Articles by Saba Long
For the past few years, many corporate and city leaders believed the Atlanta Development Authority (ADA), headquartered in a drab brick building, did not properly reflect the energy of the city.
What the research and development team is to a company, a development authority is to a city or state.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is pushing the city to sharpen its competitive edge, starting with the rebranding of the Atlanta Development Authority, now known as Invest Atlanta.
Our capital city is often the state’s poster child for innovation delivery, but we may have just been one-upped on an unlikely category — sustainability — specifically renewable energy..
Situated between Savannah and Atlanta, Dublin is not the first place to come to mind when considering a government entity interested in a public-private partnership to provide solar energy.
Teaming up with Greenavations, the city and county recently announced a new project to install over 4,000 solar panels at Dublin High School. The move is expected to save the school $100,000 in the first year alone.
Ten years is a lifetime when you are coming of age. For me, it has been a decade spanning adolescent angst to the nervous excitement of newfound freedom with life on a college campus to presently building a career and attempting to create a life of fulfillment.
Next week — March 19 to be exact — marks 10 years since the start of the Iraq War.
The day the United States was attacked and the Twin Towers came down, I watched my classmates cover their mouths in shock as we watched the news channel continuously loop the planes crashing, forever scarring the New York City skyline.
The growth and support of Atlanta’s technology community was on display this past week with nearly each day showcasing a segment of the City’s startup firepower.
Dubbing itself “the largest gathering of startups since the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895,” Startup Rally kicked off Monday, Feb. 18 as an expo and internship fair. It also was the official launch of Startup Georgia.
The event featured a network of speakers, sponsors and technologists including Steve Case of Startup America; Sig Mosley, a well-respected venture capitalist; Scott Henderson, executive director of Hypepotamus; and even Jermaine Dupri of So So Def Recordings.
“Fulton County is dysfunctional and overtaxed.” That sentiment has been the hook to a long song being sung by North Fulton Republicans for many years.
Three years ago, as a member of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, Lynn Riley sat in front of the county’s ethics board in response to a complaint by a few Democratic state representatives from the Fulton County Delegation. Her attorney during the case was State Representative Wendell Willard.
Now serving as the chairwoman of the Fulton County Delegation, Riley has cosponsored, with Willard and other North Fulton representatives, legislation that will enact sweeping, “burn the barn down” changes to the governmental structure of the state’s largest county and parallel legislation to allow for the re-creation of Milton County.
Technology is disrupting nearly every aspect of the transportation industry — whether its state-of-the-art robotics revamping the automobile assembly line to a computerized conductor system navigating the railroad tracks or a mobile application providing real-time train and bus locations.
Nearly 250 technologists, planning students, professional experts and other transportation enthusiasts gathered at Georgia Tech for TransportationCamp South, an “unconference” organized by New York City-based Open Plans — a transportation technology and planning startup. Previous launch cities include San Francisco, New York City, Montreal and Washington, DC.
Bash it all you want but the beauty of Twitter is moments like the one I had a week ago. I stumbled upon an online conversation about the ecosystem of Atlanta’s startup community and its relation to the city’s transit access – namely connecting the Atlanta BeltLine to MARTA.
The irony is hours before that tweet exchange took place, Scott Henderson, the executive director of Hypepotamus – an open gathering space for startup companies – gave me nearly the same line in an interview. “Density begets serendipity.”
For a few politicians and political advisors, the past few days have been filled with rapid fire text messages and battery-draining cell phone calls about the biggest news to impact metro Atlanta in quite a while — the 2014 election to replace retiring U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss.
The first — and only to date — polls released jointly by political consulting firms H.E.G. and Apache just hours after the announcement already has Georgia Republicans and Democrats strategizing on how to ensure their party secures the open seat.
Atlanta Tech Village is not an technology incubator; it is a community center for tech companies and tech startups, David Cummings says explicitly.
Cummings recently sold Pardot, a marketing automation company he cofounded, for $100 million, and he is on a mission to bring cohesion to Atlanta’s technology sector. He plans to do so by creating Buckhead’s first technology community center, Atlanta Tech Village (ATV).
Conjuring up the idea just two months ago, Cummings has already secured a building and tenants. Located at 3423 Piedmont Road, where the Atlanta Business Chronicle currently is located, ATV will be centrally positioned between the north Fulton tech companies, investors and Tech Square, Georgia Tech’s technology hub.
For two metro Atlanta natives, Jessyca Holland and Joe Winter, their employer’s downsizing forced them to the drawing board. Just hours after getting the boot, the two met for coffee and drafted a business plan for an arts services organization that we now know as c4 Atlanta.
The organization is one of nearly 2,000 cultural non-profits in metro Atlanta that generate more than $502 million in revenue, according to a recent Atlanta Regional Commission analysis. The Great Recession shook the foundation of many arts-related organizations with inevitable downsizing of programming and staff, and for some, shutting the doors.
