Category: Latest News

By Maria Saporta

The City of Atlanta is beginning to play hardball when it comes to its dealings with Friendship Baptist Church.

Up until now, the city and the Atlanta Falcons have said that it needs Friendship in order to build a new stadium on the site south of the Georgia Dome.

But after months of off-and-on talks between the city and Friendship, a significant gap remains between what the city is willing to offer and how much Friendship would like for the property.

So the city has come up with another idea. Reroute Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to Mitchell Street so that both the stadium and Friendship could be located side-by-side.

By Maria Saporta

Rollins Inc. has named Elizabeth “Beth” Chandler as its new vice president and general counsel, replacing recently retired Kathleen Mayton.

Rollins, a nationwide consumer services company, is best known for signature brand — Orkin pest control.

Chandler has had a long tenure in Atlanta. Before joining Rollins, Chandler was vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary for Asbury Automotive. Prior to working with Asbury, Chandler served as city attorney for the City of Atlanta; and she served as vice president, assistant general counsel and corporate secretary for Mirant Corp.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has nixed the idea of meeting with all the parties interested in acquiring Friendship Baptist Church to make way for a new Atlanta Falcons stadium.

The mayor also does not want to have a mediator try to find a middle ground between what the City of Atlanta has offered to buy the church and the property and what Friendship believes it needs to relocate and rebuild in the Vine City community.

“We got a response back from the mayor, and the mayor has said he doesn’t want to have a mediation,” said Lloyd Hawk, chairman of Friendship’s board of trustees, on Monday afternoon. “He’s not will to sit down at the table with everyone.”

By Maria Saporta

The Byers Brothers could take their act on the road.

The three brothers — Ken, Brook and Tom — who have all excelled as technology entrepreneurs from different vantage points, were the featured speakers at Monday’s Rotary Club of Atlanta where they spoke about the future of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The oldest brother, Ken Byers, started his business in 1971 and is the founder of the Atlanta-based Byers Engineering Co. Like his brothers, he went to Georgia Tech. But unlike his two younger siblings, he never left.

Brook Byers is a founding partner of the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. As one of the largest venture capital firms in the country, it has invested in a multitude of companies including Amazon.com, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Intuit.

By Maria Saporta

Members of Friendship Baptist Church were caught by surprise when Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed told WXIA-TV Thursday about the offers and counter-offers on the possible sale of the church to make way for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium.

“We were surprised that he came out and publicly stated that in the middle of negotiations,” said Lloyd Hawk, chairman of Friendship’s board of trustees, on Friday morning. “The congregation is very confused at this point. It has certainly made the situation at the church a little more complicated.”

Reed told WXIA that the city initially offered $13.5 million for the Friendship and its surrounding property, but Friendship had asked for $24.54 million. “We can’t afford that, so we sent back an offer of $15.5 million,” Reed told WXIA.

By Maria Saporta

A successful program that has put money in the pockets of Atlantans who need it most will now be managed by the United Way of Greater Atlanta instead of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program has been operated in metro Atlanta since 2007. It has offered free tax preparation services to low- and moderate-income families — helping them avoid costly income tax preparation fees and make sure that people receive all the available tax credits and deductions.

Those include the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit and other available tax credits. VITA has been able to offer its services at more than 40 sites in 12 metro counties. The Atlanta Community Food Bank has been partnering with numerous organizations, including United Way.

By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk

Two more Atlanta contractors — H.J. Russell & Co. and C.D. Moody — have joined the general construction team that will be building the new Atlanta Falcons stadium, it was announced on Tuesday.

Russell and Moody, both minority-owned construction firms, will join the previously announced lead contractors of Holder and Hunt. Holder is an Atlanta-based construction firm that was founded in 1960 by Robert Holder and is now run by his son, Tommy Holder. Hunt, led by Bob Hunt, has built numerous football stadiums including six with retractable roofs.

“We are very happy to announce that we rounded out our partnership,” said Tommy Holder, when making the announcement about Russell and Moody.

By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk

A more detailed conceptual design for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium was approved Monday by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s Stadium Development Committee.

The revised conceptual design by 360 Architecture, which expands upon the proposed “Pantheon” concept presented in April, will be presented to the GWCCA’s board for approval on Tuesday.

Bill Johnson, 360’s senior principal, showed new sketches of the design and how it would sit on the “south site” adjacent to the Georgia Dome, which will be demolished once the new $1 billion stadium opens in 2017.

By Maria Saporta

Three Atlanta firms have joined 360 Architecture to partner in the design of a new football stadium, the Atlanta Falcons announced Friday afternoon.

The three firms are: Goode Van Slyke Architecture (GVSA), Stanley Beaman & Sears and tvsdesign. The three firms were selected because are thought to bring “unique skills to the table,” according to the release.

“The three partners selected provide an attractive combination of skill sets, chemistry and capacity,” said Bill Johnson, senior principal of 360 Architecture. “Coupled with their knowledge of Atlanta, and the new stadium area in particular, we look forward to their many contributions to this project.”

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta has been the setting this week for a national conversation on the future of our workforce and how we can help those with the lowest paying jobs graduate to the middle class.

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions, a five-year-old organization of foundations and organizations interested in improving the job opportunities for low-wage employees, has spent the last three days in Atlanta looking at the results of its 30 community partners across the country to see if they have made a different. About 275 people from around the country have been exploring the best practices in job training and placement in various communities.

By Maria Saporta

MARTA has placed Ben Graham, its chief information officer and assistant general manager of information technology, on “administrative leave with pay,” according to a statement from the transit agency.

