Category: Latest News

By Maria Saporta

When the Atlanta Braves representatives were focused on renewing their lease at Turner Field, their overwhelming desire was to be able to control their own destiny.

In short, the Braves would have been happy to stay at Turner Field:

• if they had been able to fully control the stadium’s operations;
• if they had been able to partner in the redevelopment of the parking lots around the stadium into a mixed-use entertainment- residential complex;
• if they had received governmental approvals to develop a privately-funded maglev transit line from the Georgia State University MARTA station to Turner Field; and
• if the City of Atlanta would have contributed to the maintenance and rejuvenation of Turner Field.

By Maria Saporta

When the Atlanta Braves decided to explore possible locations other than Turner Field, one option the team apparently did not consider one of the most obvious choices in the region.

That site is the former General Motors plant in Doraville — a 167-acre site that sits at a prime location at the nexus of I-285 near I-85 along the MARTA rail line.

Instead of picking the GM site, the Atlanta Braves announced Monday morning plans to move to a 60-acre site in Cobb County just outside I-285 west of I-75 along Circle 75 Parkway and Windy Ridge Parkway. The closest MARTA rail station is the Arts Center station in Midtown — at least 10 miles away.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed released a statement at 12:44 on Monday afternoon — literally saying good-bye to the Atlanta Braves in downtown Atlanta.

The mayor explained that the city did not have the millions of dollars it would need to match Cobb County’s offer for the Atlanta Braves.

The mayor’s full statement read as follows:

“The Atlanta Braves are one of the best baseball teams in America, and I wish them well. We have been working very hard with the Braves for a long time, and at the end of the day, there was simply no way the team was going to stay in downtown Atlanta without city taxpayers spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make that happen. It is my understanding that our neighbor, Cobb County, made a strong offer of $450M in public support to the Braves, and we are simply unwilling to match that with taxpayer dollars. Given the needs facing our city and the impact of Turner Field stadium on surrounding neighborhoods, that was something I, and many others were unwilling to do. We have been planning for the possibility of this announcement and have already spoken to multiple organizations who are interested in redeveloping the entire Turner Field corridor.”

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Braves announced Monday morning plans to build a new stadium at I-75 and I-285 — leaving the downtown location where they have been for nearly 50 years.

Team officials announced that the new $672 million stadium will be built in partnership with Cobb County, and that it will be open in time for the opening of the 2017 baseball season. The Atlanta Braves are in the process of buying 60 acres of land just outside 285, and it plans to build the new stadium as part of a mixed-use development.

By Maria Saporta

A new holiday tradition is born.

The CARE package — the ultimate symbol of international goodwill after World War II — is making a return  with a holiday twist.

Atlanta-based CARE, with its creative agency of record — Brunner, is launching its first marketing campaign since 2006. It is seeking to reach a new generation of donors by reclaiming its iconic CARE package.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta is losing another one of its women executives.

Penny McIntyre, a former top executive of Newell Rubbermaid Inc., has been picked by the board of Sunrise Senior Living to serve as the company’s new CEO. Sunrise Senior Living is based in McLean, Va.

“I wanted to let you know that I landed a role – CEO of Sunrise Senior Living,” McIntyre wrote in an email. “I am excited – a role where I can make a difference. But sad to be leaving Atlanta…”

McIntyre, who will begin her new job on Nov. 18, will succeed Mark Ordan, the company’s current CEO, who announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down from his role after the sale of the company.

By Maria Saporta

After three years of working on the idea, Soumaya Khalifa launched the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta on Aug. 18, 2001.

Little did she know that 24 days later — on 9/11 — the Islamic Speakers Bureau would become more critical and relevant to healing the divisions and correcting the misconceptions that many Americans had toward Muslims.

Khalifa, who was born in Turkey and grew up on Texas, had been working at Georgia-Pacific when she launched the Islamic Speakers Bureau to help build better understanding between Americans and Muslims.

Then when 9/11 happened, Khalifa thought: “What do we do now?”

By Maria Saporta

Metro Atlanta residents believe the economy (24.4 percent) is the region’s most pressing problem followed by traffic (21.4 percent), according to a new survey released Friday by the Atlanta Regional Commission.

The public opinion survey was conducted by the A.L. Burruss Institute of Public Service and Research at Kennesaw State University. More than 2.100 voting-age residents in the 10-county Atlanta region participated in the statistically-significant “Metro Atlanta Speaks” survey.

One of the most striking results of the survey was the strong support for public transportation.

By Maria Saporta

At the Rotary Club of Atlanta’s annual Interfaith Business Prayer breakfast, U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) described another side of Washington, D.C. not readily apparent from today’s news reports.

Just 24 hours earlier, Isakson said he and fellow senators of both parties had been holding hands during a morning prayer. It is a weekly ritual that occurs every Wednesday morning — the Senate prayer breakfast — when a group of senators — sometimes it’s 15 and other times it’s 35 of them — get together to sing hymns and pray.

“You would never know that from watching C-SPAN,” Isakson said, alluding to the partisanship plaguing Washington, D.C. in recent years.

By Maria Saporta

After the new $1.2 billion Atlanta Falcons stadium design was unanimously approved by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority board Tuesday afternoon, the lead architect — Bill Johnson — expressed excitement rather than concern.

