The Metro Atlanta Housing Market has entered a rare phase in normal housing cycles. Gradual diminishing benefit generally follows after this point is reached. Current housing data confirms housing prices are on the rise, inventory is significantly reduced, and historically low mortgage rates although slightly higher are still available. The down side risk of single […]
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Posted inDavid Pendered
A good summer for sea turtle nests on Jekyll Island, critters on eco-friendly concrete tested at Savannah’s port
Georgia’s coast has reported good news about marine growth at the port of Savannah and turtle nesting on Jekyll Island.
On Jekyll Island, 197 turtle nests have been discovered this nesting season. That’s the second-highest number of nests tracked since 2003, when 204 nests were found, according to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. Almost 8,200 hatchlings have crawled into the sea.
In Savannah, a new type of concrete that was tested by Israeli scientists has provided a home for both plants and tiny animals. On regular concrete, barnacles are just about the only life form that grow, according to port officials.
Posted inPublic Relations, Thought Leader
Charlie Hayslett converted a government reporting career into a successful public affairs career
Charlie Hayslett was more than a decade into his career as a newspaper reporter when Bob Cohn of Cohn & Wolfe PR firm called him one afternoon and asked, “Have you had enough of the newspaper business?” “You happened to have called me on a day when the answer is ‘Yes’,” Charlie told him. That’s […]
Posted inLatest News
Saying good-bye (again) to 99X while welcoming the radio boneheads
By Maria Saporta
What a boneheaded decision.
Atlanta-based Cumulus Media has killed what little was left of 99X — one of the best known brands broadcast on the city’s radio waves for the past two decades.
On Saturday at noon, in the dead of day, Cumulus changed the 99X (which it had placed on the weak 98.9 signal) to 98.9/The Bone — a hard rock format that will try to grab listeners of the former Project 9-6-1 (which switched to a top 40 format last Wednesday).
In what has become a disorienting musical chairs among Atlanta’s radio stations, the losers will be those who love alternative rock sounds.
Posted inMaria's Metro
Sale of historic Olympia building at Five Points is a civic opportunity
The Olympia building — a historic gem in the heart of downtown Atlanta — is for sale.
The two-story triangular building currently is owned by the State of Georgia — as a result of a $3.6 million gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation in January, 1995 right before the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
“There’s a significant amount of renovation that needs to be done to the building,” said Paul Melvin, communications director for the State Property Office. “Given our budget restrictions at this time, we thought it was best to sell it.”
Posted inDavid Pendered
Glimmer of hope emerges from foreclosure meeting: Community hasn’t surrendered to the challenge
Three central messages about the foreclosure crisis in metro Atlanta emerged from a recent gathering of policy makers and community advocates.
First, jobs are needed to enable homeowners to have the resources to stabilize their mortgages. Second, government services shouldn’t be taken for granted for the foreseeable future, because cities and counties have to cut budgets to offset the loss of property taxes collected on falling property values.
The third message was unspoken, but evident among those who attended the third annual meeting of Piece by Piece: A Regional Foreclosure Initiative. The message is this: The community still has the energy to combat an intractable problem.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey
From a straight Young Republican to a gay Democrat delegate
In 1972, Georgia Tech student Bob Gibeling cheered Pat Nixon’s arrival at the Republican Convention in Miami. He gave interviews to national media about his generation’s support of the GOP’s progressive policies. He dreamed of becoming mayor of Atlanta, his hometown.
This week, Bob Gibeling will cheer Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. As a volunteer coordinator for a faith-based nonprofit in Atlanta, Gibeling is thrilled to be voting for a platform with a full marriage equality plank. His political career has been spent not in local politics, but working for change in his religious denomination.
Over 40 years, whose life and context doesn’t change? The constants in Gibeling’s story are a family-bred passion for politics, a lifelong commitment to the middle ground and a willingness to stand for change.
His arrival at the opposite political pole is one marker of discovering his true religious faith and sexual orientation – a secret that kept him from realizing his political dreams. As he found himself, he realized the ground he had always stood on no longer made room for people like him.
Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro
Egbert Perry team in lead to redevelop General Motors plant site in DeKalb
By Douglas Sams and Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 31, 2012
Prominent Atlanta developer and civic leader Egbert Perry is leading a team that could acquire and redevelop the former General Motors Co. plant in Doraville — almost two years after a similar effort collapsed.
Perry is among several developers that have considered the project, including Houston-based Hines, St. Petersburg, Fla.-based The Sembler Co. and Orlando, Fla.-based New Broad Street Cos.
Posted inTom Baxter
In diverging vowels, language mirrors political change
As the Democrats gather for the second of the nation’s quadrennial tribal gatherings, students of politics might want to ponder some recent developments in the field of linguistics.
A few decades ago, experts in the language noticed a change in the way white English-speakers in the U.S. cities along the Great Lakes were pronouncing a cluster of short vowels: “bus” was beginning to sound more like “boss” and “top” like “tap.” In everyday practice the differences are often quite subtle, but for linguists this clockwise rotation of the short-vowel sounds is a very big deal, enough for it to have its own acronym, the NCS, or North Cities (vowel) shift.
You will be more likely to hear the NCS in Charlotte this week than you would have in Tampa last week. William Labov, the foremost expert on the NCS, has noted both a sharp boundary between NCS speakers and their downstate neighbors across the East and Midwest, and a close correlation between these speech patterns and voting patterns in the last three presidential elections. This isn’t all that much of a surprise — the same boundaries also demarcate the regions settled by pioneers from New England and Appalachia, respectively. But it is a reminder that cultural patterns in American politics still run deep.
The larger political lesson may lie in the way such a dramatic divergence is occuring in a time of seeming homogenization. So it is, also, with the conventions.
Posted inGuest Column
The sinking Democratic Party in Georgia is bad news for everyone
By Guest Columnist JEFF ANDERSON, a 2010 Independent candidate for the U.S. House in Georgia’s 11th District from Acworth who heads the Anderson Center for American Policy Solutions
Georgia’s decade-and-a-half evolution into a Republican stronghold is more a story of tradition than transition.
While more than a prior century of identical Democratic dominance has surely been flipped on paper, even considering the modern demographic changes that have marked development of the New South, the general ideological character of this state’s voters really has not changed all that much.
Instead, at the level of the average Georgia citizen, this is more of a label-swapping story that centers on commercial quality issues with the two state political parties. Of real importance to each of us today is not that history, but the question of what are we getting (or more correctly, NOT getting) out of our one-party political condition?
Posted inEleanor Ringel Cater
“The Words” — an annoying movie about how cheaters don’t win
The word for the movie — “The Words” — is…disappointment.
No, it’s more like, pretentious.
Or maybe, annoying.
Okay, let’s go with…drivel.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Art on the Atlanta BeltLine begins Saturday, will count autumn’s cadence almost to election day
Just as Labor Day marks the end of summer, it is the historic start of the region’s season of political stump speeches, fall festivals, high school football and other outdoor events.
One of the region’s emerging places to escape reality and indulge in flights of whimsy is Art on the Atlanta BeltLine, which bills itself as Atlanta’s largest temporary public art exhibit. This year’s event begins Saturday, Sept. 8, and concludes Nov. 4.
This year’s Art on the Atlanta BeltLine program will provide a timeline by which some major issues will be determined – including the expected creation of new rules by the Atlanta City Council for managing the development of the BeltLine and other taxpayer-funded urban renewal programs overseen by the city’s development arm, Invest Atlanta.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Top HUD official “disappointed” by Georgia’s handling of its $99 million share of National Mortgage Settlement
The deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday in Atlanta that Georgia did not spend its $99.4 million share of the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement as the federal government had intended.
Maurice Jones, who is HUD’s second most senior official, said he was “disappointed in what I’ve seen in Georgia.” Jones was the keynote speaker at a the annual meeting of, “Piece by Piece: A Regional Foreclosure Initiative,” which was held at the Carter Center.
Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell asked Jones what the federal government was doing to respond to Georgia’s decision. Jones responded that the administration had three approaches to states that, like Georgia, had used the money for purposes other than for mortgage resolution.
Posted inLatest News
PATH Foundation’s Ed McBrayer to be honored by ULI Atlanta on Sept. 20
By Maria Saporta
After more than 20 years of developing multi-use trails, Ed McBrayer is being honored by the Atlanta chapter of the Urban Land Institute.
