Category: Latest News

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Regional Commission has received a federal grant to embark on a year-long effort to put together an “economic development” framework for metro Atlanta.

The initiative was announced Monday morning at the Atlanta Region Summit of the Georgia Competitiveness Initiative that is being held at Georgia Tech’s Conference Center.

The $318,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration us part of a three-year effort to create a strategic plan for innovation and growth for the whole region.

By Maria Saporta

For more than 20 years, a regional leadership program has been preparing current and up-and-coming leaders for moments just like this.

The week-long Regional Leadership Institute (RLI), which had its first class in 1991, brings people together from all corners of the region where they can take a deep look at the issues facing metro Atlanta — from transportation, water, education, aging and leadership.

The program, which takes place at St. Simons Island, has become a neutral ground where a diverse group of leaders can get to know each other and find areas of consensus when they return to metro Atlanta to work on its various challenges.

By Maria Saporta

Georgia State University President Mark Becker is taking on a major community role.

As of July 1, Becker became board chair of the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE), an organization of 20 colleges and universities in the greater metro area.

Becker succeeds Beheruz Sethna, the president of the University of West Georgia, who has chaired the board for the past two years. Sethna will remain on ARCHE’s executive committee.

By Maria Saporta

The City of Atlanta is reviewing its festival ordinance and policies, according to George Dusenbury, commissioner of the City of Atlanta Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs.

A particular focus is Piedmont Park, the most popular gathering spot in Atlanta and usually the favored choice for any organization wanting to hold an event or festival in a city park.

Now that Music Midtown has announced that it will be resurrecting its festival at Piedmont Park, questions about the park’s use or over-use are resurfacing.

Music Midtown will make its comeback on Sept. 24 wit Coldplay as its headlining act. There also is a chance that a major artist will come the night before — turning the “new” Music Midtown in a two-day, two–stage event.

By Maria Saporta

Ever since the popular Music Midtown festival disappeared after the 2005 season, Alex Cooley wanted to bring it back.

Cooley, who was the inspiration and founder of the “legacy” Music Midtown, believed Atlanta’s music scene would never be complete without an annual festival that attracted both known and unknown artists.

“It’s very important for Atlanta to have a music festival,” Cooley said in a telephone interview on the same day that plans for a “new” Music Midtown was unveiled. “If you go back, I wanted this to be a festival that lasted for 20, 30, 40 years.”

Cooley is the true godfather of concerts and music performances in Atlanta. He literally introduced Atlanta to the national music scene, and vice versa.

By Maria Saporta

Could it be? Music Midtown is coming back?

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s office issued a media advisory today that smells an awful lot like a return of Music Midtown. The title of the advisory: “Mayor Kasim Reed and Live Nation’s Peter Conlon to Make Major Music Announcement.”

A press conference is planned for noon at the W Atlanta Downtown, and the people involved will be: Mayor Reed; Conlon; president of Live Nation Atlanta; William Pate, president of the Atlanta Convention & Visitor’s Bureau; and Atlanta City Councilmen Alex Wan and Kwanza Hall.

Music Midtown was a popular Atlanta institution from 1994 to 2005 when it was discontinued because of losses it had incurred due to inclement weather and the scheduling of major expensive acts.

By Maria Saporta

The next six weeks are the make or break time for the regional transportation sales tax.

On Aug. 15, the executive committee of the Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable will release its draft list of transportation projects to be included as part of the 2012 referendum.

For transit advocates, the critical issue will be whether a large portion of those projects will be for non-road and bridges transportation options. In short, they will be looking to see if the project list will include significant funding for transit, bicycle paths and sidewalks.

By Maria Saporta

The mood was somber at the Fair Share for Transit reception — held Thursday evening at the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown on the 75th anniversary of “Gone with the Wind.”

The coalition of 67 local organizations and groups is hoping that the region will invest in transit as part of the one-cent transportation sales tax that will go before voters in 2012.

“We are coming to a very critical juncture in this process,” said Ray Christman, executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition, the lead organization behind the Fair Share for Transit initiative.

Christman explained that by law, by Aug. 15, the region will have to issue a draft list of all the transportation projects that is to be included in the referendum.

By Maria Saporta

Some things just don’t make sense.

Georgia seems determined to stab itself in the back.

On Monday, the Georgia Ports Authority re-elected Alec Poitevint II of Bainbridge to serve a second term as chairman.

That would not be an issue if the Georgia Ports Authority weren’t seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government and the Obama administration to deepen the Savannah port so it can accommodate the mega container ships that will be hitting the seas in 2014.

Georgia has made the deepening of the Savannah port one of its top economic development authorities — some even comparing it to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

But Georgia is not helping its case in Washington by re-electing Poitevint as its

By Maria Saporta

In the end, it all came down to becoming CEO.

Suzanne Sitherwood, who has spent 31 years at AGL Resources — most recently as president of Atlanta Gas Light, will join St. Louis-based Laclede Group, first as its president and then as its CEO.

Laclede, a natural gas holding company that’s remarkably similar in scope to AGL Resources, announced earlier this week that its chairman and CEO Douglas Yaeger was planning to retire Jan. 31, 2012.

Sitherwood will become Laclede’s president on Sept. 1, and then she’ll become the company’s CEO on Feb. 1, 2012.