Asked whether he was worried about whether the first-of-its-kind design for a retractable roof stadium would work, Johnson laughed.

Quite the opposite, he said.

“I’m looking forward to when that roof opens up for the first time,” Johnson said of the eight panels that will travel along octagonal tracks to create an opening to the skies. “The heavens will open up.”

By Maria Saporta

Plum Creek Timber Co. is adding to its land holdings in the Southeast including 36,000 acres in Georgia.

On Monday Oct. 28, Plum Creek announced that it had signed a $1.1 billion purchase and sale agreement to acquire about 501,000 acres of industrial timberlands, associated wind and mineral assets, and an interest in about 109,000 acres of high-value rural and development-quality lands from MeadWestvaco Corp.

The transaction is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2013 and it is still subject to customary closing conditions.

By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk

The new Atlanta Falcons stadium is expected to cost $1.2 billion — an increase of $200 million over earlier projections.

At a Georgia World Congress Center Authority stadium development committee meeting on Monday, Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay said the increased costs are due to several factors related to the design and the site.

It is all part of the desire of Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons, to develop a cutting-edge stadium for the city.

By Maria Saporta

The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation today released its 2014 list of its 10 “Places in Peril.”

The 10 places are located in all corners of the state, but not one of places on the list is located in metro Atlanta.

“This is the Trust’s ninth annual ‘Places in Peril’ list,” said Mark McDonald, president and CEO of the Trust. “We hope the list will continue to bring preservation action to Georgia’s imperiled historic resources by highlighting ten representative sites.”

“Places in Peril” is designed to raise awareness about Georgia’s significant historic, archaeological and cultural resources, including buildings, districts, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes that are threatened by demolition, neglect, lack of maintenance, inappropriate development or insensitive public policy.

By Maria Saporta

Metropolitan areas in the United States are the heart of trade in the nation’s economy — including Atlanta’s economy. But most of that trade is domestic rather than international.

The report by the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program is being released today as part of the five-year Global Cities Initiative. The report studied trade in the top 100 metro areas in the United States.

In all, those metro areas generate $20 trillion in trade — 85 percent of which is domestic and 15 percent of which is international, according to the new discussion paper — Metro-to-Metro: Global and Domestic Goods Trade in Metropolitan America. It is the first-ever measurement of goods exchange at the sub-national scale.

Back in 2000, then Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough felt like an orphan in Atlanta.

The boundaries of Central Atlanta Progress, the downtown business organization, ended at North Avenue and did not include the Georgia Tech campus.

And the western boundary of the Midtown Alliance ended at the Downtown Connector.

In a videotaped message at a recent Technology Square 10th Anniversary Symposium — “A Decade of Innovation,” Clough said he thought at the time: “Nobody wants to claim Georgia Tech.”

By Maria Saporta

It was an old-fashion civil rights rally to honor civil rights leader Rev. C.T. Vivian.

In the atrium of Atlanta’s City Hall on Saturday afternoon, a couple of hundred Atlantans came to give Vivian a “Congratulatory Send-off in Celebration of the Presidential Medal of Freedom” that he will receive at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 20.

After numerous friends and dignitaries spoke of the role that Vivian played in the civil rights movement for more than six decades, the lanky leader of justice clapped his hands with a great smile on his face — repeatedly saying: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

By Maria Saporta

Revamping Underground Atlanta and improving Five Points MARTA station are two top priorities that emerged at the final official meeting of the Downtown Development Technical Advisory Group (DDTAG) Thursday evening.

The task force, established by the Atlanta City Council, has included about 25 civic and community representatives who have spent the last five months taking an in-depth look at how to best stimulate new development, improved urban design and a better quality of life in the heart of the city.

A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, said the major goal of DDTAG was to leverage $2.5 billion worth of planned investment into $5 billion worth of actual investment as long as it was consistent with the community’s plans and visions.

By Maria Saporta

It’s not often that one hears from an environmentalist who has a hopeful view of the world.

After all, with climate change, income inequality, overpopulation, limited natural resources and political conflicts, most environmentalists would have you believe we’re headed to that point of no return — an earth that we have damaged so much that it could become uninhabitable to human beings in the foreseeable future.

And yet Sir Jonathon Porritt refuses to take such a gloomy view of the future. Porritt was in Atlanta on Oct. 9 to participate on a program with Laura Turner Seydel of the Turner Foundation, Howard Connell of Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business and John Gardner of Novelis at the Academy Medicine.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank is pleased with the recent progress for the new stadium development and the work that his foundation will be doing in the community.

“We are in a really good place,” Blank said in a brief conversation at the Four Pillar Award dinner in honor of Atlanta architect and developer John Portman on Thursday night. “We are really excited about the south site. It feels good to get the site solidified.”

Then looking to his dinner table neighbor Tommy Holder, one of the contractors of the new stadium project, Blank said with a smile: “We can finally put him to work. He’s been sitting on his (bottom).”

By Maria Saporta

A “humbled” John Portman accepted the Council for Quality Growth’s Four Pillar Award Thursday night in the first hotel he ever designed — the ground-breaking Hyatt Regency Atlanta.

Portman, overcome with emotion several time during his acceptance talk, spoke about how his family has always been there for him — “especially Jan, my wife of 69 years.”

After thanking his professional family and friends, he thanked every one for showing up at the dinner, attended by nearly 1,000 people.