More MARTA started out as a vehicle to bring more transit to the City of Atlanta.
Now it’s turned in to a cry for More MARTA in metro Atlanta.
Although the More MARTA $11.5 billion project list was tied to voters in the City of Atlanta passing an additional half-penny MARTA sales tax to be invested within the city, the last two MARTA board meetings were filled with people who wanted “More MARTA” in their jurisdictions.
A fascinating conversation between two public servants took place last week – thanks to ULI Atlanta. It was a conversation that should become a guiding platform for how Atlanta can evolve into a next generation city.
The conversation took place between former Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley Jr. – who has been described as the best mayor in the country, serving his city for 40 years; and Atlanta Planning Commissioner Tim Keane, who worked for Riley for eight years before coming to Atlanta.
By Maria Saporta It’s a different day at Atlanta’s City Hall. Although it is still early in her administration, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is emerging as a far different kind of executive than her predecessor – Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. The most notable change is attitude. Bottoms is not the bully that Reed was. […]
The hosting of Music Midtown in Piedmont Park continues its delicate balance of having an incredible outdoor musical festival in the midst of densely populated neighborhoods inconvenienced by its impact before, during and after the two-day weekend.
The 2018 Music Midtown was no different.
Sometimes we take for granted Atlanta’s living history as the home of civil rights.
That was reinforced to me on the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 5 when the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation hosted a program featuring the documentary – King in the Wilderness – on the last three years of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life.
A vision to create a Chattahoochee River trail within the City of Atlanta is one big step closer to reality.
Invest Atlanta, at its meeting on Aug. 29, voted to approve a pivotal land swap between the city and the development group of Chattahoochee Trails LLC and Kovach Development.
As we enter a public-private partnership to redevelop the Gulch in downtown Atlanta, we can’t forget our city’s origins – a city created by the intersection of three railroad lines.
The very heart of who we are as a city is physically rooted in the Gulch – the place once known as Terminus.
It’s no accident that the First Amendment of our nation’s Bill of Rights protected the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech. It is fundamental to our democracy and to what makes the United States special.
So it is distressing to hear President Donald Trump call the press the “enemy of the people” when the reverse is actually true.
Exactly three years ago, a fire damaged the historic Gaines Hall on the golden hill on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Then Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed pledged to save Gaines Hall.
Now three years later, little has been done to stabilize, much less restore, Gaines Hall, built in 1869.
By any measure, Charlotte Nash is a poster child of Gwinnett County.
She has lived her entire 65 years in Gwinnett, one of the few among the county’s 920,260 residents as of a year ago. When she was born, Gwinnett had fewer than 40,000 residents.
Nash now serves as board chair of the Gwinnett County Commission. Over the years, she has had a front-row seat to view changes in the county, one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation over the last 30 years.
A tug-of-war has emerged over how to invest the $2.5 billion More MARTA funding in the City of Atlanta.
Sadly, a divided mindset has developed on how to invest those dollars – pitting one group against another.
When contemplating a vision for Atlanta’s future, transportation issues often are a centerpiece of how we envision our city.
The assumption of the Atlanta City Design Project is that the city’s population will double or even triple over the next 30 years.
So the challenge facing Atlanta is how do we incorporate more people living within the city limits without having complete gridlock on our city’s streets.
After France won the World Cup on Sunday, I called my cousin – Alain Bourla – in Paris. Alain lives along Boulevard St. Germain near Boulevard St. Michel in the Latin Quarter (my favorite part of Paris).
So what was the reaction in Paris? Alain told me the city was going crazy. He took the phone to his balcony so I could hear the wild celebration outside his apartment.
It’s no secret that Monroe Drive is an accident-prone corridor in the City of Atlanta.
Just ask Ivan Schustak. He was walking along Monroe Drive in the crosswalk at Yorkshire Road on March 29thwhen he was hit by a car turning left from Monroe Drive.
Schustak, who is visually impaired, attended a Renew Atlanta community presentation of the latest proposed plans to improve the corridor of Monroe Drive-Boulevard Avenue at a town hall meeting at Grady High School on June 28th.
A proposed mixed-use project by Brock Built Homes and partners has become a lightning rod in the already divided English Avenue community.
Despite a lack of consensus among key players on the Westside, the project has been sailing through the Atlanta City Council’s committee meetings. It was scheduled to go before the full Atlanta City Council on Monday, July 2, but it has been delayed for 30 days.
Gwinnett has an opportunity to do what it should have done 47 years ago – join MARTA.
The Gwinnett County Commission is looking to pass a transit plan this week that would significantly increase its public transportation investment.
For 22 years, an impressive group of metro Atlanta civic, business and government leaders have spent three days a year visiting a North American city to learn how other cities are handling their urban challenges.
The LINK trips also have provided people an opportunity to get to know each other – connecting with leaders from different races, genders and sections of the Atlanta region as well as people from different circles of influence.
Sometimes it takes outsiders to help one appreciate what we have in Atlanta.
We are blessed to have a myriad of cultural institutions that help define what we are as a city. The Woodruff Arts Center – which encompasses the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Alliance Theatre and the High Museum of Art – is the centerpiece of our cultural offerings.
Before leaving office, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced in late November that a statue of boxer Evander Holyfield would be placed near Woodruff Park at Peachtree and Auburn Avenue.
With all due respect to Holyfield, Woodruff Park is the wrong spot to honor the boxer, who fought Bert Cooper on Nov. 21, 1991 at the now demolished Omni Coliseum – the site of Philips Arena.
The City of Atlanta jumped from 50 to 43 in the Trust for Public Land’s annual ParkScore survey of the nation’s 100 largest cities.
The improved ranking shows how Atlanta has gained traction when it comes to acquiring and maintaining parks and green space in the city limits. TPL also including a few other factors in its ranking – such as including private support for parks – that helped boost Atlanta’s standing.
