By Guest Columnist DENISE STARLING, executive director of Livable Buckhead Inc.
Imagine you’re getting ready to enjoy dinner at a top-notch restaurant for a special occasion. You’ve been looking forward to eating there for years, envisioning the delicious dishes that await you. When the evening finally arrives, you take your seat at the table, look over the menu and tell the waiter, “Just let the chef decide what we’ll have tonight.”
By Maria Saporta
It’s a first for the Alliance Francaise d’Atlanta.
For the first time since the school was founded by my mother, Nora Saporta, in 1963, the Alliance now has a suburban location.
A week ago, the Alliance held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its new satellite location at 735 Jones Dr. in downtown Roswell — a charming, stand-alone location where classes will begin on April 16. People will be able to take Beginner or Intermediate French classes as well as classes in Grammar or Conversation.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 6, 2012
Key donors are increasing their investment in the PATH Foundation, a metro Atlanta developer of multiuse trails for more than 20 years.
Just when you thought Hollywood couldn’t do any worse (“The Vow,” anyone?), the place regurgitates something like “Mirror, Mirror.”
Smug, bitchy and just plain bad, the movie isn’t so much a re-working of the Snow White fairy tale as it is an unwitting peek into the maw of the beast that purports to entertain us.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 27, 2012
The Atlanta Ballet has pulled off a feat that is almost unheard of in the nonprofit community.
The 83-year-old cultural organization is planning to announce March 30 that its capital campaign has raised $20.7 million — far exceeding its initial $14.8 million — in the midst of a recession.
Madonna is in the house.
The movie house, I mean. She’s directed a movie It’ called W.E. and I wish it were good. Or provocative. Or at least spicy. Or transgressive. Or any of the many Madonna-stamped attributes her Me-dia factory has been churning out for almost 30 years.
By Maria Saporta
The City of Atlanta now aims to be a “top tier” sustainable city rather than a “top 10” sustainable city, according to Denise Quarles, the new director of sustainability.
After three months working at the city, Quarles addressed several environmental organizations Wednesday at a luncheon at Hyatt Regency Atlanta
During her talk, Quarles said the city is “refreshing” it strategic sustainability plan. And that should be unveiled in the fall.
By David Martin, President and CEO of VeinInnovations What factors contribute to the success of a practice? Our first thought is usually the team of medical professionals in the office. As a founder, you take your time assembling a team of experienced, trustworthy medical professionals. It’s important to be surrounded by practitioners you can rely on. But […]
By Maria Saporta
Developer and urbanist Chris Leinberger delivered a “wake-up call” Monday at the Rotary Club of Atlanta — “Hot-lanta is no longer hot.”
Leinberger has been coming to Atlanta an average of once a month for the past 30 years, and he’s seen the metro area blossom during the boom times. And now he’s witnessing an Atlanta that is losing ground to such “left wing cities” as Dallas, Houston, Salt Lake City, Denver and Charlotte.
He remembers the developers of the past generation — from Blaine Kelley, Ron Terwilliger, John Williams, John Wieland and Tom Cousins.
The Atlanta BeltLine is evolving quickly into a name-brand transit system that could serve thousands of streetcar riders and untold numbers of cyclists and pedestrians by the end of this decade.
That’s partly because the name “BeltLine” has become shorthand for four proposed streetcar projects to be paid for through the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation. Just half of the 10-plus mile streetcar system would be built in the BeltLine corridor, but its linkage to the BeltLine has earned it a BeltLine tagline.
The way several BeltLine officials explain it, this evolving view of the BeltLine results from its central role in Atlanta’s ongoing efforts to improve mobility in the region’s urban core.
“We are pursuing an aggressive, integrated strategy to build out the transit network in the City of Atlanta over the next 10 years,” said Ethan Davidson, spokesman for the BeltLine.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 30, 2012
As a testament to its longtime support of Young Harris College, the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation is giving a $22 million gift as part of the institution’s $55 million capital campaign.
By Maria Saporta
The MARTA board is exploring all options to meet a potential shortfall in operating dollars in 2013 as a result of the state legislature not acting to remove the 50-50 restriction in how the agency spends its sales tax revenue.
When MARTA was created, there was a stipulation that 50 percent of its budget go towards capital spending and 50 percent towards operating. Since MARTA has been unable to expand the system, it has sought the flexibility to spend more of the tax revenue on operating expenses.
What ingredients contribute to healthy cities? National experts in Atlanta last week identified three — walking, cycling and parks within walking distance for all its residents.
For Atlanta — be it in the central city or in the suburbs, we have a ways to go to compete with the top tier cities around the world.
By Chris Schroder
Joyce Fownes has completely transformed the workspace of many of her firm’s clients, proving again and again that interior design can alter how employees interact with each other.
Ironically, she found herself completely transformed one recent Easter morning when she felt spiritual “lightning” travel through her body. She hasn’t been the same since – at home or at work.
Regardless of religion, we all are equaled through humbling moments.
The Palm Sunday service at the Church of the Common Ground in Woodruff Park repeatedly chipped at the gap between the homeless worshippers and those who were much better .
Staring into a street person’s face to see the face of Christ is a stark discovery of one’s own neediness – for status, approval and fleeting comforts.
It’s now clear that the vote in metro Atlanta on the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation will occur with few clues from the federal government about its intention to pay for 12 percent of the work.
Federal funding now is in the region’s budget to pay for almost $847 million of the projects that are to be completed if voters approve the 10-year sales tax, which is to raise $6.14 billion in local dollars. The federal money appears throughout the region’s construction list.
But Congress did not pass a federal transportation bill last week, in advance of the March 31 expiration of the previous continuation funding bill. President Obama on Friday signed a 90-day continuation bill, which had been approved by the House and Senate, to forestall a shutdown of federally funded highway and transit projects.
By Guest Columnist MATTHEW GARBETT, president of Fourth Ward Neighbors
In 1976, Sweet Auburn was designated a National Historic District. Yet the buildings came down.
By 1992, the National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized Sweet Auburn as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in America. And the buildings still came down.
By Maria Saporta
It gets so bloody depressing.
Once again, MARTA has gotten screwed. This time, it was at the hands of the State Rep. Mike Jacobs, State Rep. Steve Davis and other misguided colleagues who have lost sight of what being a legislator is all about — to act in the best interests of the state.
In the closing minutes of the 2012 legislative session, political motives and missteps failed to remove the noose around MARTA’s neck that forces the transit agency to spend 50 percent of the sales tax it collects on capital improvements and 50 percent on operations.
“W.E.” pilfers the then-and-now configuration used in “Julie & Julia,” but to little effect. Or more accurately, perhaps, to no effect.
If you remember, the earlier film cast Meryl Streep as celebrated chef, Julia Child and Amy Adams as a present-day woman who is obsessed with her and her recipes.
Late in the last night of this year’s legislative session, in that hour when so much mischief famously has been done, there was a brief but illuminating flash of red which revealed the way things work under the Golden Dome and the potential of social media to disrupt the old order.
You can it watch it, starting at the 3 hour 16 minute mark, on this Georgia Public Broadcasting archive video.
