By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, March 8, 2013
The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is increasing its donation to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights by $1.5 million to a total of $2.5 million.
As a result, the Civil Rights Gallery wing will be named after the Blank Family Foundation.
By Guest Columnist JEFF SWEENEY, co-founder and executive vice president of East-West Manufacturing, an Atlanta-based domestic offshore manufacturing company
Is offshoring inherently bad? Do manufacturing jobs “belong” onshore? Both questions are based on an erroneous assumption that trade creates winners and losers.
A job producing something in China does not mean one fewer job here in the United States. It is not a zero sum game. My experience has shown that a properly executed strategy can and should create winners on both sides.
It’s long past the time to instead ask “where is the best place to manufacture?” I have been working in international trade for two decades and help American and Georgia-based companies source components and products from a variety of nations, including China, Vietnam and India.
Part One: The politics of the new Atlanta Falcons stadium deal
Once again, the City of Atlanta is leading the way.
The tentative agreement reached between the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Falcons holds great significance — far beyond the building of a new home for one of the state’s top professional sports teams.
The agreement is yet one more example that without Atlanta’s leadership, Georgia would have been stuck in reverse.
There are too many examples to name.
But here are a few. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, arguably the most important economic engine for the whole state, was and is a creature of the City of Atlanta.
The farm to table food movement was the unheralded winner in a ceremony at the state Capitol to recognize school districts that serve locally grown food to students.
The actual awards went to six districts in metro Atlanta, out of 25 awards statewide. These districts were honored for their pledge, in the state’s farm to school program, to serve more locally grown food in their cafeterias as part of the state’s formal farm to school program.
The ceremony highlighted the amazing rate at which the farm to table movement is growing. Georgia is pushing the school program as a complement to the national HealthierUS Schools Challenge, which has recognized 170 schools in Georgia.
The pending deal for a new Falcons stadium on Northside Drive ensures the road will be a busy corridor for years to come.
As that deal comes together, Georgia Tech graduate students are putting the finishing touches on recommendations that intend to transform Northside Drive into a grand transit boulevard. Tech’s study is to be complete in May.
One goal of Tech’s study is to improve east-west connectivity, from Midtown and Downtown into some forgotten neighborhoods to the west of Northside Drive. The study also calls for improving north-south connectivity to provide a strong spine for future development and mobility that will solidify Atlanta’s core center.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, March 1, 2013
For Hamilton Powell, a 32-year-old Atlanta entrepreneur, it’s all about time.
His one-year-old Atlanta business — Crown & Caliber — buys and sells luxury watches from around the world.
And every time Crown & Caliber makes a sale, the company puts aside $25 in a fund that goes to the nonprofit MAP International to help buy more time for people living in some of the most impoverished parts of the world.
A new report commissioned by a national transit union cites what it contends are deep flaws in MARTA’s own management study, which is fueling the General Assembly’s effort to reorganize MARTA and promote the privatization of some jobs.
The new report is part of the groundswell of opposition the national union and its advocates are attempting to mount against looming changes in the management and oversight of metro Atlanta’s largest transit system.
In the past, the presence of the national union appeared to be barely evident in MARTA’s affairs. This moment is different, as evidenced by strong language in the report by a professor at Columbia University who specializes in privatization:
As fractured fairy tales a la Hollywood goes, “Jack the Giant Slayer” is better than most.
If anything, it reminds you of the Disney live-action adventures from the early 1960s. Movies like “In Search of the Castaways” and “Swiss Family Robinson” — only with a little more gore and a lot better special effects.
The picture begins appropriately with twin bedtime stories. In the royal palace, the Queen reads her little girl to sleep with the tale of how one of her long-ago ancestors defeated a gang of bloodthirsty giants who think humans taste just like chicken, only better.
By Maria Saporta and Douglas Sams
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, March 1, 2013
Atlanta is poised to become a hub for educational technology, says the CEO of a new nonprofit backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Atlanta Business Chronicle reported Feb. 5 that inBloom Inc. has chosen Atlanta for its headquarters. The nonprofit, which will provide technology services to schools as they race to meet new academic requirements, could help make Atlanta a center for a cohesive effort to accelerate student achievement in the United States by boosting personalized learning in schools.
A string of narcotics arrests near Five Points last week, plus arrests for several outstanding warrants and the recovery of a stolen handgun, are among the latest examples of the challenges of sprucing up the city’s southern business district.
This section of downtown Atlanta remains a place of competing objectives. The planned billion-dollar redevelopment of the gulch and neighboring area may spark a restoration of Atlanta’s historic urban core, even as an underground economy seems to thrive in the current environment.
