By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on August 2, 2013
The Atlanta Braves have an annual economic impact of more than $100 million — paying $8.6 million in state and local taxes each year.
That’s according to a new study that measures the team’s contribution to the Georgia economy. The findings are being released just as the Braves begin efforts to renegotiate their lease of Turner Field. The current lease expires Dec. 31, 2016.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, July 26, 2013
As Junior Achievement of Georgia prepares to unveil the Chick-fil-A Foundation Discovery Center — a novel financial literacy experience for middle school students — it has several reasons to celebrate.
It raised more than $15 million for the Discovery Center, which is being constructed on the mezzanine level of the Georgia World Congress Center’s Building C. It will include two interactive venues — JA BizTown and JA Finance Park — as well as the Delta Career Exploration Center, that will feature career opportunities and jobs of the future.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on July 26, 2013
The Atlanta Braves are partnering with a private company to build a maglev train from MARTA’s Georgia State station to Turner Field as a way to improve fan accessibility to the stadium.
But before that project can begin, the Atlanta Braves must first negotiate a new agreement with the city of Atlanta. The baseball team’s lease of Turner Field runs out on Dec. 31, 2016. The Braves would love to reach a new agreement — with more favorable terms — as soon as possible.
At the September 2011 meeting of the Georgia Research Alliance, Gov. Nathan Deal told the prestigious group of business leaders and university presidents that he had just returned from the Southern Governors’ Association annual meeting where the focus was on innovation.
At SGA, Deal questioned why Silicon Valley and Boston were attracting research, development, venture capital the innovation jobs. He was told it was all about quality of life.
“They like to be able to ride bicycles to work,” Deal told GRA board members. “So when I ask DOT (the Georgia Department of Transportation) to build bicycle trails, don’t think I’ve lost my mind.”
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, July 19, 2013
Georgia State University has just completed its best fundraising year ever. The university raised $38.3 million during the 2012-2013 fiscal year — surpassing its previous record of $35.3 million set in 1999.
It’s an important year for Georgia State, which is celebrating its centennial in 2013.
The offer was too good to refuse. Come spend a couple of days by a beautiful lake in cool New Hampshire during the hottest days of summer to talk about the future of cities and regions in North America and the world with some of the most engaged experts in the country.
The offer came from Neal Peirce, a well-respected veteran journalist who has been writing about metro areas for decades.
Every couple of years, Peirce and a core group of “Citistate associates” have been getting together for a Citistates Convergence — a casual, yet in depth, exchange of ideas and observations on what is happening in the fields of urbanism and regionalism.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, July 19, 2013
As a trained landscape architect who has been a developer and transit professional, Paul Morris now is adding a new title to his résumé — president and CEO of Atlanta BeltLine Inc.
Morris said his friends and associates observed that “if a person could craft a position that fit a unique set of skills for one person — this is Paul” — about the Beltline position.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, July 12, 2013
It will be a year of firsts for the Business Hall of Fame at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business.
It is the first year that the second generation is being inducted and the first year for siblings to be inducted into the respected Business Hall of Fame. Three of the four 2013 inductees are the children of Herman Russell, founder of H.J. Russell & Co. Russell was in the first class of inductees in 1985.
When GeorgiaForward was created four years ago, it was modeled after the successful North Carolina Emerging Issues Forum that had been launched by former Gov. Jim Hunt in 1986.
So it was fitting that when GeorgiaForward forum held its first forum three years ago in Macon that the keynote speaker was Anita Brown-Graham, director of North Carolina State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues.
It was through the annual forums and eventually the Institute that Gov. Hunt and the top business, nonprofit and government leaders in North Carolina tackled the state’s toughest issues of health, education, transportation and the environment — finding consensus and often translating that into action and implementation.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, July 12, 2013
Despite its presence of respected colleges and universities, metro Atlanta rarely is recognized in national business circles as a leading center for innovation, research and entrepreneurship.
But the Metro Atlanta Chamber — through its recently formed Business Higher Ed (BHE) Council — aims to change that reputation as well as foster a closer collaboration between the region’s companies and its colleges and universities.
A pivotal property to the future of the westside of downtown Atlanta is what is best known as the Morris Brown campus — a college that is a shadow of its former self.
What happens with the Morris Brown property likely will determine how the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive corridor will be developed — connecting the new Atlanta Falcons stadium with the historically black colleges that are part of the Atlanta University Center.