In a wide-ranging interview, Sitherwood spoke of her mixed emotions in leaving Georgia and AGL Resources, where she has become one of the most important women executives in the state.

By Maria Saporta

After a couple of bleak years, it appears that charitable giving is coming back.

That was the message at a recent presentation by David King, a board member of the Giving USA Foundation, which conducts an annual study on philanthropic trends.

In 2010, there was $290.89 billion in charitable giving, a 3.8 percent increase in current dollars over 2009. The total giving in 2009 was $280.30 billion.

“Most definitely, things have turned around,” said King, managing partner and president of Alexander Haas Martin & Partners, after his presentation at Oglethorpe University. “The worst is over, but I don’t think we are going to get back to where we were in 2007 in the near future.”

By Maria Saporta

Now the hard work begins — shrinking a wish list of $22.9 billion worth of transportation projects into a list that is estimated to cost a total of $6.14 billion over the next 10 years.

But numerous questions remain.

At Monday’s Fulton County Transportation Summit, it was clear that a division exists among leaders in the county.

Virtually the whole meeting was dedicated to discussing the future of rail transportation in the region.

But several mayors in north Fulton have already been expressed their displeasure with the proposed tax because they already pay a one-penny sales tax.

By Maria Saporta

It’s official.

The Atlanta Board of Education voted Monday to name Erroll Davis, the outgoing chancellor for the Georgia Board of Regents, as the interim school superintendent (see previous posts in Latest Reports).

In an 8-0 vote (one board member was out of town), the school board picked Davis to succeed Superintendent Beverly Hall, whose last day will be June 30. By the way, Davis’ last day as chancellor also will be June 30, and he will become the interim on July 1.

Meanwhile, the board also is continuing its search for a permanent superintendent. It will interview three finalists for the position on Friday, but Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said he will not support any superintendent that has been selected under the current governance of the Atlanta Board of Education.

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Committee for Progress, at its regular quarterly meeting Monday morning, weighed in on the current situation of the Atlanta Public Schools by strongly supporting a plan to name outgoing Georgia Board of Regents Chancellor Erroll Davis as the interim superintendent.

“Because of his impeccable credentials, many of us see Mr. Davis as offering a lot of stability and affording us the time to do a national search for a best in class superintendent to serve the long term needs of the students in the Atlanta public schools,” said Phil Kent, ACP’s chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting.

Kent went on to say that Davis has strong support from Gov. Nathan Deal, the philanthropic community and a broad group of organizations, including 100 Black Men of Atlanta, which initially presented his name.

By Maria Saporta

In a luncheon talk to the Atlanta Press Club Wednesday, Bernie Marcus announced plans to build a school to serve children with autism.

Marcus, co-founder of the Home Depot and a leading philanthropist, founded the Marcus Institute in 1990 to serve children with developmental disabilities.

Since then, the facility has focused its efforts on children with autism. Also, Marcus then turned the Marcus Center to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to give it greater stability.

“This morning, I had a meeting about actually taking the Marcus Autism Center and taking it to education,” Marcus told the Atlanta Press Club Wednesday. “We are probably going to open a school very shortly for children with autism.”

By Maria Saporta

Shareholders of AGL Resources Tuesday morning approved the pending merger between the Atlanta-based natural gas company and Nicor Inc., which is based in Naperville, Ill.

The meeting was relatively short as more than 90 percent of the votes cast approved the merger. There were no questions from shareholders during the meeting.

About 95 percent of the shares cast approved increasing the number of AGL board seats from 15 to 16. Currently, AGL has 12 directors. The vote will permit ACL to add four members of Nicor’s board to the board of the merged company.

By Maria Saporta

The name of Erroll Davis Jr., former Chancellor of the Georgia Board of Regents, is being put forth to be the interim superintendent for the Atlanta Public Schools.

Among the organizations supporting Davis for the sensitive position is 100 Black Men of Atlanta.

Gregory Hawkins, chairman of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, sent a letter to the search firm involved in helping select the leadership for APS strongly recommending Davis for the interim post.

The letter stated that Davis “has a proven track record in the education and academic arena serving in his former position since early 2006.”

By Maria Saporta

There was lots of patting on the back at he Rotary Club of Atlanta’s luncheon Monday with Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as the keynote speaker.

Donohue was introduced by Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, who said Donohue was “making an incredible difference in Washington.”

Williams also told a story of when Donohue, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association, was being considered for the top chamber job in 1997.

By Maria Saporta

Transit and alternative modes of transportation should make up half of the project list now being put together by the Metro Atlanta Regional Roundtable.

That’s the position taken in a “white paper” prepared by the Livable Communities Coalition and its Fair Share for Transit Initiative that is being presented to the roundtable in time for its meeting Thursday morning.

The roundtable’s project list will be on the ballot in 2012 as part of the one penny regional transportation sales tax. The roundtable will have to complete its proposed list by Oct. 15 of this year.

By Maria Saporta

Forty years ago, voters in Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton counties said “no” to MARTA — and that led to the rail transit system being built in only two counties — Fulton and DeKalb.

Fast forward to 2011. On Wednesday morning, leaders in Cobb, Gwinnett and Fulton held a summit to encourage the development of a regional transit system — especially in the north metro area.

The Metro Atlanta Northern Crescent Transit Summit is the outgrowth of a growing partnership between the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce, the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce as well as government leaders in those jurisdictions.