For those who link the ki-yotes’ plaintive howl to the romance of an old Western — the distant soundtrack as the cowpokes tell stories around the campfire – forget all that.
Coyotes’ story in urban Atlanta is about pests, pets and prevention.
Last week, Dr. Chris Mowry, a biologist from north Georgia who has studied coyotes, described their gritty survival skills to a crowd gathered at Fernbank Science Center for a forum titled, “How can humans and coyotes co-exist?”
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed this morning signed a set of contracts with companies that will provide food and beverages to passengers at Atlanta’s airport, ending this phase of a process that started more than a year ago.
The signing of contracts does not mean the end of controversy over the airport concessions contracts. Companies that did not get a contract may still file a lawsuit contesting the city’s handling of the contracts. Several administrative appeals remain pending at City Hall.
Reed evidently signed the contracts minutes after he told reporters an an unrelated event that a Fulton County judge had denied one or more motions requesting a restraining order to prevent the mayor from signing the contracts.
The mood at Turner Field’s parking lot was ultra-festive Sunday afternoon.
Thousands of Atlantans, literally of every walk of life, participated in the 28th annual Hunger Walk/Run — a signature event of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
As people gathered to either walk or run the five kilometer course, a band played on the stage while dozens danced and cheered.
A Wal-Mart, with a grocery, that’s been long-awaited in Atlanta’s Historic Westside Village is slated to open in January 2013, bringing 200 jobs and relieving a food desert west of the Georgia Dome, Atlanta Councilman Ivory Lee Young, Jr. said Sunday.
The project is viewed as a tremendous boon to the neighborhood, which faces hard times despite its historic legacy. Local leaders are now promoting the adjoining Sunset Avenue Historic District as a tourist destination, with its collection of sites where early Atlantans settled, and where civil rights leaders met.
Meanwhile, in Decatur, plans for a Wal-Mart continue in the face of opposition by some residents. Selig Enterprises intends to build a supercenter with 149,130 square feet that will be flanked by out parcels providing an additional 175,000 square feet of commercial space, according to Selig’s site plan.
At Historic Westside Village, Wal-Mart has acquired all the retail structures and vacant property, Young said. The Wal-Mart will be developed at the site of a former Publix grocery. An affiliate of H.R. Russell and Co., which developed condos nearby and once intended to develop the retail sector, is no longer in the retail deal, Young said.
By Guest Columnist STEVE WILLIS, vice chair of the Sierra Club Georgia Chapter
Panama Canal Authority CEO Alberto Aleman Zubieta’s recent East Coast harbor deepening promotional tour raises more questions than answers.
While Aleman Zubieta scrupulously avoided openly advocating for the deepening of any one U.S. port in preference to another, on this recent tour he unequivocally pitched deepening as many East Coast ports as possible, as soon as possible.
In Agnieska Holland’s new movie, “In Darkness,” the director takes us back to the Holocaust and another implausible yet certifiably true story. 1990’s “Europa, Europa,” was about a Jewish boy who hides his religion and ends up a “hero” of the Nazi Youth.
“In Darkness” focuses on a completely different sort of hero: a stolid Polish sewer worker named Leopold Socha (played with great subtly and craft by Robert Wieckiewicz).
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 2, 2012
The Foundation for Economic Education will be moving its headquarters from New York to Atlanta in the fall, according to its president, Lawrence Reed.
The Foundation, which dates back to 1946, is the oldest free enterprise economics think tank in the United States, directly reaching about 15,000 students a year from around the world through weeklong seminars and other events. It also has a host of Web-based offerings that reach thousands more.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta media pioneer and philanthropist Ted Turner has always had a soft place in his heart for chimpanzees, apes and mountain gorillas.
On Wednesday night, Turner put money where his heart is. He announced a $1 million donation to the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to help save endangered gorillas in eastern Congo.
“Our wonderful friend Ted Turner has stepped up to the plate, and he has given the Dian Fossey Fund the largest gift we have ever received, “ said Clare Richardson, president and CEO of the Fossey Fund, at a press conference at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. “Ted you are a hero.”
By Maria Saporta
For Monica Kaufman Pearson, United Way is personal.
Pearson, long-time anchor for WSB-TV, was the keynote speaker Tuesday at United Way of Metro Atlanta’s Tocqueville Society at the Vinings Club.
Her relationship with United Way dates back long before 1988 when she became the first African-American and the second woman to chair Atlanta’s United Way board.