Georgia’s governor has practiced a pragmatic ebb and flow on a number of public policy issues during his first term.
Since the summer of 2011, Gov. Nathan Deal and the state have been quietly tackling an issue Republicans have historically ceded the floor on –— criminal justice reform, particularly for juveniles. It’s a problem too expensive to ignore, and conservative groups across the country are now championing such reform in the name of smarter and smaller government spending.
Youth employment is at its lowest level since World War II with only half of young people ages 16 to 24 holding jobs in 2011, according to a recent policy report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Overall, 6.5 million people in that age group are both out of school and out of work, “statistics that suggest dire consequences for financial stability and employment prospects in that population,” according to the report.
The status quo pipeline from high school to college is a broken model for success, particularly for those not mentally prepared for the challenges of adulthood.
The universe has a way of throwing cold water on you without you realizing you need it. For Atlanta City Councilman Lamar Willis, it was being denied life insurance.
“I’ve always been aware of my size, but I never felt like the weight hindered me from doing things that I wanted to do,” Willis said in an email. “I just believed that tenacity, skill, and determination were the tools that would allow you to do and achieve whatever goals or tasks were ahead of you. When I was denied life insurance due to my weight I realized that the same values that I place on my children, education and career need to be directed to my personal health.”
The last line of the great Herman Miller’s poem — “The Martyr”— sums up how the American public should treat the political theatrics regarding the fiscal cliff being acted out by our Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington. “Beware the People weeping when they bare the iron hand.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and other partisan actors performed their one-act plays on the various Sunday political talk shows, declaring the opposite side as unwilling to compromise. Boehner called the Democrats plan to avoid the fiscal cliff as “unserious.”
In a phone interview, Mel Schwarz, director of tax legislative affairs for Grant Thornton, shed some light on the negotiations and what could lie ahead.
Among the flurry of press releases pronouncing the rebound of state’s economy, the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI) released a sobering report this month on the Great Recession’s impact on working and middle class Georgians.
The institute’s State of Working Georgia 2012 report addresses battered annual incomes, decreased wealth, depressed wages and historically high poverty. There’s another Georgia far removed from the cluster of Buckhead A-Class office buildings, the trendy Midtown restaurant scene and the gameday suites.
Ladies — who piques your interest — George Clooney, Ryan Lochte or Richard Branson?
Gents, how about Tyra Banks, Jessica Biel or Anna Kounikova?
You may recall the high school and college game “Bed, Wed or Dead.” Atlanta entrepreneur, Taryn Crouthers created a web version at this year’s Startup Weekend Atlanta. Her simple, addictive game won first place qualifying her to compete in Global Startup Battle – a competition featuring Startup Weekend winners across the world.
Tech enthusiasts came together the weekend of November 9 to create a web or mobile application within 54 hours. National successes include Zaarly – which has received $15.1 million in funding – and Foodspotting.
While the country is consumed with conversations about the demographic divides of the Republican Party and the shellacking the Mitt Romney campaign experienced, a number of transportation referenda have gone seemingly unnoticed.
Transportation investment measures on the Nov. 6 ballot included seven sales tax, five property taxes, one bond and one gas tax, according the Center for Transportation Excellence (CFTE).
Michigan alone had five referenda across the state, all funded via property tax increases ranging from .1 to .6 mills.
Just a month before the release of its KPMG audit, the MARTA board and chief executive officer submitted their annual report to state Rep. Mike Jacobs, chairman of MARTOC — the legislature’s MARTA Oversight Committee.
The 215-page report gives an overview of operating and capital consolidated financial statements, procurement contracts and salaries of all full-time employees.
The total operating revenues totaled $406 million with $130.5 million coming from passenger revenue and $196.3 million from the penny sales tax paid by Fulton and DeKalb counties. Operating expenses came out to $405.8 million with salaries and benefits accounting for over $340 million.
Midway through his lecture, Charles Fishman paused to rest a package on top of his head — 24 packaged bottles of Publix branded bottled water. This, he said, represents the amount of water we use to flush a toilet.
Fishman, author of “The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water”, was in Atlanta Oct. 26 presenting a talk “Smart Water Solutions for Atlanta” on behalf of two initiatives — Smart Water Grid coalition and Georgia Water Wise Council.
Fishman’s talk provided anecdotes on water use failures and successes — both domestically and abroad.
In Atlanta, conversations on public and street art have progressed by leaps and bounds over the past three years.
Private citizens and city officials have watched the success of public art in strengthening community and fostering dialogue across the globe in Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, New York and even Gambia.
Elevate, one of two annual contemporary public art series to have transformed the city, is back for a fall installation sure to aide in the revitalization of downtown Atlanta.
Kicking off with a mixed-media installation, titled “Banho de Luz”, using the marble monument at Peachtree and Baker, the series will continue south with the final days of Elevate to focus on South Broad with spectators invited to watch Hense, Push, Tilt and other renowned street artists creative paintings on five buildings.
