Honorable Mayor Reed,
When you issued your press release last week saying you welcomed a conversation on Fort McPherson – that you encouraged debate and dialogue based on facts – not fiction, I was delighted and greatly relieved.
An open, honest and fact-based debate about Fort McPherson is long overdue.
As you know, I believe Fort McPherson represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Atlanta. We have only one chance to get it right.
A city stands and falls on the decisions and vision of her leaders.
All too rarely, a city has an opportunity to make a decision that will set its future course for generations to come.
Fort McPherson is such an opportunity for Atlanta.
(The first of two columns about the pending sale of 330 acres at Fort McPherson to Tyler Perry Studios.)
Before Fort McPherson and its 488 acres of beautiful rolling hills, historic houses and officers quarters, a golf course, a post office, several office buildings and a lake ever went on the market, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed gave movie mogul Tyler Perry a private tour.
That is how Atlanta has ended up with what may become known as one of the worst transactions in the city’s history.
When asked why the 19th annual LINK trip was going to Toronto, Doug Hooker, executive director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, had a simple answer.
“If you want to be world class, you have to go to a world class city and see what it looks like,” Hooker said.
A group of dedicated activists stood on the corner of Northside Drive and Magnolia Street on a recent Saturday holding posters and waving signs. “Stop Poop in Our Creeks.”
A driver turned off Northside onto Magnolia and motioned to Tony Torrence, a community leader, to come over. The night before there had been heavy rains and he said the area around his house had that all-too familiar smell of sewage.
No one company and no one executive was treated more disrespectfully during the 2015 legislative session than Delta Air Lines and Richard Anderson.
His crime?
He had the audacity to speak his mind about what he thought was in the best interest of Georgia’s economic future.
When it comes driving electric vehicles, Georgia has been on the leading edge.
So naturally we needed to put our low-polluting cars in reverse and adopt the worst package for electric vehicles in the country.
Thank you Georgia legislature.
Atlanta’s greatest preservation victory happened 40 years ago when a broad-based coalition of civic leaders, students, developers, preservationists, elected officials and media outlets rallied behind the “Save the Fox” movement.
The Fox has been the pinnacle of Atlanta’s preservation movement – a lasting symbol of what can and should be done to save our historic treasures.
Riding on the bus as part of Tom Houck’s Civil Rights Tours Atlanta is sobering.
Whether it is Auburn Avenue or Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the message is two-fold. These are sacred places. It was here in Atlanta where some of the most significant moments in U.S. history took place – the Civil Rights movement.
Oh the irony.
The Midtown Neighbor’s Association and its Historic Midtown Committee are looking into designating one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods into a “Local Historic District.”
But as the neighborhood is pursuing the establishment of a Midtown Historic Overlay District, significant parts of its history are being torn down for new developments.
SELMA – A beaming Meria Carstarphen – Atlanta’s still relatively new superintendent of schools – was right at home.
Carstarphen was receiving the inaugural Phoenix Award from the Sullivan and Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson Foundation Sunday morning – on the same weekend as all the 50th anniversary events of the Selma to Montgomery March that made such an impression on this nation and was a driving force behind the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
Listening to John Hope Bryant, one word comes to mind – destiny.
The myriad of coincidences and serendipitous encounters in Bryant’s life have led to this moment – the 150th anniversary of Freedman’s Bank.
For many, Freedman’s Bank is a footnote in history. But for Bryant, Freedman’s Bank is the biggest unfinished business left over from the presidential administration of Abraham Lincoln, who he calls the greatest president in America’s history.
Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.
That is the most generous way to describe the transportation proposals coming out of the state legislature – and the response from the Atlanta business community.
From all outward appearances, it feels as though the Metro Atlanta Chamber has become complicit in Georgia’s favorite sport – to aim low when it comes to investing our state’s future.
We justify mediocrity.
A couple of months ago, a couple of Atlanta Braves representatives told me they owned the statue of Henry Aaron hitting the 715 homerun that broke Babe Ruth’s record.
They told me the Braves would be moving the statue to Cobb County as part of their new baseball stadium.
That struck me as odd. All my research up until then had been that the statue belonged to the citizens of Atlanta and Fulton County.
It’s time to set the record straight.
Contrary to a theme in the national sports world, the Atlanta Hawks are not the team that Danny Ferry built. The Atlanta Hawks are at the top of their game – because Danny Ferry is gone.
At least that is the view of several people who are familiar with the inner-workings of the Atlanta Hawks, including one of team’s most loyal fans – businessman Tommy Dortch
The transportation plan unveiled last week by leaders in the Georgia House of Representatives initially showed promise, but when details emerged, sadly, it totally missed the mark. The House got it backwards. Keeping the sales tax on motor fuel would give the state the ability to invest in all modes of transportation.
Every year we wonder whether this will be the year when Georgia will finally become a state with a multi-dimensional view towards transportation.
We wonder whether members of our General Assembly will figure out a permanent way to pay for all modes of transportation – transit, trains, buses, sidewalks, bicycle paths and multi-purpose trails – instead of primarily highways and roads.
The widening gap between rich and poor presents the biggest threat to the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ultimate dream of a nation and world of equal opportunity.
And so it was no coincidence that during this past week’s Operation HOPE Global Forum in Atlanta and during the annual King holiday festivities that one theme kept surfacing – one of “inclusive economics.”
Former President Bill Clinton articulated both the challenges and opportunities that exists when a large share of the wealth is held by just a few people.
For a state where many of the top elected officials don’t believe in climate change and question whether humans play a role in pollution, Georgia environmental leaders actually hope the 2015 General Assembly will be a good one.
Whether it be reinstituting a buffer for development on marshes along the state’s coastal areas, or whether it be exploring a permanent source of state funding for transit, or whether it be allowing for the third-party financing of solar panels on people’s homes, the 2015 legislative session could leave the environmental community happier than it has been in a long time.
CHARLESTON, S.C. – The sidewalks along the historic streets of Charleston are lined with people – strolling, shopping, people-watching, enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of an intentional city.
Intentional? Yes. One can immediately feel that downtown Charleston is a place that has had leadership with the intention of turning the seaside town into a world-class city.
