Category: David Pendered

Everyone in metro Atlanta who has eyes on the new iPhone 5 has grand expectations that it will improve their lives, or at least be a lot of fun.

The only problem is that, eventually, there won’t be enough capacity to transmit all that data through the air waves. Everyone already knows what happens when the mobile spectrum is overloaded – slow Internet service and bumped calls.

The issue is critical to a surprisingly diverse group of people. These groups include those who use mobile devices, and those who write the apps – applications – that make money for inventors or are given away to serve a some purpose.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens is slated to address business leaders in Atlanta next week on the future of health care and how it affects the business community.

Olens has been on a hot streak of late, having addressed the Republican National Convention on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the health care law. Olens’ fiery remarks were deemed “mostly true” by ajc.com, which conducted a fact-check shortly after Olens’ presentation with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Olens, who is the state’s highest elected official to back Mitt Romney’s bid for president, will share a podium Sept. 25 with other national figures in a panel titled: “The Future of Health Care and Impact on Your Business.” The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is hosting the forum.

In some Atlanta neighborhoods, a $50,000 grant to fix some basketball courts isn’t that big a deal.

This isn’t one of those neighborhoods.

The corridor along a road called Boulevard, which passes Atlanta Medical Center just east of Downtown, is a rare place in Atlanta. It is a community of severe poverty surrounded by neighborhoods of comfortable homes. Boulevard is a place where the grant from the Atlanta Hawks Foundation that’s to be announced Wednesday is expected to make a big difference in the lives of its young men and women.

The Atlanta City Council voted Monday to defer its decision on a proposed Walmart in Buckhead that is to anchor a big retail/residential development.

The council sent the matter back to committee to continue negotiations with the developer. The vote is a defeat for the city’s planning department, which recommended approval, and a victory for Buckhead residents who oppose the project as it’s currently designed.

The council’s vote means the end isn’t in sight for a debate that, at some level, pits the city’s master development plan against job creation – in this case, 600 permanent jobs and 300 temporary construction jobs, according to the developer.

The Atlanta City Council is slated to vote Monday on a double-edged development proposal that would be a no-brainer in just about any other neighborhood in the city.

On one hand, many Buckhead residents wish that just about anything but a Walmart were in the works for a site along Piedmont Road. On the other hand, Atlanta desperately needs the expected taxes from the improved property and retail sales, not to mention 300 temporary construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs when the retail center opens.

Atlanta Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd summed up her impasse this way: “I’m caught on both sides of this. We can sit here and say, ‘Boo for Walmart!’, [but] 600 permanent jobs. Six hundred permanent jobs. And on a MARTA train where people can ride MARTA and get to the jobs. … This whole Walmart thing is a dilemma across the country.”

This story has been updated with additional information about ARC’s staff lobbyists.

Whither now, Atlanta Regional Commission?

That is the conversation that began Thursday, when ARC’s board met to start figuring out what’s next for the 10-county coordinating agency, whose heritage dates to 1947.

Two things appear to be certain: There’s not a consensus for jumping back into the fray over transportation; and there is a consensus for doing something to preserve ARC’s relevance by improving relations with Gov. Nathan Deal and the state Legislature.

In addition, no objections were raised during a general discussion of ARC increasing its role in areas cited by ARC Chairman Tad Leithead: Aging, arts, education, criminal justice, economic development.

A new era of “streamlined” development regulation has taken effect in metro Atlanta and throughout Georgia, meaning that big proposed projects are able to move more quickly through government review and into construction.

The new rules roll out as official proposals for three big, residential/commercial projects have been submitted since July. Each of them – two in Buckhead and one in Sandy Springs (inside I-285) – is politically sensitive because each is a high impact project that has the potential to create jobs and tax revenues.

STEM students from Brazil will study at Georgia State University, following GSU’s selection by Brazil to participate in the country’s new effort to strengthen its domestic economy by better educating its young people.

Brazil sent 591 college students abroad in January in the first wave of its attempt to reduce the country’s skills shortage in the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering and math. Brazil’s government plans to eliminate financial barriers to higher education by paying all costs to send about 100,000 students abroad for a year, 20,000 of them to the U.S. The students are to return home to finish studies and start careers in Brazil.

GSU expects to benefit from the international exposure its involvement will bring, according to its announcement last week. Brazil expects to benefit from a workforce that can better compete internationally.

The fate of a proposed 18-acre retail/residential project in Buckhead near the Lindbergh MARTA station, possibly including a Walmart, is now completely in the hands of the city of Atlanta.

The project has been moving in fits and starts through the various review processes for about a year. The Atlanta Regional Commission handed the project to Mayor Kasim Reed in an Aug. 28 letter that said the ARC doesn’t have purview: The project isn’t big enough to qualify as a “development of regional impact.”

The development is proposed by a duo that has retooled the face of several urban neighborhoods – Sembler Co. and Jeff Fuqua. The total square footage being proposed, 400,000 square feet, is roughly a third the size of Lenox Square.

Sen. Vincent Fort and human rights advocate Joe Beasley took the MARTA board to task Monday, urging it to maintain its independence from Gov. Nathan Deal and the Legislature regarding MARTA’s fiscal management and selection of a new CEO/GM.

As Fort was calling for MARTA’s critics to be as watchful of the state Transportation Department as they are of the transit system, MARTA board Chairman Frederick Daniels asked him to stop his remarks, in observance of the regular two-minute time limit for public comments. Fort refused to step down, contending that MARTA’s board always has provided elected officials whatever time they need to comment, because they represent constituents.

