The reason behind the construction boom of rental apartments in metro Atlanta is evident in the numbers – rent rates were up by a record-setting, year-over-year 7.8 percent, and investors are earning returns of up to 7.75 percent, according to data in a recent report from CBRE Research.
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Are we that different? Thoughts on shared history of North and South – from the cotton economy to 20th-century fights for freedoms
Previously, I wrote of a summer family vacation week in New England — Massachusetts specifically — and the intertwining stories of Georgia and the Bay State that we discovered.
This wasn’t so surprising, since both places share a common history: as members of the original 13 English colonies, having fought each other when the concept of the Union came under attack, and having joined each other to fight in two world wars. But our shared history can sometimes be obscured as we hear the differences between the North and South emphasized.
Posted inColumns, Eleanor Ringel Cater, Main Slider
‘Phoenix’ – a must see movie
“Phoenix” reminds me of “The Lives of Others.”
Not because the plot, characters, themes or even tone are similar. But everyone who took a chance on “Others” – a 2006 German film set in East Berlin in the ‘80s – came away incredibly excited and engaged by what they had seen. People I thought would never in a zillion years even give the picture a look couldn’t stop talking about it.
So it is with “Phoenix,” if you’ll just go see it.
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed: We are going to find a way to preserve Gaines Hall
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed pledged to do all he could to preserve the historic Gaines Hall on the Morris Brown campus.
Gaines Hall, which was built in 1869 and was one of the original buildings in the Atlanta University campus, caught on fire last Thursday evening. Gaines Hall currently is owned by Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency which acquired the building earlier this year as part of the Morris Brown College property sale.
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
The dragon that reaches out and grabs you
Roger Babson is the founder of the Gravity Research Foundation, an organization with the stated purpose of studying, understanding and, ultimately, harnessing the force of gravity. It was the childhood drowning of his older sister in a river near Gloucester, Massachusetts that sparked Babson’s life-long interest in finding a way to control the effects of […]
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
Mercedes Benz putting its name on new Atlanta football and soccer stadium
Mercedes Benz and the AMB Sports & Entertainment (owner of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United) announced a 27-year naming rights agreement Monday morning.
But neither side disclosed the dollar value of the deal – which will extend through 2042 – two years between now and when the stadium opens in 2017 plus 25 years.
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
Southern Co. acquiring AGL Resources in $12 billion deal
Atlanta’s two largest utilities – the Southern Co. and AGL Resources – are becoming one.
Southern Co. announced Monday morning that it is acquiring AGL Resources in a $12 billion transaction – one that will create a leading electric and gas utility in the nation.
Posted inMain Slider, Saba Long
Ted Turner’s family and friends gather in Atlanta to fight malaria
The annual World Mosquito Day, a global recognition of the fight to end malaria, was marked with a special event on Aug. 20. Faith leaders, elected officials, businessmen and a NBA All-Star athlete recently gathered in Atlanta to raise awareness of the fight to end malaria.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than three billion – three times the population of China – people are at risk of being bitten by a malaria-carrying parasite.
Posted inColumns, Guest Column, Main Slider
Atlanta’s music venues come and go – making melodies and memories along the way
By Guest Columnist TONY PARIS, a veteran music critic in Atlanta
There’s a building boom rocking this city not seen since the Reconstruction. Most recently this has manifested itself with the announcements that both the Masquerade on North Avenue and Smith’s Olde Bar have been given their walking papers as the former property has been sold and the latter is up for sale.
The news that the stages of these two large, established venues will go silent when developers have their way has hit those in Atlanta’s music scene particularly hard.
Posted inDavid Pendered, Latest News, Main Slider
Manuel’s Tavern: First steps begin toward surrounding it with mixed-use project
Manuel’s Tavern could be surrounded by an array of homes, shops and offices if the Atlanta City Council approves the first step in a rezoning process that is to get its first hearing Tuesday at the council’s Community Development Committee.
