Category: Sections

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.

By Maria Saporta

If Georgia State University were human, it probably would identify with Rodney Dangerfield.

For those younger than 30, Dangerfield was the comedian (1921-2004) who coined the catchphrase: “I don’t get no respect!”

But it may be time for Georgia State to be viewed as being in the same league as the much more revered University of Georgia and Georgia Tech.

GSU President Mark Becker was the keynote speaker at the Rotary Club of Atlanta Monday tracing the university’s roots back 100 years to 1913 when it was the Evening College of Commerce with 48 white men as students.

By Maria Saporta

One of Atlanta’s best-kept secrets continues to be the Morehouse School of Medicine and its sister colleges at the Atlanta University Center.

Case in point was when six former U.S. Surgeons General convened at the Morehouse School of Medicine Thursday morning with a common theme — that serving as the nation’s top doctor transcends politics.