Beasley previously had urged the board to follow its own conscience in selecting a CEO/GM to succeed Beverly Scott, who is leaving at yearend. Beasley urged the board to ignore comments from state lawmakers, who have been quoted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution opining about who should be named to the region’s top transit job.

Beverly Scott will leave MARTA in a posture of preparing for a day when the transit system again will be laying rails and expanding bus service.

MARTA on Monday will convene the first of three public meetings to gather public response to the I-20 East Transit Initiative. Almost before the responses can be analyzed, Scott will have departed as MARTA’s CEO/GM – a move she has announced will occur at yearend.

Such planning seems hopeful, especially in light of the region’s sound rejection of the proposed sales and the roiling debate over the role of federal funding for transit and transportation. Scott maintains that MARTA wasn’t planning its future around the sales tax plan.

Top officials from the city of Atlanta traveled to Griffin Thursday and came back with a better sense of how to move forward with a proposal to increase tax rates on blighted properties in hopes of eradicating such public nuisances.

“We’ll continue brainstorming and looking at what we can do,” Atlanta Councilmember Joyce Sheperd said late Thursday. “It’s more complicated than we’d thought.”

Cities across Georgia are looking for ways to get a handle on blighted properties, and Griffin’s ordinances are models to follow, according to the Georgia Municipal Association.

The notion that Gwinnett County is home to a population that’s predominately white and affluent is as out-of-date as the idea that two painted water towers along I-85 in Norcross still proclaim: “Success Lives Here.”

The 40-year-old towers were torn down two years ago. In the decade before their demolition, 40,000 whites had moved out of Gwinnett. Now, the county’s population is predominately non-white, and less wealthy and less educated than it was in 2000.

The demographic shift in Gwinnett speaks to the broader question of “Who are We?” That was the topic Wednesday, at the quarterly meeting of the Atlanta Regional Housing Forum.

Georgia’s coast has reported good news about marine growth at the port of Savannah and turtle nesting on Jekyll Island.

On Jekyll Island, 197 turtle nests have been discovered this nesting season. That’s the second-highest number of nests tracked since 2003, when 204 nests were found, according to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. Almost 8,200 hatchlings have crawled into the sea.

In Savannah, a new type of concrete that was tested by Israeli scientists has provided a home for both plants and tiny animals. On regular concrete, barnacles are just about the only life form that grow, according to port officials.

Three central messages about the foreclosure crisis in metro Atlanta emerged from a recent gathering of policy makers and community advocates.

First, jobs are needed to enable homeowners to have the resources to stabilize their mortgages. Second, government services shouldn’t be taken for granted for the foreseeable future, because cities and counties have to cut budgets to offset the loss of property taxes collected on falling property values.

The third message was unspoken, but evident among those who attended the third annual meeting of Piece by Piece: A Regional Foreclosure Initiative. The message is this: The community still has the energy to combat an intractable problem.

Just as Labor Day marks the end of summer, it is the historic start of the region’s season of political stump speeches, fall festivals, high school football and other outdoor events.

One of the region’s emerging places to escape reality and indulge in flights of whimsy is Art on the Atlanta BeltLine, which bills itself as Atlanta’s largest temporary public art exhibit. This year’s event begins Saturday, Sept. 8, and concludes Nov. 4.

This year’s Art on the Atlanta BeltLine program will provide a timeline by which some major issues will be determined – including the expected creation of new rules by the Atlanta City Council for managing the development of the BeltLine and other taxpayer-funded urban renewal programs overseen by the city’s development arm, Invest Atlanta.

The deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday in Atlanta that Georgia did not spend its $99.4 million share of the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement as the federal government had intended.

Maurice Jones, who is HUD’s second most senior official, said he was “disappointed in what I’ve seen in Georgia.” Jones was the keynote speaker at a the annual meeting of, “Piece by Piece: A Regional Foreclosure Initiative,” which was held at the Carter Center.

Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell asked Jones what the federal government was doing to respond to Georgia’s decision. Jones responded that the administration had three approaches to states that, like Georgia, had used the money for purposes other than for mortgage resolution.

Atlanta’s airport is poised to give BlackBerry the boot and open its doors to Apple.

The sale of Blackberry smart phones has fallen so dramatically that an airport concessionaire plans to replace its two Blackberry shops with Apple resellers. Only one other airport in the country has an Apple reseller, according to legislation pending before the Atlanta City Council. The other airport wasn’t identified.

The change in product line was requested by a joint-venture company whose prime partner failed to win one of the airport concessions contracts the city council awarded earlier this year. Miami-based Areas USA had submitted a proposal to manage food and beverage outlets at the airport, in addition to the retail spaces it now runs with its joint-venture partner, ARM, or Atlanta Retail Management.

Fulton County is seeking to hire an external lobbying firm to represent the county commission at the state Capitol, and a key part of the job likely will be to oppose the creation of Milton County.

Friday is the deadline for proposals from firms that want the job. A company probably will be hired before Thanksgiving, based on past timelines. One person attended a pre-proposal conference on Aug. 22, according to the sign-in sheet.

The job looks like heavy lifting. All the tasks cited in the county’s prospectus involve fending off challenges to the county’s current authority, trying to address traffic congestion, and influencing expected legislation to consolidate MARTA and other metro transit providers.

Once upon a time, a conversation about “MARTA by the Numbers” dwelled on the number of passengers served by X number of buses and Y number of trains.

How quaint that seems in today’s era, when so many issues seem to be rendered into component parts that are quantified.

MARTA has tracked its own economic impact throughout Georgia. The results show MARTA’s economic impact to Georgia in 2010 was $2.2 billion. MARTA tracked its expenditures in each House and Senate district from 2007 through 2011, and those results are intriguing.