MARTA, responding to a question about the status of an investigation, said Graham’s administrative leave was “part of the ongoing audit and investigation of that department’s performance.”

It was disclosed in a story in April that MARTA had retained the auditing firm of KPMG LLP to conduct an internal investigation of possible misappropriation of assets in the operations that were headed by Graham. It is not clear when the KPMG investigation will be completed.

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta BeltLine Inc. has a new president and CEO — Paul Morris from North Carolina.

The ABI board met Wednesday morning when it voted to approve Morris, the former deputy secretary of transit for the N.C. Department of Transportation, as its next executive. Morris is expected to begin his new role within the next several weeks.

ABI Chairman John Somerhalder, CEO of AGL Resources Inc., said that Morris’ wealth and breadth of experience made him the top choice among the five finalists for the position.

By Maria Saporta

The naming of a new CEO for the Atlanta BeltLine could happen in a matter of days. But now the number of finalists has gone from five to four.

The board of the Atlanta BeltLine Inc. is scheduled to meet Wednesday morning when it is likely it will select its next CEO from the four remaining candidates.

One of the two out-of-town candidates — Aundra “Drew” Wallace — is the unanimous choice to become CEO of the Jacksonville Downtown Investment Authority. Wallace has been executive director of the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

By Maria Saporta

What do the Atlanta Community Food Bank, MedShare and Lifecycle Building Center have in common?

Each nonprofit provides an opportunity for products to be used or reused, and each one of them prevent products from being thrown away and ending up in a landfill.

Executives from each organization were part of a panel discussion on Friday at the Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable on “Transforming the World through Reuse.”

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said he is on the verge of making an offer to acquire Friendship Baptist Church to make room for a new Atlanta Falcons football stadium.

“My issue was to make sure the Congregational support was above two-thirds,” Reed said. “We are getting there.”

When asked about the timing, Reed said it will be in a matter of days.

“I want to move this forward,” Reed said, adding that the city would be presenting an offer to Friendship “definitely within the next 10 days.”

The Atlanta Falcons are anxiously waiting on the outcome of the city’s negotiations to buy Friendship as well as the culmination of negotiations that the Georgia World Congress Center is having with Mount Vernon Baptist Church, which is across the street from Friendship.

By Maria Saporta

The City of Atlanta improved its “park score” in 2013 — earning two-and-a-half park benches from the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore index, an improvement from its two bench score in 2012.

Atlanta was one of only four cities to improve its park bench rating in the 2013 ranking. The other three cities that improved their park bench ratings were New York, Long Beach and Fresno.

Still the Atlanta results were mixed. The Trust increased the number of U.S. cities in its ranking from 40 to 50 cities. As a result, Atlanta’s ranking went from being 26th among 40 cities to being tied for 31st among 50 cities.

One of the new cities that was added to the list was Minneapolis, which actually bumped San Francisco to be ranked as the nation’s top park system, according a press release from the Trust for Public Land. Minneapolis was the only city to have a perfect score of five park benches.

By Maria Saporta

After 17 years as president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Sam A. Williams told the organization’s executive committee at a specially-called meeting Tuesday morning that he will retire at the end of the year or when his replacement is hired.

Williams, 68, has been one of the leading voices of the Atlanta business community for decades — at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, three years as president of Central Atlanta Progress and 22 years at the Portman Companies.

In his role as president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Williams has been instrumental in a number of civic initiatives — helping save Grady Hospital; working to change the Georgia flag; meeting the standards of the Clean Water Act; trying to reduce congestion and increase investment in transportation; revamping the region’s economic development strategies; improving the area’s quality of life; and trying to improve the outcomes of students attending public schools.

By Maria Saporta

National Public Radio is committed to living up to the “national” part of its name.

That was one of the messages that Gary Knell, president and CEO of NPR, shared with the Rotary Club of Atlanta during his talk on Monday.

“When you have journalists based only in Washington and New York, you are not hearing what is going on in the country,” Knell said. “We are going to rely more on our partners like WABE. We have got an army of 1,200 journalists around the country at 270 stations.”

Knell said NPR already has become a powerful force in the field of journalism. It has 38 million listeners per week, which is more than the subscribers of 78 of nation’s top newspapers combined.

By Maria Saporta

Another great Atlanta tradition is born.

The Atlanta Braves on Friday launched the beginning of the team’s first-ever Heritage Weekend (May 31 to June 2) as a way to pay tribute to its home city’s Civil Rights legacy.

And the opening luncheon did not disappoint with the presence of legends who broke racial barriers in the world of sports and society in general.

In 2011 and 2012, the Atlanta Braves hosted the Civil Rights Game. But this year, Braves decided to expand the idea into an annual Heritage Weekend and to pay tribute to the team’s own icon — Hank Aaron — with the Hank Aaron Champion for Justice Award.

By Maria Saporta

Rarely do preservation stories in Atlanta end up with happy endings.

But that’s exactly the happy fate of the historic Randolph-Lucas house — a 1924 home in south Buckhead — that has been threatened with demolition several times in recent years.

The solution? The house will be moved from its current location at Peachtree Road and Lindbergh Drive to Atlanta’s Ansley Park neighborhood to a vacant lot at 78 Peachtree Circle later this summer.

The home is being saved thanks to an extraordinary effort that has taken place bettween a host of partners — especially the Buckhead Heritage Society and the new owners of the home — Christoper Jones and Roger Smith, founder of NewTown Partners. They will be returning the mansion to its residential roots for the first time in nearly 20 years.