what the single most important issue they would face as the city’s next mayor.

But the same four candidates seemed to agree with each other while answering most of the other questions posed at a mayoral forum Thursday evening.

The forum was hosted by the Urban Land Institute — Atlanta District Council, at the 999 Peachtree St. building in Midtown. It was ULI’s 4th annual Mayors Forum kicked off by Jeff DuFresne, the Atlanta District’s executive director.

So what will be the most important issue that the

It’s never easy to make everybody happy, a fact that the Center for Civil and Human Rights may face as its plans come out of the ground.

Just about everyone has an opinion on what should be the focus or purpose of the new center, and it might be hard for one place to encapsulate all the various desires.
That challenge was clear this morning when the architectural team for the center was announced at today’s annual meeting of Central Atlanta Progress.

For the record, the winning team was the Freelon Group, which is based in the Research Triangle in

Every year, Atlanta hosts a conference called “Greenprints” to provide the latest thoughts on planning, architecture, construction and the use of natural resources.

The conference, which is put on by Southface and the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, brings togther the latest technology on green buildings as well as the people who are working to make our communities more sustainable.

The attendance at this year’s two-day conference (March 25-26) is not as great as in the last few years, but Southface executive director, Dennis Creech, was appreciative of the 300 people who

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, during her annual address at the Rotary Club of Atlanta on Monday, let it be known that Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is in good hands under the city’s control.

She also said she hopes the city will finish the year in the black, despite the current economic climate.

Rotarian R.K. Sehgal asked the mayor how she felt about some Georgia legislators exploring ways for the state to takeover Hartsfield-Jackson.

My friends with the Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers asked if I could help clear up confusion on what constitutes the different might of passenger rail.

It’s probably wishful thinking, but I keep hoping Georgia will decide sooner rather than later to dedicate its transportation future to rail as other states, like North Carolina, have done.

But I agreed that it would be helpful if we could agree on a set of definitions for the different forms of rail transportation.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber keeps hoping for a transportation funding bill to come out of this year’s General Assembly.

At its board meeting today, chamber leaders heard from Tommie Williams (R-Lyons), president pro tem of the state Senate, who bascially said that governance must come before new funding.

That has been the position of Gov. Sonny Perdue since he unveiled his plan to change the governance structure of the state’s transportation

Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall had one message for board members of the Metro Atlanta Chamber. Her work, with the community’s help, is not done.

At today’s board meeting, which is closed to the press, Hall was congratulated for being named the nation’s top superintendent last month by the American Association of School administrators.

“It took a lot of community support to get to where we are today,” Hall said in a quick interview

Regions Bank has promoted Atlantan Bill Linginfelter as area president for Georgia and South Carolina.

Linginfelter, a longtime Atlanta banker, joined Birmingham-based Regions Bank last June as area president for North Georgia. Previously, Linginfelter had been Wachovia Bank’s president for Georgia until a bank reorganization cost him his job in the fall of 2007.

It’s official.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce will now just become the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

“The ‘of Commerce’ is gone,” said Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, after his board meeting today. “The board decided that there are a lot of things we do that are not done by traditional chambers of

It’s been a little more than three months since Karen Huebner, a casualty of the city of Atlanta’s cutbacks, “retired” as executive director of the Atlanta Urban Design Commission.

Huebner, 60, and I had lunch today to talk about her life since leaving the city and her plans for the future.

“I would be interested in part-time work,” said

You have to start somewhere.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin unvieled the city government’s municipal carbon footprint today at a press briefing.

She was one of nation’s mayors who pledged a couple of years ago to a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 7 percent by 2012.

A thorough study, done by Georgia Tech Professor

Given the economic climate, Atlanta’s United Way came remarkably close to making its 2008 campaign goal of $82 million.

United Way held its “Appreciation Event” Monday evening at the Loudermilk Center, where Campaign Chairman Ed Heys announced that the community had raised $80.54 million.

Heys also announced that metro Atlanta now has a new top corporate United Way donor — Publix.

Former Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. would have been proud to have Dr. Helene Gayle receive this year’s Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Progress and Service from Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College.

That’s what members of the Allen family said on March 12 after hearing Dr. Gayle, president and CEO of Atlanta-based CARE USA, speak at a lunch in her honor.

The historic Crum & Forster building lives on.

The city of Atlanta’s Board of Zoning Adjustment denied an appeal from the Georgia Tech Foundation, in its quest to get a demolition permit.

The Bureau of Planning had denied Georgia Tech’s request for a demolition permit last year, and that decision was appealed by the foundation.

The BZA board voted 3-0 today to uphold the planning bureau’s decision to deny a demolition