By Maria Saporta
After seven years in the making, ground was broken Wednesday on the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta.
The ground also was broken in more ways than one.
The law firm of Jones Day announced that it was making a $350,000 gift, joining only a handful of other local law firms that have contributed to the Center, which will showcase the history, present and future of civil and human rights issues across the globe.
Gov. Nathan Deal and the state Transportation Department have given two big boosts to the effort to create a linear park along Ga. 400 in Buckhead.
Gov. Nathan Deal has announced the state will provide $750,000 to the Buckhead Trail, which is being overseen by Livable Buckhead.
The state DOT also helped the trail by approving a resolution that calls for transit and multi-use trails to be included in all managed lane projects. The board that oversees GDOT approved the resolution in May.
By Chris Schroder
Imam Plemon El-Amin looks back now over his 33 years as leader of one of the region’s largest mosques, as well as the largest Muslim educational program in Atlanta that he helped establish. The Atlanta native traces his conversion from Christianity to Islam as a Moment after he returned from graduating at Harvard in 1972 and found his community devastated by the drugs and physical scars of the Vietnam War.
Growing up near Spelman and Morehouse colleges in southwest Atlanta, schools his family traditionally attended, Plemon sensed he had a broader view of the world so he applied and was accepted at Harvard, MIT and Princeton. He returned to a city in which “my friends were coming back from Vietnam addicted to heroin, or handicapped or in body bags.”
He owned and operated a paint store, and helped with his family’s construction company, but he grew increasingly troubled at the political unrest engulfing the country. He was a member of Providence Baptist Church, “an intellectual Christian congregation which included members such as Benjamin E. Mays, who was a frequent speaker. But the church didn’t have an answer for what was happening around me.”
In part three of this series on urban design, Perkins+Will principal David Green discusses the transportation projects Atlanta city leaders considered in 1922 and how we are living with these decisions today. On July 31, 2012 the residents of Atlanta, along with others across the region and throughout the state, will vote on a referendum […]
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is among President Obama’s biggest supporters, but that didn’t stop a city entity that’s chaired by the mayor from renting office space in a skyscraper that’s partly owned by two of Obama’s wealthiest opponents.
The city’s development arm, Invest Atlanta, has approved a 13-year, $5.7 million lease for office space in the Georgia Pacific building, in Downtown Atlanta. The lease is three times the $1.9 million that Invest Atlanta would pay to stay at Underground Atlanta, according to a fact sheet from Invest Atlanta.
The iconic skyscraper is owned by Georgia Pacific and others, according to Fulton County tax records. Georgia Pacific is wholly owned by Koch Industries, whose two billionaire owners oppose Obama’s reelection and support conservative candidates.
For more than 35 years, two federal laws (the Truth in Lending Act or “TILA,” and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act or “RESPA”) have required lenders and settlement agents to give consumers who take out a mortgage loan separate but overlapping disclosure forms regarding the loan’s terms and costs. This duplication has long been […]
They don’t have a catchy name yet, like soccer moms or NASCAR dads, but Latino voters have grown large enough in number, particular in several of the key swing states in this year’s presidential election, that a cliche can only be just around the corner.
Nothing bespeaks the rear-view nature, from a political perspective, of Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Arizona immigration law than a recent USA Today/Gallup poll of what issues these voters are concerned over.
The biggest issue on their minds is health care, which the court will rule on later in the week. Among Latino-Americans as a whole immigration ranks high, but among those registered to vote it’s fifth on the list behind healthcare, unemployment, economic growth, and the gap between rich and poor.
By Maria Saporta
The Metro Atlanta Chamber’s new strategic plan acknowledges that what has stimulated growth in the past no longer works in today’s regional economy.
Leaders from the Metro Atlanta Chamber unveiled the business organization’s Forward Atlanta plan Monday at the Rotary Club of Atlanta hoping that its new approach to economic development will restart the region’s economy.
The new strategic plan — which sets a plan through 2025 — was formulated with the help of the Boston Consulting Group and has been in the works for a year.
Allison Tilly wanted to go to Hawaii.
No was her mom’s answer. She hoped Allison would just drop the idea. She and Allison’s dad were divorcing, and they were moving. A fancy vacation wasn’t in the budget.
