Articles from the Atlanta Business Chronicle
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 31, 2012
Back in 1956, Anne Berg joined Atlanta’s legendary Rich’s Department Store, eventually becoming vice president of public and community relations.
As Rich’s has faded from the retail landscape, Berg has been the human link between the former retail giant and the Atlanta community.
By Douglas Sams and Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 31, 2012
Prominent Atlanta developer and civic leader Egbert Perry is leading a team that could acquire and redevelop the former General Motors Co. plant in Doraville — almost two years after a similar effort collapsed.
Perry is among several developers that have considered the project, including Houston-based Hines, St. Petersburg, Fla.-based The Sembler Co. and Orlando, Fla.-based New Broad Street Cos.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 24, 2012
As Margaret DeFrancisco, president and CEO of the Georgia Lottery, prepares for her upcoming retirement, she and her husband, Joseph, plan to stay in Atlanta.
“Honestly, I could not get my husband out of here with a crane,” DeFrancisco said in a telephone interview on Aug. 21.
By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 24, 2012
As the Atlanta Falcons and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority get closer to sealing a business deal for a new stadium, they also are getting closer to deciding where the new stadium will be located.
The GWCCA has commissioned consulting firm Populous to do a thorough analysis of the two possible sites — a northern site near the truck marshalling yard at Northside Drive and Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard and a second site south of the Georgia Dome along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Northside Drive.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 17, 2012
Atlanta’s 1996 Paralympic Games lives on through BlazeSports America — a national nonprofit organization that provides training and best practices to athletes with physical disabilities.
BlazeSports America is described as the “legacy organization” of the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta — the first Paralympics to be held on American soil in the same host city as the Olympic Games.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, August 10, 2012
Stephen Woods can tell you that life can get in the way of long-laid plans.
Woods, who began as the first paid employee of the nonprofit Open Hand in 1989, had no plans of retiring as the organization’s executive director.
After all, Open Hand had launched a major capital campaign to double its operations. And Woods was exploring ways to bolster the revenues of the nonprofit by creating a for-profit sister organization that fit in Open Hand’s overall mission of providing nutritional meals to the homebound.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, August 3, 2012
Change is under way at the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE), an organization that has been around since 1938.
The Council, which represents 20 institutions of higher learning in metro Atlanta, currently is without a top executive, and it likely will be several months before there will be someone named to that position.
By Maria Saporta and Dave Williams
Published in the ABC on Friday, August 3, 2012
Political and business leaders throughout metro Atlanta worked together as never before to put a transportation sales tax on the July 31 ballot.
From choosing the projects to be funded by the penny tax to waging the campaign to approve it, they acted regionally, despite diverse backgrounds and interests.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, August 3, 2012
The effort to pass the regional transportation referendum also was a test for the Atlanta business community: Would it have the power and influence to get the region to pass the1 percent sales tax?
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, July 27, 2012
Publix Super Markets continues to reign supreme when it comes to the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta.
United Way, which closed out its 2011 campaign of $80.4 million (led by Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson), reconfirmed that Publix Super Markets is in a league of its own.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, July 20, 2012
Agnes Scott College has received a $6 million gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation to bring new life to Campbell Hall, which has been vacant since 2003.
“We are very excited,” said Elizabeth Kiss, president of Agnes Scott College. “We have these beautiful historic buildings, and some of them have been in need of tender love and care. Campbell Hall was the biggest target of opportunity. We wanted to create spaces that are 21st Century living and learning spaces.”
By Dave Williams and Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, July 20, 2012
The Obama administration may put a rush job on a proposed transit hub in downtown Atlanta.
The Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal is being considered for a national list of infrastructure projects to be expedited through streamlined federal environmental review and permitting, Derrick Cameron, MMPT project manager for the Georgia Department of Transportation, said July 18.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, July 13, 2012
After eight years running the Susan G. Komen for the Cure of Greater Atlanta Affiliate, Kelly Dolan has joined the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as executive director of its Georgia chapter.
Dolan said the move is unrelated to the controversy that the national Komen organization went through earlier this year when it had adopted a policy to no longer support breast cancer services provided by Planned Parenthood.
By Maria Saporta and Dave Williams
Published in the ABC on Friday, July 13, 2012
Atlanta charter-school advocates are worried the recent closing of Tech High School due to budget cuts may not be the last in a city school system that operates 11 charter schools and is about to open a 12th.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, July 6, 2012
Board leaders of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation pledge that they will not “miss a beat” during the executive transition of the organization.
Barbara Mosacchio, who has been president and CEO of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation since 2008, is leaving Atlanta to become president and CEO of Chicago Youth Centers. The move will permit Mosacchio to return to her hometown.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 29, 2012
In mid-May, the annual corporate campaign for the Woodruff Arts Center was falling about $200,000 short of its $9 million goal. So leaders of the campaign went back to several key donors asking if they could stretch a little more so the campaign would have a successful close.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 29, 2012
Metro Atlanta can thank the multiple Forward Atlanta campaigns for helping turn a small Southern town into one of the nation’s top cities.
Forward Atlanta campaigns can be traced back to 1925, when the business community began raising money to promote Atlanta as an emerging city.
By Maria Saporta and Dave Williams
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 29, 2012
The once-thriving economy in metro Atlanta recently has been stuck in reverse — losing almost as many jobs as it created since 2000.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber now wants to change gears with its latest Forward Atlanta initiative by seeking to jump-start the regional economy with a multipronged plan that includes nurturing homegrown, cutting-edge companies and creating stronger partnerships between business and Georgia’s universities.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 22, 2012
The PATH Foundation has done it again.
Within days of going public about its latest fundraising campaign to build more multiuse paths throughout Atlanta, the PATH Foundation had raised enough money to meet its $11.45 million goal.
That was largely due to four major gifts — $5 million from the James M. Cox Foundation/Cox Enterprises Inc.; $3 million from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation; $1 million from the Kendeda Fund and $2 million from the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 22, 2012
NEW YORK — Delta has had a long happy marriage with Atlanta but that’s not stopping it from having an affair in New York City.
The airline currently is part of a $1.4 billion investment at the two major New York airports — $1.2 billion to build a new international terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport and $200 million to upgrade and expand its operations at two terminals at LaGuardia Airport.
