By Maria Saporta and David Pendered
The red brick building on Auburn Avenue that once housed the Atlanta Daily World newspaper is getting a reprieve from the wrecking ball.
A developer’s proposal to tear down all but the front portion of the building was rejected unanimously by a powerful Economic Review Panel that reports to the Atlanta Urban Design Commission.
The commission later voted unanimously to accept the panel’s report and deny the demolition permit.
By Maria Saporta
Going to Atlanta Housing Authority board meeting can be surreal.
After having not met since Jan. 5 and despite having several lingering thorny issues (see previous post) on its plate, the AHA board met Wednesday as though nothing was out of the ordinary.
For starters, the chairman — Dan Halpern — was on vacation. And only four of the seven board members were present — enough for a quorum.
By Maria Saporta
When the Atlanta Housing Authority board meets on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., it will be the first time in nearly three months.
This is the same board that placed restrictions on Renee Glover, AHA’s president and CEO, last fall.
The board said she could not hire or fire any employees. It also stipulated that she could not enter into any contracts worth more than $10,000 without board approval.
By Maria Saporta
After 19 years at the helm of VOX Teen Communications, Rachel Alterman Wallack is stepping aside as the nonprofit’s executive director but will take on a new role as director of strategic initiatives.
Wallack, who founded the organization that has become metro Atlanta’s premier writing program for teens, has been serving as a part-time (75 percent) executive director for the past six years so she could spend more time with her family and raising her three children.
Now she and the VOX board believe it’s time for the nonprofit to focus on long term strategic plan and put in place a new leadership model.
By Maria Saporta
It was so Dennis Creech.
Upon being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2012 Environmental Awards breakfast Friday, Creech said the honor really belongs to all the people he has worked with for the past 34 years.
Creech, who was a founder of Southface in 1978, has been advocating for green building practices for more than three decades. Due to his leadership, metro Atlanta has become a leader for green building with some of the highest concentration of LEED certified buildings in a metro area.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 16, 2012
It’s one way to make goal.
When Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines, set the campaign goal for United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta at $80.4 million, he knew it was a stretch.
By Maria Saporta
We are in mourning at SaportaReport over the passing of Furman Bisher, our beloved colleague who was the legendary sports columnist for the Atlanta Journal, and later the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Although Furman was 93, outliving so many of his contemporaries, it still came as a shock to hear he had passed away on Sunday. We all thought that Furman was immortal — that he would live forever.
There are many Furman Bisher stories, and Michelle Hiskey will share some with you in her column next week.
Meanwhile, we wanted to let you know about the upcoming services honoring Furman’s rich and storied life.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed continues to enjoy solid support from a leading group of metro business leader serving on the Atlanta Committee for Progress.
The group met Monday morning when they discussed the mayor’s next steps for his administration — efforts that the business community has been willing to lend their financial and influential support.
“There’s been consistent support for what’s going to make a difference long term in the quality of life of the city,” said Jim Hannan, CEO of Georgia-Pacific Corp. who is new chair of the Atlanta Committee for Progress.
By Maria Saporta
Too many Peachtrees?
So thinks my friend George Vecsey, the famed sports writer and columnist who took a buyout from the New York Times in December.
Vecsey, who now has his own website — www.georgevecesy.com, was in Atlanta over the weekend visiting family when he “squandered an hour or two of my life trying to solve the maze of streets named Peachtree in the northern Atlanta suburbs.”
For Vecesey, he can’t understand why there are more than 70 streets in metro Atlanta with Peachtree in their name. He makes a valid case in his “How Baseball Could Solve a Terrible Problem” post.
“This suggests a staggering failure of imagination, if all the planners of the New South cannot do better than slap the name Peachtree on bisecting boulevards,” Vecsey said.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 9, 2012
Leaders in Atlanta and Georgia have launched a high-powered effort to lure a regional office of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to the city.
The federal government has said that it wants to establish several regional offices that could review and issue patents and trademarks as a way of encouraging innovation throughout the country.
By Maria Saporta
A visibly-relieved Mayor Kasim Reed savored the moment. Yes, the new Maynard H. Jackson Jr. International Terminal will open Wednesday, May 16.
The city was able to announce an opening date just one day after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Wright on Monday denied a request from losing airport concession bidders asking to block the city from finalizing concession deals and stop all work to build out retail and eating establishments on the new international terminal and the rest of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
“It feels good,” the mayor said after Tuesday morning’s media briefing in the new terminal still under construction. “I’m really happy. I feel good today.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 9, 2012
When William Foege receives Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen Jr. Prize in Social Courage on March 15, it will accomplish two important goals.
It will shine the spotlight on a relatively unknown Atlanta leader who has had a tremendous impact on saving lives across the world.
And it will help reinforce Atlanta’s role as a nexus for global health.
By Maria Saporta
A special appeal is being launched to get metro Atlanta’s transit advocates to vote on July 31 when a one percent regional transportation sales tax referendum will be on the ballot.
The “Fast Track Forward Initiative” is being spearheaded by the Livable Communities Coalition thanks to a “generous” $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, according to Jim Stokes, interim executive director of the Coalition.
In many ways this is a continuation of a relationship that was formed nearly two years ago when the Rockefeller Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to fund the successful Fair Share for Transit initiative.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 2, 2012
The Foundation for Economic Education will be moving its headquarters from New York to Atlanta in the fall, according to its president, Lawrence Reed.
The Foundation, which dates back to 1946, is the oldest free enterprise economics think tank in the United States, directly reaching about 15,000 students a year from around the world through weeklong seminars and other events. It also has a host of Web-based offerings that reach thousands more.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta media pioneer and philanthropist Ted Turner has always had a soft place in his heart for chimpanzees, apes and mountain gorillas.
On Wednesday night, Turner put money where his heart is. He announced a $1 million donation to the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to help save endangered gorillas in eastern Congo.
“Our wonderful friend Ted Turner has stepped up to the plate, and he has given the Dian Fossey Fund the largest gift we have ever received, “ said Clare Richardson, president and CEO of the Fossey Fund, at a press conference at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. “Ted you are a hero.”
By Maria Saporta
For Monica Kaufman Pearson, United Way is personal.
Pearson, long-time anchor for WSB-TV, was the keynote speaker Tuesday at United Way of Metro Atlanta’s Tocqueville Society at the Vinings Club.
Her relationship with United Way dates back long before 1988 when she became the first African-American and the second woman to chair Atlanta’s United Way board.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 2, 2012
JPMorgan Chase & Co. could not be more pleased with how its partnership with the King Center has turned out.
Since last April, JPMorgan has been working on the King Center Imaging Project — digitizing all the center’s archival materials, including speeches and papers of Martin Luther King Jr., and making them available on a new website: www.thekingcenter.org/archive.
By Maria Saporta
While the Atlanta preservation community is objecting to plans to demolish the historic home of the Atlanta Daily World, the parties behind the application released a lengthy statement Monday evening to present their point of view.
It is a joint statement from Alexis Scott, publisher of Atlanta Daily World and the building’s owner; and Valerie Edwards, an executive with the Integral Group, which wants to redevelop the property.
By Maria Saporta
At the First Monday breakfast of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, Georgia’s top economic development official made a passionate plea for the penny sales tax for regional transportation.
Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said passage of the tax would be key to the state’s ability to attract new companies and jobs over the next decade.
Twelve regions in the state will be voting on July 31 whether to approve the sales tax, which then would build a host of transportation projects in their individual areas.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, February 24, 2012
Rome-based Berry College has received an anonymous $10 million challenge gift to help provide at least 80 new full-time scholarships for students who combine their studies with work on campus.
