As the state moves ahead with plans to build water reservoirs, Atlanta is proceeding with efforts to make better use of rainwater that falls over the city.
On Nov. 27, if all goes as planned, the city’s long-awaited proposal to improve the management of storm water is to get its first hearing by the Utilities Committee of the Atlanta City Council. Advocates hope the council will enact it early next year and Mayor Kasim Reed will sign the legislation.
It is the back story from bicycle-crash survivor Jim Durrett that underscores this year’s PACE Awards, by which the Clean Air Campaign honors top commute programs.
Durrett won the PACE category of GDOT Leadership Award for his use of influence as a community leader to promote clean-air commutes. Later Wednesday, in the just-released edition of the Buckhead CID’s newsletter, Durrett’s column in the Executive Director’s slot began with this compelling sentence:
“Maybe you’ve heard, but I recently went airborne. Unfortunately, it was not in a fun aeronautical way, but in a ‘flew of my bicycle while going 34 mph’ way. You can read the whole story of my accident on our blog.”
By Maria Saporta
The prospect of the fiscal cliff could actually lead to action in Congress and Washington, D.C.
At least, that’s what U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia) believes.
Isakson was the breakfast speaker Thursday morning at the Commerce Club where he talked about the dangers and opportunities that face the nation.
Sometimes it really is the little things. When I check into a DoubleTree Hotel, I know that along with my room key, I’ll receive a warm chocolate chip cookie. The tradition of welcoming guests with a baked treat started 25 years ago, and now the chain serves 60,000 cookies a day — 21 million a year. […]
Mack Wilbourn, a longtime concessionaire at Atlanta’s airport, is to hear within a month if he has become too wealthy for his firm to remain certified as a disadvantaged business enterprise.
Wilbourn’s lawyers spent almost three hours Thursday fighting a ruling by the Federal Aviation Authority, which has determined Wilbourn is too rich for his firm, Mack II, to receive preferential treatment as a DBE. The DBE certification helped Mack II in last year’s competition for lucrative concessions contracts at Atlanta’s airport. The Atlanta City Council authorized the contracts in January.
Wilbourn emerged from the closed-door hearing and declined comment repeatedly as he walked 50 feet to a bank of elevators and stepped into one. Hearings for three other companies that the FAA has ruled ineligible for DBE preferences for concessions contracts they received are scheduled Nov. 14-20.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has no intention to join the second administration of President Barack Obama.
At the Carter breakfast Thursday morning at the Atlanta History Center, Reed was asked directly whether he could guarantee that he would be mayor in 2017 if he were to be re-elected next year.
The mayor’s answer was an unconditional yes.
“ARITHmetic.”
Republicans will have a lot to sort out over the coming weeks and months, but as they mull over their loss in the Presidential and U.S. Senate races and ponder where they go from here, Bill Clinton’s derisive retort in his virtuoso performance at the Democratic National Convention last September should echo loudly in their minds. A failure to grapple with arithmetic was, at so many levels, the key to the problems which came down on the GOP Tuesday night.
Partisans hold out hope for their candidates until the bitter end, but in politics you seldom see an election in which so many of the pros ignored the math for as long as they did in this one. Karl Rove’s Tuesday night “meltdown” on Fox was only the last and most public manifestation. (And by the way, it probably wouldn’t have happened if Fox, perhaps attempting to salvage something from a miserable night, hadn’t put itself out there to be first to call Ohio.)
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, November 2, 2012
JP Morgan Chase and the Brookings Institute have teamed up on an initiative to help cities become more globally competitive.
The Global Cities Initiative, a $10 million, five-year program, will be coming to Atlanta on March 19 and 20. It is one of five cities that will be part of the initiative in 2013. The other cities are Houston (May 14-15), Dallas (May 16), Denver (June 25-26) and Mexico City (Nov. 11-15).
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with comments from the Georgia Building Authority.
Georgia has suspended indefinitely its effort to sell the old Atlanta Farmers Market near the BeltLine in southwest Atlanta.
The state cancelled a bid opening for the farmers market that was set for Wednesday afternoon. Bids were due Oct. 26 and the market expressed no interest in the 16.4 acres with 10 buildings and a shed. The cancelled deal is a blow to hopes that redevelopment is coming anytime soon to a gritty industrial area near Murphy Triangle along the BeltLine.
This is the second time in two weeks the state has had to stall the proposed sale of high-interest parcels in Atlanta. The planned bid opening for the historic Olympia building, at Five Points, was delayed for a month or two. A spokesman with the Georgia Building Authority said Oct. 22 that more time was needed to finalize negotiations with Coca-Cola over their sign on the rooftop.
Wyc Orr, a board member of Common Cause of Georgia, is raising questions about the legality of negotiations over a new football stadium and urging for more public involvement in the planned public payments for the proposed $1 billion-plus facility.
