Category: Sections

By Maria Saporta

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard will be stepping down as president of the Georgia Conservancy at the end of June, the organization announced Monday.

Howard has led the Georgia Conservancy since 2009. He will remain as a senior advisor and as a member of the Advisory board with a focus on helping to develop the Georgia Conservancy’s 2015-2019 Strategic Plan, continuing to expand its Land Conservation Initiative and easing the transition to a new president, according to the press release.

The organization board of trustees is planning to engage a search firm to help identify candidates for a successor, and the goal is to have a new president in place by July 1, the start of the Conservancy’s new fiscal year.

By Maria Saporta

The memorial service celebrating the life of J. Mack Robinson on Friday captured the essence of the man — someone who succeeded in several lines of business but never let that success change his humble, self-effacing nature.

Robinson, 90, passed away on Feb. 7.

Ambassador Edward Elson, his friend for nearly 50 years, described Robinson as a “quintessential American hero” who could have emerged from a “Jimmy Stewart movie from the 1930s.”

Elson used several adjectives to describe his friend — handsome, wise, intuitive, soft-spoken, innocent, fair, yet highly sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

“He was at home anywhere,” said Elson, adding that he would mingle among presidents and princes as well as corporate moguls. “Yet Mack never seemed to understand how he got there. He never could fully appreciate his own genius. He was always so surprised by his own success.”

By Maria Saporta

The Georgia World Congress Center Authority was selected Wednesday to manage the Savannah International Trade & Convention Center.

The Georgia International Maritime and Trade Center Authority approved the selection of GWCCA at a meeting in Savannah on Wednesday. The GWCCA will be responsible for managing and operating the Savannah convention center. It also will work collaboratively with the “Visit Savannah” team in marketing the convention center as a premier business destination, according to Jennifer LeMaster, GWCCA’s director of communications, who issued a press release.

The two authorities will now begin negotiating the details of a multi-year agreement, according to the release.

By Maria Saporta

MARTA was one of three transit agencies built at the same time — BART in San Francisco and METRO in Washington, D.C.

Both BART and METRO today have about 100 miles of rail, but MARTA only has 48 miles — giving fuel to the argument that it is a skeletal system.

But if its up to MARTA General Manager Keith Parker the transit agency will re-enter into an expansion mode as soon as fiscally possible.

“MARTA has only reached half of its potential,” Parker told members of the Rotary Club of Atlanta on Monday. “We are a transit system we feel is poised to do much more, to be like Washington and San Francisco, which are 100-mile transit authorities.”

By Maria Saporta

An updated update: Due to weather concerns, the memorial service now is scheduled for  Friday, Feb. 14 at 2 p.m. at Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. The family will be receiving guests immediately following the service in the Robinson Atrium at the High Museum of Art. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to either Emory University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center or the High Museum of Art.

Legendary Atlanta businessman J. Mack Robinson passed away Saturday night after a long illness.

Robinson, 90, enjoyed one of the most colorful professional lives of any businessman in Atlanta — experiencing the worlds of banking, insurance, fashion design, media, horse racing and numerous other business sectors.

Throughout his life, Robinson was probably best known as a polite, soft-spoken Southern gentleman who rarely had an unkind word for anyone.

By Maria Saporta

Gov. Nathan Deal used the forum of speaking to the high-level board of the Commerce Club at its Thursday lunch to talk about a “few things we had in the budget designed to stimulate economic development in our state.”

After the closed lunch meeting, Deal spent a few minutes in an interview to talk about what issues were on the minds of some of the top business leaders in Atlanta.

Deal, who had been invited to speak to the Commerce Club board three times in 2013 but ended up having to cancel each time, also outlined his plans for criminal justice reform and education in the state.

After his prepared remarks, business leaders asked the governor about what the state should do to fix the transportation issues that exist in metro Atlanta.

By Maria Saporta

Bernice A. King – the youngest and only living daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. – issued the strongest statement yet against her two brothers — Dexter Scott King and Martin Luther King III — and their desire to sell two of their late father’s prized possessions.

Bernice King, CEO of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent and Social Change, went public Tuesday about how her brothers now want to sell her father’s Nobel Peace Prize medal and his personal Bible.

Once again, the King brothers used a monumental date in order to take an action against their sister. They first filed a suit trying to get her ousted as a CEO of the King Center on Aug. 28, 2013 — the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

By Maria Saporta

Thanks to their popularity and demand for original and branded entertainment, Turner Broadcasting System’s Animation, Young Adults and Kids Media offerings will be expanding and undergoing strategic changes, the company announced Tuesday morning.

The expansions and strategic changes will impact Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network and the all-cartoon-classics Boomerang.

Stuart Snyder, president and COO of Turner’s AYAKM (Animation, Young Adults and Kids Media), announced the following changes:

By Maria Saporta

A stand-off is intensifying between the west side communities and the Atlanta Falcons over the future alignment of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive around the new football stadium.

The presidents of the four Atlanta University colleges wrote a letter on Jan. 24 to Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and Frank Poe, executive director of the Georgia World Congress Center expressing “deep concern” about the latest plans for the street.

Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College who serves as chair of the Atlanta University Center Consortium, sent the letter on behalf of her colleagues — the presidents of Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine and Clark Atlanta University as well as the thousands of students that attend their institutions.

By Maria Saporta

In an all-too-rare spirit of bipartisan cooperation, U.S. Senators Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) appeared jointly at the Rotary Club of Atlanta urging for the federal government to convert to a two-year budget cycle.

“We have to change the way we do business in Washington,” said Shaheen, a former governor of New Hampshire who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008.

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Press Club is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2014 by looking forward rather than focusing on the past.

The APC’s “Forward at Fifty” initiative will seek to leverage the anniversary year as a way of strengthening the role of journalism in serving the public interest. The year-long series of events will unfold under three themes — “Celebrate, Educate and Engage.” The Cox Media Group will sponsor the APC’s “Forward at Fifty” initiative.

By Maria Saporta

A sold out audience attended the world premier concert of the National Arab Orchestra at Atlanta’s Symphony Hall Friday night — living up to its billing — “Building Bridges through Music.”

Even Gov. Nathan Deal wrote a letter of welcome to the National Arab Orchestra and the concert attendees that was printed in the evening’s program. “On behalf of the State of Georgia, it is a pleasure to be a part of this special performance,” Deal wrote.

The host of the Atlanta concert was Nue Medical Consulting, a health information technology company based in Lawrenceville. The event helped the National Arab Orchestra in its quest to meet a $100,000 challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Arts Challenge for an inaugural innovative music program to benefit Detroit’s students.