Category: ATL Business Chronicle

By Maria Saporta
Friday, November 11, 2011

Waffle House soon will be the latest Atlanta institution to border Centennial Olympic Park with a signature location.

The national restaurant chain that was founded in metro Atlanta in 1955 is buying a prime piece of downtown land at the corner of Andrew Young International Boulevard and Centennial Olympic Park Boulevard for what will become a “showcase” for Waffle House.

“We are an Atlanta institution, and we will be down there near the World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium,” said Pat Warner, vice president of marketing and communications for Waffle House. “This is a great location for us because of the millions of people who are down there each year who will be exposed to our brand.”

By Maria Saporta
Friday, November 4, 2011

A slow economy has not stopped Georgia Tech’s fundraising prowess.
For the fiscal year ending on June 30, Georgia Tech received $118.1 million — its second-best fundraising year ever.

And those numbers, which Georgia Tech reported to the Council for Aid to Education, only include gifts received rather than pledges made to the university.

“Georgia Tech alumni and friends have a long-standing tradition of generously supporting the Institute,” said Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson, in a statement.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, November 4, 2011

The Atlanta Falcons and Georgia World Congress Center will soon send out a request for proposals to potential designers of a new football stadium.

Falcons and GWCC officials expect to issue the RFP by the end of November for national and international architects to provide conceptual designs for a new open-air football stadium. The new stadium would be located north of the Falcons existing home — the Georgia Dome — at the intersection of Northside Drive and Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard.

“It gives us an opportunity to look at some conceptual designs for the stadium and to get cost estimates,” said Rich McKay, Falcons president and CEO. “Our hope is that it would be issued in the next 30 days.”

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 28, 2011

The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation has preserved its own home for the next five decades.

“We just signed a new 50-year lease with the state of Georgia for Rhodes Hall,” said Mark McDonald, president and CEO of the Georgia Trust. “We have been here since 1983, but we hadn’t had a lease for the last three years.”

Rhodes Hall was built in 1904 as the original residence of Rhodes Furniture founder Amos Rhodes at 1516 Peachtree St. in Midtown. Today, it is a historic house museum that doubles as the headquarters for the Georgia Trust.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 28, 2011

Move over Fortune 500.

The Philanthropy 400 gives metro Atlanta and Georgia solid bragging rights as a leading center for the headquarters of the country’s major nonprofit organizations.

The 2011 Philanthropy 400 list, compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, shows that five of the largest 20 nonprofits in the country are based in metro Atlanta. The only other metro area with the headquarters of five of the top 20 is the Greater Washington, D.C., area.

The list ranks the 400 charities that raised the most donations from private sources in 2010. The top three nonprofits in the country were: United Way Worldwide; the Salvation Army and the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 21, 2011

Atlanta business leader Ray Christman has been tapped to become the senior vice president of the Mid South Division for the Trust for Public Land. Also, the division is being relocated from Miami to Atlanta at the same time.

Christman, who currently is executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition, also worked for the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and the Peachtree Corridor Task Force.

Previously, Christman spent 13 years with the Federal Home Loan Bank system, including serving as president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.]

Christman, who has a master’s degree in urban planning, said that he has always been drawn to TPL’s “unique mission” of promoting land conservation and park land in urban areas.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 14, 2011

The Atlanta Regional Office of the American Jewish Committee has named Dov Wilker to be its new director beginning on Nov. 14.

He will succeed Sheri Labovitz, who has been serving as the interim director of the office and who served on the search committee and was a former president of the organization.

“Dov is really a magical choice for us,” Labovitz said. “He was our assistant director during my term as president, so I have been the direct beneficiary of his dedication, energy and intellect.”

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 14, 2011

Purpose Built Communities, a nonprofit group founded four years ago by Atlanta businessman Tom Cousins and billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and now led by former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, held its second annual Network Member Conference in Indianapolis in September where supporters could see firsthand one of its neighborhoods under construction.

Atlanta Business Chronicle contributing writer Maria Saporta was there. Here is her second of two stories reporting on the group’s work.

Back in the 1960s, the Avondale Meadows community in Indianapolis was one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city — a place where young professionals could raise their families on tree-lined streets.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Oct. 14, 2011

A majority of Georgia’s public companies now have at least one woman on their boards, the first time that the percentage has topped 49 percent.

The latest study by the Board of Directors Network, which will be officially released at the organization’s annual meeting on Oct. 20, shows that 56 percent of Georgia’s 136 public companies now have a least one woman director.

Last year, 49 percent of Georgia’s public companies had one or more women on boards (at the time Georgia had 150 public companies), the highest percentage that had ever been reached in the 19 years that BDN has been keeping track. In 1993, the first year that BDN did a study, only 27 percent of Georgia’s public companies had women directors.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 7, 2011

Atlanta Equity Investors has just sold one of its five portfolio companies, but it has turned right around and invested in a health-care services company based in Lexington, Ky.

“The summer usually sucks in the private equity business, and we are bucking that trend,” said Gerry Benjamin, who is an Atlanta Equity partner along with former Georgia-Pacific CEO Pete Correll and David Crosland, formerly with Arcapita.

