Category: Maria Saporta

MARTA picked St. Patrick’s Day to start trying out an all-electric bus.

The bus is manufactured Proterra, a Silicon Valley company with its manufacturing base in Greenville, S.C. It has a nominal range of about 60 miles, but it has a “fast charge” capability of 10 minutes or less.

Atlanta’s TransFormation Alliance on Thursday night celebrated its recent designation as one of six groups from around the country awarded with a $1 million grant to help advance more equitable transportation and housing initiatives.

The Strong, Prosperous And Resilient Communities challenge is providing a three-year, $90 million in grants to support local groups and their leaders who are working to ensure that major new investments in transportation are equitably in their efforts to improve health and environmental outcomes for all residents.

After Invest Atlanta’s Downtown Development Authority approved the conceptual master plan for the redevelopment of Underground Atlanta, developer T. Scott Smith signaled he would be working closely with the community going forward.

Dorothy I. Height’s legacy supporting women and civil rights will live on forever – as in the “forever” stamp of the U.S. Postal Service.

Several Atlanta leaders, many of them who knew Height personally, marked the occasion at a stamp unveiling ceremony Monday at the Center for Civil and Human Rights.

After several deadlines have come and gone, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and WRS Realty said they are working to close the sale of Underground Atlanta by the end of March.

“We are just working really hard to bring it to a conclusion,” Reed said Monday morning. Asked if it would happen by the end of March, Reed said: “We are working as hard as possible to close by the end of the month.”

An updated masterplan for the redevelopment of Underground Atlanta was presented Thursday to a committee of Invest Atlanta.

Although it is labeled as a “conceptual” plan, several members of the public were concerned about the number of new parking spaces – 2,189 – that are envisioned to be part of the Underground development. That is in addition to the two existing Underground Atlanta garages.

Women must fight complacency to make sure they maintain the progress that they’ve achieved in recent decades.

That was one of the messages that an influential panel of women shared Wednesday morning at the International Women’s Day Breakfast organized by the World Affairs Council of Atlanta at the Commerce Club.

In a talk to the Atlanta Press Club Wednesday, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston spent a great portion of the speech talking about transit.

Ralston had already made news in January when he proposed setting up a House Commission to study transit. He also made a point that the Commission was not being put together to “take over” any existing transit agency (a point that was welcomed by MARTA officials at the time).

Now the state is well on its way to establishing the transit commission, which Ralston told the Press Club that it would not be another “study committee,” but a “real effort” to advance the development of transit in Georgia.

Despite having agreed to placing a “Comfort Women” memorial in early February, the Center for Civil and Human Rights announced on March 2 that it was backing off the memorial.

Varying reasons were given for the Center’s change of heart, including the fact that the institution did not have a policy to place memorials on its grounds.

The Atlanta Regional Commission has hired two new members to its executive team – Susan Chana and Samyukth Shenbaga.

Effective March 13, Chana will become the regional planning agency’s director of its Center for Strategic Relations, succeeding Julie Ralston, who has just retired after 31 years with the organization.

Shenbaga has been named manager of the agency’s Community Development Division, succeeding Dan Reuter, who recently left the ARC.

UPDATED with photos from KELLY JORDAN….

The Democratic National Committee came to Atlanta this week almost equally divided between two candidates for chairman – former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Congressman Keith Ellison.

But on Saturday, after the election went to second ballot of voting, Perez won the chairmanship in a vote of 235 to 200.

For more than 31 years, Julie Ralston has been the communications voice for the Atlanta Regional Commission.

On Feb. 21, she retired as ARC’s director of the Center for Strategic Relations – complete with a state proclamation, slide show of Ralston through the years as well as video, a reception following the organization’s board meeting and a party at Manuel’s.