The pedigree of one building where drug arrests were made highlights part of the economic tension. The building was purchased in 2009 for a sum higher than may be expected in the recession: 175 percent of the value assigned by Fulton County’s tax assessors.
Atlanta’s next fix-it program is based on a report that reads like a “Guinness Book of World Records” of the city’s public amenities.
Ever wonder about sidewalks? Atlanta has 2,158 miles of them, and 395 miles are defective. Ever suspect that traffic flow could be improved if signals were fixed? The answer’s in the report. Recreation centers and playgrounds? They’re in there, too.
The report, issued in 2008, recommends the city borrow $250 million to start the repair program. Mayor Kasim Reed has landed on the same sum, and is considering a recommendation for Atlanta to borrow that amount of money this year.
There has recently been a dust-up over in Alabama which might have set our ears to ringing here in Georgia, had our ears not already been deafened by the clamor from Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Residential and commercial customers in Alabama pay more for their electricity than those in Georgia, even though the price of the fuel needed to produce the electricity is less there than it is here. According to a recent survey, Alabama Power customers paid $1.5 billion more over a six-year period than they would have if they could have bought the electricity from Georgia Power, even though both companies are owned by Southern Co.
And even though vast reserves of natural gas have been discovered in Alabama while Georgia is still prospecting for its first big strike, customers of the two largest natural gas utilities there are charged two to three times more in operations and maintenance costs than customers in Georgia or Mississippi.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, March 1, 2013
As the top executive for The Coca-Cola Co., Muhtar Kent may be the most global CEO working for the most global company in the world.
It is a role Kent takes seriously. As Coca-Cola’s CEO for nearly five years (his anniversary will be in July), Kent has continued to expand the company’s business and social impact on the world.
The demise of Progressive Redevelopment Inc. — once the largest nonprofit owner and developer of affordable housing in the state — is a sad commentary of our times.
Specifically, it points to the nearly insurmountable hurdles that exist to provide supportive housing to those with the greatest needs — especially during trying economic times.
A reflective Bruce Gunter, one of PRI’s co-founders and its CEO, is now working without a paycheck, expecting to phase out what’s left of the organization within the next six months.
Atlanta’s role in funding the proposed Falcons stadium provides Mayor Kasim Reed and the Atlanta City Council with their biggest opportunity since the airport concessions contracts to shape social objectives through public investments.
With the city’s airport contracts, the city strongly encouraged joint ventures and required a minimum of 36 percent of contracts be awarded to disadvantaged businesses. In another example of tightly drawn requirements, a group of restaurant contracts required specific types of food to be served – food unique to the American South.
By Guest Columnist DAVID FREEDMAN, executive director of the U.S. Green Building Council, Georgia Chapter
Can the forestry industry and the green building industry co-exist in Georgia?
Most Georgians would think the answer to this question is, “yes.”
Both industries support protecting natural resources, clean water and clean air; preserving green space; utilizing local building materials and creating jobs.
Any movie that begins with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke means to be taken seriously.
And for much of “Dark Skies,” that respect is earned. So much so that I’m a bit surprised the studio did so little to market it. Not even one of those garish nightmares called “word of mouth” screenings.
Like the best haunted house movies — which this is not; remember Clarke is a sci-fi guy — “Dark Skies” works through suggestion, misdirection and just enough shocks to keep you on your toes.
Opponents of the expansive legislative proposal to remake MARTA’s governance structure and privatize jobs took to the streets Thursday and say they collected about a thousand signatures supporting their view.
The protest movement now consists of three entities: MARTA’s union; the national union office in Washington, D.C.; and Georgians for Better Transit.
The transit group is a state affiliate of Americans for Transit, of which former MARTA GM Beverly Scott serves as a director. The national group’s website says it is a grassroots group of transit riders and advocates who seek to secure transit funding.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Wednesday strongly endorsed one of President Obama’s domestic proposals, even as it has been swept from the stage by debate over budget cuts known as the sequester.
During Obama’s State of the Union message, the president reintroduced the idea of repairing the nation’s transportation infrastructure. The plan he discussed is to fix worn roads, bridges, ports, water and sewerage, and transit – and to pay for the upgrades with measures including a national infrastructure bank.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, February 22, 2013
The Atlanta-based CDC Foundation has championed an effort to build two new public health buildings in Haiti as a way to help the country continue its recovery from the 2010 earthquake.
The two buildings will be dedicated in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 25.
After the earthquake, Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population was destroyed, forcing its health officials to work out of temporary housing or tents. Haiti also had other public health needs, including a place to conduct epidemiology training and conduct research.