Left with no viable “Plan B,” nearly 18 percent of Atlanta’s registered voters turned out Tuesday to pass the extension of the penny sales tax for sewer improvements by an overwhelming margin.
The outcome has implications for the upcoming referendum on a regional 1 percent sales tax for transportation improvements. There is no “Plan B” in that campaign, either.
In the sewer tax campaign, Atlanta voters were told that “Plan B” was for water rates to rise by as much as 30 percent if the 1 percent sales tax were not extended. In the transportation sales tax, voters are being told that there is no “Plan B” to fund mobility improvements if the proposed sales tax is rejected.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 2, 2012
JPMorgan Chase & Co. could not be more pleased with how its partnership with the King Center has turned out.
Since last April, JPMorgan has been working on the King Center Imaging Project — digitizing all the center’s archival materials, including speeches and papers of Martin Luther King Jr., and making them available on a new website: www.thekingcenter.org/archive.
The name of the game these days is competitiveness.
Many Georgia leaders are asking how can we create the most competitive economy in the United States, if not the world.
Gov. Nathan Deal, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and Georgia Department of Economic Development launched a Competitiveness Initiative in 2011.
After 17 years in pro baseball, the Carlyles are used to rapid shifts in the foundation of their family’s life.
That’s why their family supporters are so precious to them, and that’s why when the earthquake shook Japan on March 11, 2011, the Carlyles pitched in to care for Akane Nakagawa, the single mom who had cared for them, and for her community that suddenly, desperately needed help.
By Maria Saporta
While the Atlanta preservation community is objecting to plans to demolish the historic home of the Atlanta Daily World, the parties behind the application released a lengthy statement Monday evening to present their point of view.
It is a joint statement from Alexis Scott, publisher of Atlanta Daily World and the building’s owner; and Valerie Edwards, an executive with the Integral Group, which wants to redevelop the property.
By Maria Saporta
At the First Monday breakfast of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, Georgia’s top economic development official made a passionate plea for the penny sales tax for regional transportation.
Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said passage of the tax would be key to the state’s ability to attract new companies and jobs over the next decade.
Twelve regions in the state will be voting on July 31 whether to approve the sales tax, which then would build a host of transportation projects in their individual areas.
Facebook Brand Timeline Last Wednesday was a pretty big day in the world of social media managers. Facebook unveiled its timeline for brand pages, and everyone should take note for several reasons. The main reason is all pages will convert on March 30, so you should be prepared. My favorite part about the timeline is […]
Emory Morsberger is still having incredible days, and now they are spent nurturing the Stone Mountain Community Improvement District.
In less than a year, the region’s newest CID has made demonstrable improvements to the quality of life and streetscapes in a teetering area along the Gwinnett/DeKalb county line.
But the vision of this CID goes beyond creating streets that are pretty and secure. It’s about creating jobs.
“Our goal is to create 2,000 jobs in the CID,” Morsberger said. “Our first priority has been to secure it and clean it up, and then we’re going to fill it up. We have 2 million square feet of vacant space in an industrial area that has 10 million square feet. Once we fill it up, we’ll create 2,000 jobs.”
By Chris Schroder
Chuck Leavell leads a musical life that most guys would trade everything to have – playing keyboards for the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton the Allman Brothers and later next month with John Mayer – but his Moment was one all the ladies will love.
Now at age 59, looking back on all that rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck really wants to talk about his true loves: his wife, family and his deep abiding care for the environment, support for which he is spending an increasing amount of his time and treasure.
If you’ve seen Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed give a speech over the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard his pitch about how important the deepening of the Savannah River is to Atlanta’s future.
For Reed, deepening the Port of Savannah’s channel to accommodate the larger ships soon to be coming through the Panama Canal is key to the development of the region, and thereby to the future health of our city.
If the mayor is correct, events took a fateful turn last week. Reed and other supporters of the Savannah harbor-deepening project now find themselves hostage to something with which they are ill-prepared to cope, namely, politics in South Carolina.
This is really the story of a sort of three-legged sack race, prompted by the Panama Canal expansion to be completed in 2014, and the lure of the riches to be gained by accommodating the larger container ships coming in its wake.
By Guest Columnist JOHN SIBLEY, senior policy fellow at Southface Energy Institute and former president of the Georgia Conservancy
Have you gotten used to thinking you have no choice on your power bill? We can’t choose our power company, so most of us pay the bill without looking past the total amount due – without even thinking about the amount paid for each kilowatt-hour or whether we have better choices.