Posted inDavid Pendered, Latest News, Main Slider
Georgia’s quail recovery program wins kudos, promotes important hunting industry
Georgia’s population of Northern Bobwhite Quail has declined by 90 percent since 1966, and the state has won national recognition for a program to promote the bird’s recovery – and to stabilize the $125 million quail-hunting industry clustered around Albany.
Posted inDavid Pendered, Latest News, Main Slider
New GSU report shows charter schools raise home values in attendance areas
Proximity to a charter school increases home values in three metro Atlanta school districts, according to a new report released by Georgia State University.
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
President Jimmy Carter – a man at peace with his life
A calm and composed President Jimmy Carter faced the media Thursday morning to update the world about his cancer and answer as many questions as he could.
The briefing attracted an onslaught of national and local media attention – probably more than the Carter Center has seen in decades – despite all the significant initiatives that the former president has launched from his base in Atlanta.
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
Atlanta reaches milestone – 100 million square feet in Better Buildings Challenge
Thanks to several new partners, the City of Atlanta’s Better Buildings Challenge has passed a milestone – 100 million square feet.
That means owners of buildings totaling 100 million square feet have agreed to reduce energy and water consumption by 20 percent by 2020 – using 2010 as a baseline.
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Saba Long
Atlanta leaders looking forward to building closer ties with Cuba
Normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba is in the works as the White House seeks a new approach to engagement after 54 years.
Congress will further decide the breadth of such relations with votes on three bills to end the trade embargo and travel ban.
A delegation of Atlanta residents from the city’s World Affairs Council recently visited the Caribbean island nation and brought back with them much enthusiasm and hope for the future.
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Maria's Metro
Fulton’s John Eaves and Atlanta’s Kasim Reed forging homeless pact
Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves visited the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter on Friday, Aug. 14, when he was given a personal tour by operator Anita Beatty, director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.
Eaves wanted to see for himself the condition of the facility and whether it was following Fulton County’s protocols to test its clients for tuberculosis.
After the tour, Eaves said it was not as bad as he had thought it would be, and that the facility is meeting the TB protocols.
Posted inColumns, David Pendered, Main Slider
Baltimore, once a beacon for Atlanta’s downtown revitalization, sees its lamp dim
BALTIMORE – Once upon a time, Atlanta wanted to create the same kind of magic that enabled Baltimore to build a tourism destination around an aquarium. Those days seem long ago.
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
This week, it’s a time travel story…with a twist
Time travel. It has been a part of the plot of many a movie over the years and, no doubt, the daydream of almost everyone at one time or another. Who hasn’t thought of what they could do if only time travel were possible? From sparing the world the pain of a future calamity or […]
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Remembering Atlanta history — the lynching of Leo Frank
This week guest contributor DAVE SCHECHTER, a veteran journalist, tells the story of the Leo Frank case on the centennial of Leo Frank’s lynching.
It has been said that an Atlanta busy in the present and building for the future sometimes leaves behind its past.
August 17 is the centennial of an ignominious piece of history, the hanging of Leo Max Frank in a Marietta woods — if not the only, then at least the best-known lynching of a Jew in the United States. Nothing marks the site along a forgettable (other than the “Big Chicken”) stretch of Roswell Road near Frey’s Gin Road where vigilantes hanged Frank after kidnapping him from the state prison in Milledgeville.
Posted inColumns, Eleanor Ringel Cater, Main Slider
‘Listen to Me Marlon’ – a rare treat of Brando on Brando
Finding what others have had to say about Marlon Brando is easy.
Anna Magnani, his co-star in “The Fugitive Kind,” called him “great, half-crazy and impossible to work with.”
“But,” she added, “better a hundred Brandos any day than a one nice, dull negative man.
Sidney Lumet, who directed “The Fugitive Kind,” said of his star, “Like many great actors, he is also a very suspicious man. He likes to test his directors.”