McBrayer, co-founder and executive director of the PATH Foundation, will be honored with the Dan & Tally Sweat Community Leadership Award at ULI Atlanta’s 18th annual Awards for Excellence Dinner, which will be held on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 20 at the Atlanta History Center.
After nearly 21 years in existence, the PATH Foundation now has 3,500 members, and it has raised more than $420 million from public and private sources.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Atlanta airport concessionaire to close BlackBerry stores, replace them with shops for Apple iPhones, etc
Atlanta’s airport is poised to give BlackBerry the boot and open its doors to Apple.
The sale of Blackberry smart phones has fallen so dramatically that an airport concessionaire plans to replace its two Blackberry shops with Apple resellers. Only one other airport in the country has an Apple reseller, according to legislation pending before the Atlanta City Council. The other airport wasn’t identified.
The change in product line was requested by a joint-venture company whose prime partner failed to win one of the airport concessions contracts the city council awarded earlier this year. Miami-based Areas USA had submitted a proposal to manage food and beverage outlets at the airport, in addition to the retail spaces it now runs with its joint-venture partner, ARM, or Atlanta Retail Management.
Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro
Column: Retiring chief of Georgia Lottery staying in Atlanta
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, August 24, 2012
As Margaret DeFrancisco, president and CEO of the Georgia Lottery, prepares for her upcoming retirement, she and her husband, Joseph, plan to stay in Atlanta.
“Honestly, I could not get my husband out of here with a crane,” DeFrancisco said in a telephone interview on Aug. 21.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Fulton County seeking lobbyist for state Capitol, likely to fight proposed Milton County in 2013 Legislature
Fulton County is seeking to hire an external lobbying firm to represent the county commission at the state Capitol, and a key part of the job likely will be to oppose the creation of Milton County.
Friday is the deadline for proposals from firms that want the job. A company probably will be hired before Thanksgiving, based on past timelines. One person attended a pre-proposal conference on Aug. 22, according to the sign-in sheet.
The job looks like heavy lifting. All the tasks cited in the county’s prospectus involve fending off challenges to the county’s current authority, trying to address traffic congestion, and influencing expected legislation to consolidate MARTA and other metro transit providers.
Posted inEleanor Ringel Cater
‘Cosmopolis’ — film feels like you’re riding around in a confined space
Just like Stella and her Groove, David Cronenberg’s got his crazy back. The Canadian director, best known for transgressive horror films like “The Fly” with Jeff Goldblum, has been keeping to the straight and narrow (relatively…) for the past few years with pictures like “A History of Violence, ” “Eastern Promises,” and, most recently, “A Dangerous Method.”
His newest picture, “Cosmopolis,” takes him back to the disquieting and mind-blowing movies that made him famous. Movies like “Scanners,” with its exploding heads and “Dead Ringers’ with twin gynecologists played by Jeremy Irons and “Videodrome” with its tummies-turned-video-players.
Posted inDavid Pendered
MARTA by the Numbers: Contractors throughout state benefit from MARTA
Once upon a time, a conversation about “MARTA by the Numbers” dwelled on the number of passengers served by X number of buses and Y number of trains.
How quaint that seems in today’s era, when so many issues seem to be rendered into component parts that are quantified.
MARTA has tracked its own economic impact throughout Georgia. The results show MARTA’s economic impact to Georgia in 2010 was $2.2 billion. MARTA tracked its expenditures in each House and Senate district from 2007 through 2011, and those results are intriguing.
Posted inMaria's Metro
2012 GeorgiaForward forum in Athens will focus on statewide prosperity
Imagine it’s 2032. Georgia has become a national model of a prosperous economy where growth is enjoyed in every corner of the state.
In fact, Fortune Magazine is writing a cover story with the headline: “Georgia’s Deep and Wide Economy: How Prosperity Came to Every Part of the State.”
What does Georgia need to do in the next 20 years to make that vision a reality?
That is the question that the 2012 GeorgiaForward forum will seek to answer when it convenes 250 leaders from among the space at the Classic Center in Athens from Sept. 12 to 13.
