Articles by Maria Saporta
Newly updated
CHARLOTTE – Atlanta has won the Super Bowl for 2019.
A relieved contingent of Atlanta leaders celebrated after the 32 owners of the National Football League awarded the city the Super Bowl – Atlanta’s third ever.
Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, at a press conference after the four-ballot vote, said he felt as though he was at the Academy Awards – needing to thank everyone who had played a part in getting Atlanta to this moment.
By Doug Sams and Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 20, 2016
Nearly a year after the city of Atlanta announced an agreement to redevelop Underground Atlanta and almost eight months after plans emerged to transform the Atlanta Civic Center, neither deal has closed — and cranes for the intown projects are nowhere in sight.
The delays come as the country enters a period of uncertainty surrounding the presidential election, and the real estate cycle — which has flooded Atlanta with new investment and dotted its central skyline and intown neighborhoods with apartment buildings — may be peaking.
Recently, the outlook for the nearly $300 million Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center redevelopment took an unexpected turn when Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed told a reporter “the deal is a little shaky. It’s taken longer than I had hoped it would.”
A marquis member of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration is out of a job.
The City of Atlanta issued a release late Friday stating that “Miguel Southwell’s service as Aviation General Manager at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has ended.”
The statement did not explain why Southwell was leaving the post.
The new president and chief operating officer of privately-owned Chick-fil-A – Tim Tassopoulos – is part of the chain’s family that one can be without being related by blood.
He was only 17 in 1977 when he first started working as an hourly employee for a Chick-fil-A store at North DeKalb Mall. He had applied there as a back-up when applying for a job at Rich’s and decided to have lunch at his favorite restaurant.
A special guest attended Home Depot’s annual meeting Thursday morning – co-founder Arthur Blank
It was only the second annual meeting that Blank had attended since he left the company in 2002. The last time was in 2008 – the first year that Frank Blake was CEO of the home-improvement company.
“They are doing a fabulous job,” Blank said adding that “fabulous” was an inadequate word to describe how well the company was doing.
For 20 years, leaders from the Atlanta region have been visiting other North American cities to get ideas on how best to address our metro area’s toughest challenges. The group of 110 leaders just returned from Dallas – and here’s what some of them learned.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber will be moving from its own multi-story building on Centennial Olympic Park to the 34th floor of the 191 Peachtree Tower by the end of the year.
The Coca-Cola Co. took Atlantans back in time Monday when they adorned a building a Five Points with a life-sized photo depicting the long-ago demolished Jacob’s Pharmacy where Coke was first served and sold on May 8, 1886.
Jacob’s Pharmacy stood at 12 Marietta St. at Five Points, what has been the historic heart of Atlanta.
Sandy Springs-based Veritiv – which will soon be officially designated as a Fortune 500 company – held its second annual meeting Thursday at the Westin Atlanta Perimeter Norh – close to its new corporate offices.
For the second year in a row, the meeting attracted only one Veritiv shareholder. This year it was Suzanne Mulcay from Marietta.
As Atlanta’s top business and civic leaders officially welcomed Operation HOPE moving its global headquarters in the city, the conversation quickly turned to equity.
The welcome luncheon was held Monday at the Federal Reserve of Atlanta, a rather elegant setting to talk about poverty along with financial inclusion and literacy. Operation Hope also announced Atlanta Uplift 2020 – to help make it a model city of lifting people out of poverty.
The Dallas metro area showed regional Atlanta leaders Friday that connecting suburban cities with rail transit can invigorate and strengthen those communities.
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who was mayor when the LINK delegation last came to this Texas city in 1999, said the Atlanta region and the Dallas-Fort Worth have much in common.
“We are two regions that have a lot of high class problems,” said Kirk, referring to the two fast-growing Sun Belt cities that are trying to have their infrastructure keep up with their growth.
Somewhat grudgingly, the mayors of Dallas and Fort Worth on Wednesday paid tribute to Atlanta when addressing the LINK group visiting their respective cities.
But both mayors were quick to remind the 110 regional Atlanta leaders that they were in the presence of strong competition.
On the 20th anniversary of the regional LINK trips to different North American cities, the 2016 delegation arrived ahead of schedule Wednesday – giving the group an opportunity to tour Sundance Square in downtown Forth Worth.
“Look how clean it is,” remarked Emory Morsberger, head of the Stone Mountain Community Improvement District. “I don’t even see any cigarette butts on the ground.”
Global health leaders convened in Atlanta to help raise an alarm of the dangers of the ongoing refugee crisis.
The issue has become especially acute because now doctors, health professionals and hospitals are becoming targets – as evidenced by the airstrike on a hospital in Aleppo – killing 14 people, including the most qualified pediatrician in Syria’s largest city.
The Coca-Cola Co. will turn 130 years old on May 8, and there’s no company that brands Atlanta more than the beverage giant. As goes Coke, so goes Atlanta – and vice versa.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was overcome with emotion during the public signing of the city’s 20-year lease agreement with Delta Air Lines – a lease that also includes a 10-year optional extension.
The mayor’s voice quivered as he fought back tears talking about one of his closest confidants and friends in Atlanta’s business community – Delta CEO Richard Anderson.
For the first year ever, the Coca-Cola Co. invited its shareowners to its own turf for its 2016 annual meeting – the World of Coca-Cola at Pemberton Place across from Centennial Olympic Park.
The new location had a strange impact on shareowners. Even the company’s harshest critics seemed subdued in the environment. It didn’t hurt that the company was opening up the attraction for a special first-ever Coca-Cola Shareowner Day so the owners of the company could get their fill of the house that soda built.
Clark Atlanta University – which just finished hosting the nation’s first Economic Inclusion and Competitiveness Summit on April 22-23 – is hoping to gain national notoriety for combining innovation with a more inclusive workforce.
Note to readers: On Thursday, we made the painful decision to part ways with Maynard Eaton, who has been writing a column for us since last October. It was not a decision we made lightly.