On Oct. 3, Atlanta Equity sold its interest in Richmond Cold Storage, which it had bought in April 2009 for $15 million, to Southeast Cold Holdings, a unit of Bay Grove Capital.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, October 7, 2011

Purpose Built Communities, a nonprofit group founded four years ago by Atlanta businessman Tom Cousins and billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and now led by former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, held its second annual Network Member Conference in Indianapolis in September where supporters could see firsthand one of its neighborhoods under construction. Atlanta Business Chronicle contributing writer Maria Saporta was there. Here is the first of two stories reporting on the group’s work. The second will appear next week.

In March 2007, Atlanta developer Tom Cousins received a letter.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 30, 2011

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has a long-term plan to shore up the city’s finances.

The first step was pension reform — a plan that passed in July after the mayor made it priority as soon as he took office in January 2010.
Now the mayor wants to take on the city’s rising health-care costs.

“It’s the next step in stabilizing the city’s finances,” Reed said. “We are going to be asking for help again in a similar model that we used in the past.”

The formula Reed used with pensions was to put together a blue-ribbon

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 23, 2011

The Nature Conservancy’s Georgia chapter has a new executive director — Mark Abner, who is coming back home.

Abner, who most recently was director of philanthropy for the Nature Conservancy’s mid-Atlantic States operations in the Washington, D.C., area, was born in Jesup, Ga., where his family had lived for 200 years.

“I’ve lived in a lot of places that were not home,” said Abner, who left Georgia in 1988 after receiving his bachelor’s degree from Emory University. He received his master’s degree in environmental studies from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. He moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he worked for the University of Minnesota Foundation and the Trust For Public Land.

By Maria Saporta and Lisa Schoolcraft
Friday, Sept. 23, 2011

The College Football Hall of Fame is racing against the clock to raise another $20 million before the end of the year so it can break ground in February.

Supporters have raised $22 million thus far for the project, which is expected to cost a total of $67.5 million.

And a trio of banks just agreed to provide a $27.5 million loan to help fund the Hall of Fame during construction. The loan, which is being secured by sponsorships pledges and donations, is being led by Regions Bank and includes Fifth Third Bank and BB&T.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

Two Atlanta Olympic veterans, Terrence Burns and George Hirthler, have joined forces to work on a 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid.

Between the two of them, they have been part of five successful Olympic bids in the past 20 years — Atlanta (1996), Beijing (2008), Vancouver (2010), Sochi (2014) and PyeongChang (2018).

Burns and Hirthler are former business partners. Their previous firm — Helikon Media — worked on the successful Beijing and Vancouver Olympic bids. The firm dissolved in the early 2000s after 9/11 and the recession when “every piece of the incremental marketing business went away,” Burns said.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 16, 2011

In an effort to make Georgia more competitive, Gov. Nathan Deal is open to allowing a portion of the state’s pension funds to be invested in venture capital.

Georgia is the only state in the nation that forbids its employee pension funds to be invested in alternative investments — a sore point among technology leaders hoping to make Georgia a vibrant center for research and new ventures.

For much of the past decade, technology leaders have been trying to get traction at the state Capitol to change Georgia’s restrictive investment policies — so far to no avail.

But Deal could emerge as a champion to change the state pension funds’ investment portfolio.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 9, 2011

The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta has named Detroit businessman and philanthropist Michael Horowitz as its new president and CEO.

The federation, Atlanta’s premier Jewish fundraising organization, approved Horowitz as its new leader at its board meeting Wednesday, Sept. 7. He will begin his new post Oct. 17.

Horowitz held several leadership roles in Detroit’s Jewish community. He chaired the board of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, served on its executive community and founded the Israel and Overseas Committee as some of his roles.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, September 9, 2011

The 138-year-old Atlanta Humane Society is about to begin a whole new chapter in its history.

The organization has selected its board chairman — William Shaheen — to become its new president effective Jan. 20, 2012, when the current president — Carl Leveridge — plans to retire.

And later this year, it will double in size and expand its offerings when its new Mansell Road campus in North Fulton opens on Dec. 1.

For Shaheen, 48, it also is a second professional chapter in his life. He has been president of Shaheen & Co., a second-generation, family-owned real estate development firm.

And although he will continue to work with the firm in a strategic capacity, Shaheen is following his passion by becoming president of Atlanta Humane Society.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 2, 2011

United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta Inc. will lift off its 2011 campaign Sept. 8 at a unique setting — Delta’s Hangar 2.

That’s because Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines Inc., is United Way’s 2011 campaign chair.

The campaign event will be where Anderson will officially announce this year’s goal of $80.4 million — a slight increase over the $80.2 million goal that was reached last year.

By Maria Saporta
Friday, September 2, 2011

As former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin sees it, she is coming full circle — returning to her first love of transforming communities.

Recently, Franklin became CEO of Purpose Built Communities, an organization that partners with local nonprofit organizations to transform struggling neighborhoods in various cities.

Purpose Built was the inspiration of developer Tom Cousins, who wanted to replicate around the country the successful transformation of Atlanta’s East Lake community. For Purpose Built, Cousins has partnered with two other philanthropists — Warren Buffett and Julian Robertson — and they have agreed to cover its operating costs.