Allison, 8 years old, is the baby of the family — imaginative, stubborn and persuasive. She rounds up her older brother and sister to play games she’s made up.
Hawaii obsessed her. Her mother relented a bit.
After you graduate from high school, Melissa Tilly said.
For 8-year-old Allison, that meant paradise was 10 years. For her mom, it seemed even farther than 4500 miles.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 22, 2012
NEW YORK — Delta has had a long happy marriage with Atlanta but that’s not stopping it from having an affair in New York City.
The airline currently is part of a $1.4 billion investment at the two major New York airports — $1.2 billion to build a new international terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport and $200 million to upgrade and expand its operations at two terminals at LaGuardia Airport.
It’s a new beginning for the arts in metro Atlanta.
The Atlanta Regional Commission has reached an agreement to absorb the operations of the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition — a decade-old entity that has been a leading voice for the development and funding of cultural organizations in the Atlanta Region.
The move to fold the coalition within the ARC is being widely applauded by arts advocates in the region because it will institutionalize the support of metro Atlanta’s cultural organizations.
The deadline to register to vote in the July 31 election – including the referendum for the transportation sales tax – is just a week away.
Voters have until July 2 to register for the general primary election, according to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp. The same date is the deadline for voter registration for any run-off, which would be Aug. 21.
The ballot will be chock full on July 31. In addition to the sales tax referendum, primary elections are underway for local seats as well as the state Legislature and Congress. Metro Atlantans also will be voting on a seat on the Public Service Commission, which oversees utility companies.
By Maria Saporta
The Georgia Tech Foundation won a major victory this week in its quest to demolish most of the historic Crum & Forster building at 771 Spring St. in Midtown.
A report from a three-person Economic Review Panel for the Atlanta Urban Design Commission submitted June 21 agreed with just about every point made by the attorneys of the Georgia Tech Foundation.
By Guest Columnist NATHANIEL Q. SMITH JR., founder and chief equity officer of the Partnership for Southern Equity
Metro Atlanta has a unique opportunity with the July 31st Transportation Improvement Act (TIA) referendum to make equity a priority when considering the long-lasting impacts this multi-billion dollar investment will have on our region.
By Maria Saporta
Sixteen years ago, Atlanta was busy getting ready for the biggest event in its history — the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
This year, it’s the City of London’s turn to enjoy its time in the international spotlight. Next month, it will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
By Maria Saporta
Three U.S. representatives from metro Atlanta — John Lewis, David Scott and Hank Johnson — urged Gov. Nathan Deal and other state officials to ensure that the $104 million awarded to Georgia from the National Mortgage Settlement be invested in foreclosure prevention.
The fact that Georgia had decided to spend those funds on economic development initiatives rather than foreclosure prevention was brought to light in this week’s SaportaReport guest column, written by Kate Little.
Would you answer this ad?
“Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”
It is a genuine classified; check with Jay Leno if you don’t believe me.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the ABC on Friday, June 15, 2012
The quality of child care in Georgia experienced a decline for the fourth year in a row, according to a new report that is to be released June 15. The statewide survey was conducted by the Atlanta-based nonprofit group Quality Care for Children.
The nonprofit conducted its fourth annual survey of child-care centers in February and March, interviewing nearly 900 providers.
Atlanta could be at the center of a new southern network of passenger high-speed rail service that a consultant to the state Transportation Department has said is feasible and could begin operating no sooner than 2028.
The report does not address the sobering question of how to pay for the potential network, which would link Atlanta with four southern cities: Birmingham, Ala.; Louisville, Ky.; and Savannah/Jacksonville, Fla.
The new report reaches some of the same general conclusions of a freight logistics report GDOT released earlier this year: Georgia’s rail system has not kept pace in providing upgrades needed to serve its growing logistic industries and population.
Georgia is heading toward a new model for transporting the poor, elderly and disabled from home to health care in rural Georgia.
A new system is needed simply because the costs are forecast to rise dramatically – up by 64 percent by 2030, according to a recent report to a committee of the Governors Development Council.
The new system seems likely to rely on the use of one entity to coordinate the overall transport system, which will continue to use a variety of local transport providers to transport rural Georgians.