In a piece titled, “Open roofed, closed doors,” Orr writes that if news reports are to be believed: “The negotiations, back-and-forth positions, trade-offs, terms and potential agreements have been conducted with only the barest pretense of opportunity for significant input from the public.”
Orr says taxpayers should press the issue with their state lawmakers, who likely will be asked in the 2013 legislative session to authorize a $100 million increase in the borrowing capacity of the Georgia World Congress Center. The increase is likely to be portrayed as the final straw to completing the deal to start construction, he notes.
By David Martin, President and CEO of VeinInnovations November (September for some eager retailers) kicks off the holiday season. Weeks and weeks of indulging with family and friends means extra calories coupled with more relaxing. Studies once claimed that on average, most people gained five to seven pounds. The news isn’t that bad! In 2007, […]
In a request for proposals that are due Wednesday, the Atlanta BeltLine has spelled out an aggressive schedule for building a link from the newly opened Eastside Trail to the Ponce City Market project.
The winning vendor is to start work in December and the project is to be let for construction by May 2014. The bike/ped project may be ready for use when Ponce City Market throws its doors open Ponce de Leon Avenue in 2014 as a vibrant live-work-play development in a resurrected Sears, Roebuck warehouse that’s said to be the largest brick building in the South.
This hot pace for the BeltLine occurs as the board that oversees Atlanta’s largest urban renewal project seeks a president/CEO to replace Brian Leary, whom the board ousted in August. The BeltLine board has called a special meeting Tuesday morning to discuss the recruitment process for its chief executive.
For Atlanta’s sizable community of runners, the first Sunday in November belongs to the New York City Marathon. First there’s the luck of getting in via a lottery of hundreds of thousands of applicants. Then there’s hours of training that can feel like a part-time job. Finish the 26.2 miles through the five boroughs, and chalk a big one off the bucket list.
After a week of mixed messages from New York race organizers, Hurricane Sandy ultimately led to canceling the race and detouring the disappointed runners. While disaster response is of course more important than a big athletic event, the following Atlanta marathoners illustrate the trait that will fuel New York’s recovery: endurance, resilience, optimism and more.
This first column in a new four-part series by Chris Sciarrone, an associate in the Atlanta office of Perkins+Will, is on pro bono work and social responsibility in the architecture industry. A core belief shared among architects, urban designers, interior designers and related professionals is that good design can create positive transformation in the world. This is not […]
By Chris Schroder
Matt Arnett had toured art museums across the globe, but nothing made a larger impact on his art career than the Moment he discovered a handcrafted quilt tucked away in a closet of an older woman’s modest home in Gee’s Bend, Alabama.
Matt had been researching and documenting African American art and culture in the South – tagging along for years with his father William, an art collector.
Just a month before the release of its KPMG audit, the MARTA board and chief executive officer submitted their annual report to state Rep. Mike Jacobs, chairman of MARTOC — the legislature’s MARTA Oversight Committee.
The 215-page report gives an overview of operating and capital consolidated financial statements, procurement contracts and salaries of all full-time employees.
The total operating revenues totaled $406 million with $130.5 million coming from passenger revenue and $196.3 million from the penny sales tax paid by Fulton and DeKalb counties. Operating expenses came out to $405.8 million with salaries and benefits accounting for over $340 million.
By Maria Saporta
The Atlanta Falcons had a special guest for its Sunday night victory against the Dallas Cowboys — Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League.
Actually Goodell spent the better part of 24 hours in Atlanta — meeting with the fans, attending the game, visiting with retired NFL players, a special visit with Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and then as the keynote guest at the Rotary Club of Atlanta.
Asked about the merits of building a new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons, Goodell said: “It’s important, not just for the Falcons, but for the NFL.”
Old Walt Whitman got it right. As messy as this one is likely to be, as many as have already voted before the polls open Tuesday, Election Day remains our “powerfulest scene and show,” more majestic in its way than our greatest natural wonders.
The heart of it, he thought, was not in the chosen but the choosing, and that’s a good way to look at things when you’re writing about an election this close, the day before it’s over.
First about close. Not only is the presidential election close enough for it to be conceivable the next winter storm could hit the East Coast before the winner is known, but there are some nail-biters in this comfortably red state as well.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Now is a great time to buy a home. At Southeast Mortgage, we recently had several team members buy their first home. The current market provided each of them a unique and affordable opportunity they couldn’t pass up. One member of the Southeast Mortgage team bought […]
We’ve all seen the damaging effect “Frankenstorm” has had on the east coast – and now we’re seeing the nation come together in the relief effort. With elections this week, a new set of problems has joined the massive list. From electronic voting machines without power and shortages of backup paper ballots; polling centers without power, […]
