Category: Maria Saporta

Three hours after being named as the next president and CEO of Atlanta BeltLine Inc. Wednesday morning, Brian McGowan was having lunch at Ponce City Market with Ryan Gravel, the visionary who first proposed the BeltLine concept in his Georgia Tech Master’s thesis.

“I’m optimistic he will be able to take the BeltLine in a direction it needs to go,” Gravel said of his Wednesday meeting with McGowan. “I’m always excited about the opportunity to shift the leadership so the project can reach the potential we have been talking about all these years.”

Frank Blake, the retired chairman and CEO of the Home Depot, is not a fan of Amazon – a company that is disrupting the retailing industry.

“Amazon is a dark star,” Blake said. “I really don’t like Amazon.”

Blake was the guest speaker Monday at the Rotary Club of Atlanta, where he was asked about the impact of e-commerce on retailing.

The tagline says it all: “Our Youth are At-Promise, Not At-Risk.”

The At-Promise Youth Center in English Avenue officially opened after a warm ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 1 – the culmination of dozens of partners in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

The $2 million-plus facility will be a place to divert young people from having a possible experience in the criminal justice system. Instead, it will be a place that will seek to get to the root causes of juvenile-behavior issues and be a place to their lives around.

During a talk at the Atlanta Commerce Club, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed implied he might be making a leadership change at Atlanta BeltLine Inc., the city’s arm in charge of development along the 22-mile corridor.

In response to an attendee’s question about affordable housing along the BeltLine, Reed said there was going to be more funds available to improve equity along the corridor.

The Atlanta Public Schools enjoyed a stellar day on Thursday.

It started out with a release at 10 a.m. announcing that 57 APS schools (about two-thirds of the system) achieved academic gains based on the Georgia Milestones End of Grade and End of Course Assessments – 17 more than last year.