And the viability of that corridor also will send ripples of renewed prosperity or of continued disinvestment to the communities of Vine City, English Avenue, Castleberry Hill and West End.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, July 5, 2013
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta is reassuring stakeholders that it employs sound accounting practices when receiving federal grants.
Janice McKenzie-Crayton, president and CEO of BBBS of Metro Atlanta, sent out an email making that clear in light of news that an audit of the Philadelphia-based Big Brothers Big Sisters of America uncovered a lack of financial controls and inadequate accounting procedures on three federal grants.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 28, 2013
Mayor Kasim Reed is galvanizing business community support in his efforts to get the Fulton County judicial system to keep repeat offenders off the streets.
At the June 26 quarterly meeting of the Atlanta Committee for Progress (ACP) — the blue-ribbon group of business leaders who act as a sounding board for the mayor, Reed outlined how the city of Atlanta has been successful in reducing crime and adding police officers.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 28, 2013
Morehouse School of Medicine will undergo a near-seamless transition of leadership in the coming year.
Its president, Dr. John E. Maupin, is announcing his retirement from MSM effective July 1, 2014, and his successor will be Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, currently MSM’s executive vice president and dean of the medical school.
Montgomery Rice will become the nation’s first African-American woman to become president of an independent medical school and only one of three women to hold such a position. Only 16 percent of the nation’s medical school deans are women.
Although 11 months have passed since the regional transportation sales tax vote, the defeat still stings.
The Atlanta region has never been comfortable with failure — partly because it has enjoyed more than its fair share of successes over the decades.
So metro leaders seem hesitant to take a diagnostic look at what went wrong last July 31 during the primary election when voters in the 10-county metro Atlanta area defeated the transportation sales tax by a 68 percent to 32 percent vote.
But others believe that a failure is too important to waste — we must learn from our past so we can know what we need to do differently in the future.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 21, 2013
As Jonathan Reckford and Michael Polk hammered a window into a Habitat home under construction in the Glenrose Heights neighborhood in south Atlanta on June 19, they also were sealing the beginning of a new global partnership.
Polk, CEO of Atlanta-based Newell Rubbermaid Inc., launched its first-ever Global Day of Service on June 19 with the help of 1,200 employee volunteers working at 73 different sites in 21 countries.
Just as significantly, Polk also announced a two-year, $1 million partnership with Atlanta-based Habitat for Humanity International to help build homes for people in need of shelter around the world.
A most valiant effort to unite the state of Georgia continues to prosper despite a lack of visible support from its top leaders.
GeorgiaForward, which will hold its fourth annual forum in Atlanta on July 11 and 12 at the Georgia Tech Conference Center, has built a grassroots following of civic, business and political officials from all over the state who seek to bridge the various forces that divide our state.
Those include Atlanta versus the rest of the state or perhaps more importantly — urban versus rural versus suburban; income divides, racial and ethnic divides, generational divides and political divides.
The goal has been to build consensus on a shared vision for where and how we want our state to evolve.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 21, 2013
As the economy continues to improve, charitable giving in the United States has increased. But at the current rate of growth, it will take another five years to reach the level of giving that the nation enjoyed at its height.
Americans donated $316.23 billion to charitable causes in 2012, according to the Giving USA Foundation and its research partner, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
“That is the largest number since 2008,” said David King, president of Atlanta-based fundraising firm Alexander Haas, who also is chair of the Giving Institute, which founded the Giving USA Foundation in 1985.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 14, 2013
If the Woodruff Arts Center had failed to make its $9.2 million goal this year, it would have been totally understandable.
The Atlanta economy is still in a recovery mode. It has been Virginia Hepner’s first campaign as CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center. It has been the first campaign in 35 years without the leadership of Beauchamp Carr organizing the effort.
And as if that weren’t enough, shortly after the campaign was launched, the Woodruff Arts Center disclosed that a former employee had stolen more than $1 million by issuing fraudulent invoices.
How many economic development plans does it take to market a region?
It depends. If it’s metro Atlanta, the answer is countless.
The most recent effort is the Atlanta Regional Economic Competitiveness Strategy that has been done for the Atlanta Regional Commission by Market Street Services.
The ARC’s effort is a requirement of the Economic Development Administration for each region to have a “Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy.” Although the ARC is required to go through this process every five years, it decided to take a more robust approach this time around.
