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.
On the 20th anniversary of the regional LINK trips to different North American cities, the 2016 delegation arrived ahead of schedule Wednesday – giving the group an opportunity to tour Sundance Square in downtown Forth Worth.
“Look how clean it is,” remarked Emory Morsberger, head of the Stone Mountain Community Improvement District. “I don’t even see any cigarette butts on the ground.”
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 29, 2016
Global Ministries, the philanthropic arm of the United Methodist Church, has received a $1.5 million grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation to move its headquarters from New York to Atlanta.
Thomas Kemper, general secretary of Global Ministries, said in a telephone conversation April 26 the organization has already started moving people to Atlanta. The move should be completed by October when a total of 168 staff members will be located in Atlanta. About 40 percent of them will be moving here from New York.
Global Ministries has worked out a partnership to co-locate with Grace United Methodist Church at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Charles Allen Drive. A building for the global nonprofit is being reconstructed for the headquarters.
Global health leaders convened in Atlanta to help raise an alarm of the dangers of the ongoing refugee crisis.
The issue has become especially acute because now doctors, health professionals and hospitals are becoming targets – as evidenced by the airstrike on a hospital in Aleppo – killing 14 people, including the most qualified pediatrician in Syria’s largest city.
An axis of peace. That’s probably the best way to define the relationship between two of Atlanta’s greatest leaders and their families – the late Martin Luther King Jr. and former President Jimmy Carter.
It is a special multi-layered relationship that keeps building upon a shared foundation of non-violence, human and civil rights. And both MLK Jr. and Carter were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was overcome with emotion during the public signing of the city’s 20-year lease agreement with Delta Air Lines – a lease that also includes a 10-year optional extension.
The mayor’s voice quivered as he fought back tears talking about one of his closest confidants and friends in Atlanta’s business community – Delta CEO Richard Anderson.
For the first year ever, the Coca-Cola Co. invited its shareowners to its own turf for its 2016 annual meeting – the World of Coca-Cola at Pemberton Place across from Centennial Olympic Park.
The new location had a strange impact on shareowners. Even the company’s harshest critics seemed subdued in the environment. It didn’t hurt that the company was opening up the attraction for a special first-ever Coca-Cola Shareowner Day so the owners of the company could get their fill of the house that soda built.
Clark Atlanta University – which just finished hosting the nation’s first Economic Inclusion and Competitiveness Summit on April 22-23 – is hoping to gain national notoriety for combining innovation with a more inclusive workforce.
The 2016 LINK trip to Dallas – scheduled from May 4 to May 7 – will mark the Atlanta region’s 20th anniversary of the annul visit to peer cities – providing metro leaders an opportunity to reflect on the value of the trips and consider their future.
About 110 metro Atlanta leaders are scheduled to be on the three-day to the Dallas-Fort Worth area – studying transportation, urban planning, downtown renaissance, the arts, education, millennials, suburban development and regional economic development.
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 22, 2016
Michael Privette, who has served as the executive director of the American Heart Association’s Atlanta division for the past five years, is being promoted to a national role – as AHA’s nation director of the Go Red for Women Campaign – beginning July 1.
Note to readers: On Thursday, we made the painful decision to part ways with Maynard Eaton, who has been writing a column for us since last October. It was not a decision we made lightly.
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 15, 2016
So close, and yet so far.
The Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School has received a $3 million gift from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation to help the innovative school renovate and move into a downtown office building.
But before it can make the move, Cristo Rey, which serves students from lower-income families, will need to raise up to another $3 million for the renovation and up to another $6 million to build a gym that would also be the assembly area for the school.
Georgia Tech invited business and civic leaders Wednesday afternoon to visit the site where the future High Performance Computing Center was given its code name – Coda.
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 15, 2016
When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., came to Atlanta April 8 to speak to members of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, he was on familiar turf.
There was a time when Dimon, who had been ousted by CitiGroup CEO Sandy Weill, considered moving to Atlanta to become CEO of The Home Depot Inc.
Part-time Atlantan Ron Terwilliger has become one of the leading voices for federal housing policy reform in the country.
Terwilliger, retired chairman and CEO of Trammel Crow Residential, is now spending much of his time working on philanthropic causes primarily focused on providing housing for the working poor.
By Maria Saporta The success of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition can be measured in the frequency the nonprofit has had to move its offices in the last eight years. And now the Coalition is on the move again. During the last week in April, the ABC will be moving from its current offices on Kirkwood […]
By Maria Saporta and Douglas Sams
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 15, 2016
The redevelopment of the 165-acre former Doraville General Motors plant, one of Georgia’s largest-ever real estate projects, is in danger of running into a ditch.
That dire assessment comes from the project’s developer, Atlanta-based The Integral Group LLC, which wants to turn the site along Atlanta’s northeast Perimeter into 10 million square feet of office towers, stores, apartments and restaurants on MARTA’s Gold Line. The concerns are also echoed by Doraville city officials and metro and county economic development leaders.
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 8, 2016
Two Atlanta leaders will be recognized for their generosity on Nov. 1 at the Georgia Aquarium during one of Atlanta’s most prestigious annual events, National Philanthropy Day.
Chris M. Carlos, a patron of the arts, will receive the Philanthropist of the Year award; and Lucy Carpenter Vance, a longtime Families First board member and campaign chair, will be awarded as the Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year.
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 8, 2016
On Dec. 18 of last year, Dietmar Exler was planning to leave that afternoon with his family to fly to his home country of Austria for the holidays.
But at 4:30 a.m. that Friday morning, the phone rang. It was Ola Källenius, the global head of marketing and sales for Mercedes-Benz.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Atlanta Tuesday, got personal –talking about how becoming a family man had changed him.
In a moment of candor, the mayor admitted that at home he does not call the shots. For example, he said he wanted his daughter, Maria, to become a student in Atlanta’s public schools. But his wife was a student at the Pace Academy and went to the Suzuki school, a Montessori pre-school. So his daughter is going to the Suzuki School.
It’s a given. The City of Atlanta will go to voters in November to propose an additional half-penny in taxes over the next 40 years for MARTA. That tax alone initially is expected to generate more than $50 million a year.
But the City of Atlanta also has the option to ask voters whether they want to approve another half penny for five years for general transportation projects.
