What a wonderful way to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday — the Sunday Supper.
The Atlanta-based Points of Light Institute has launched “America’s Sunday Supper” — to be held throughout the nation on the Sunday before the King birthday holiday — as a way to exchange meaningful dialogue among a diverse group of citizens.
Tom Baxter wrote on this page last week that one of the disappointments of visitors from Japan is the discovery that they couldn’t visit Tara because it was a product of Margaret Mitchell’s imagination.
An approximation of the world that fueled Mitchell’s thoughts does remain visible in a town less than two hour’s drive southeast of the state Capitol – Milledgeville, which served as the state capital before and during the Civil War.
The town is rich in history of the war and way of life that was a precursor to the Civil Rights movement, which is commemorated in Monday’s observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Milledgeville today is a town at a crossroad as residents prepare for life after job losses related to the Great Recession.
By Guest Columnist GEORGE CHIDI, councilman for Pine Lake, managing director of the strategic and competitive intelligence consultancy Neon Flag, and a supporter of Occupy Atlanta
Newt Gingrich, that noted exemplar of moral integrity and sober discourse, neatly encapsulated the vapid conservative dismissal of the Occupy protests with a few comments at an Iowa family values forum in November.
By Maria Saporta
ToolBank USA has a new board president — Nick Costides, vice president of information services with UPS.
Costides succeeds outgoing board president, Corky Martin, an executive with the Home Depot. He will remain on ToolBank USA’s board as immediate past president.
ToolBank USA’s board are the “guiding strategic force” behind the governance and development of the organization,
By Maria Saporta
Friday, January 13, 2012
In the 20 months that Martin Luther King III has been president and CEO of The King Center, he has been putting together a $100 million investment package for a major renovation of the 30-year old facility as well as plans to preserve his father’s legacy for generations to come.
A glimmer of hope about the economy may be emanating from the Atlanta Boat Show.
Some 25,000 visitors are expected this weekend at the 50th annual boat show in Atlanta. Some of them will attend with plans to buy vessels and toys that promise relaxation and good times with friends and family, or to check out marinas that advertise a suitable lifestyle.
Even in this trying era after the Great Recession, Georgia still ranks in the top 15 states in terms of boat registrations. Together with its sister state of Florida, which is No. 1 in marine commerce, Georgia stands as a major market for the marine industry, according to the show’s manager, Larry Berryman.
The superb new movie, “The Iron Lady,” which stars Meryl Streep as the (in?) famous former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, is about a lot of things.
That said, one thing it isn’t especially about is Mrs. Thatcher’s famously (in?) conservative politics. Yes, her decisions — on everything from taxes to the
By Maria Saporta
The Clean Air Campaign has established an inaugural list of Platinum Partners.
To qualify as a Platinum Partner, at least 20 percent of all employee or tenant trips to a worksite had to involve alternatives to driving alone.
The effort, which is called “In Good Company,” includes a list of 130 employers and landlords — including some of the largest companies in metro
To make way for the Peachtree Streetcar, GRTA’s Xpress buses will be rerouted off Peachtree Street in Downtown Atlanta starting March 5.
“With the Peachtree Streetcar coming, we want to accommodate all operations of the streetcar,” Jannine Miller, GRTA’s executive director, said Wednesday, after GRTA’s board unanimously approved the new Xpress routes.
From 4,000 to 5,000 commuters a day will be affected by the change. Staffers with the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority predict that some riders may stop riding Xpress buses because of longer walks to their destinations, according to the resolution approved
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By Maria Saporta
Friday, January 6, 2012
When Ed Heys becomes the new chair of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 9, he will take over an organization that has changed in several significant ways in just the past couple of years.
Describing a recent, resonant visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C.:
“Against a brilliant sky rose King, almost three stories high, partially emerged from the stone, his arms crossed and eyes to the horizon. The chill seemed to bring him even more in relief, the sculptor’s lines more edgy, bare as the young trees nearby.”
MARTA General Manager Beverly Scott, who has been heading the agency since October of 2007, recently told her board that she will leave her post after her five-year contract ends on Dec. 31, 2012.
But Scott said much still needs to get done between now and when she leaves to catapult transit in the Atlanta region.
A lot should become clear this week about the likelihood that a portion of Fort McPherson will be redeveloped anytime soon.
Tuesday is the deadline for proposals from master developers who want to oversee development of a 113-acre node of commercial and residential uses. Later this week, Gov. Nathan Deal is expected to unveil his 2013 budget, which will show if the governor recommended funds for a planned science and technology research center at the fort.
By Maria Saporta
Genuine Parts is putting its succession plan in place.
As expected, Genuine Parts announced Monday that its board had elected Paul Donahue to the position of president of the automotive parts, industrial products and business services company. In 2010, the company had revenues of $11.2 billion.
Tom Gallagher will continue to serve as Genuine Parts’ chairman and CEO. For the record, Donahue, 55, will be only the seventh president of the 84-year-old company. Previously Donahue had been serving as executive vice president of the Genuine Parts Co. and as president of the U.S. Automotive Parts Group.
Oh to have Gertrude Stein back, if only for a day. It was she who said once of Oakland, “There’s no there, there.” What wonders of grammatical compression might she have concocted in an age when the very concept of thereness is under stress?
The Southern Baptist Convention is considering dropping the “Southern.” The St. Petersburg Times has retired one of the most honored mastheads in newspaperdom to become The Tampa Bay Times. Texas A&M and Missouri will kick off next fall in the Southeastern Conference, and Kansas (where I spent a pleasant spell last fall as a fellow at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics) may join the Big East.
These signs of cultural dislocation ought to be of special interest in Atlanta, a city
SaportaReport is re-running Season One of Moments for your enjoyment. This column originally published in January 2012.
When we sat down with former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin in the conference room of her new office at Purpose Built Communities where she is now the CEO, she was clear she wanted her Moment to be “strategic.” It wasn’t until we were packed up and leaving a little later that we truly understood her meaning – giving us a sense that she’s been strategic since she was a young child in a Philadelphia dance class.
Video Shirley Franklin’s HD Moments Video.
By Maria Saporta
At the First Monday breakfast of the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce, Fresenius Medical Care announced that it was adding 120 jobs by opening its new Peachtree Billing and Verification Office in Kennesaw.
The expansion will provide billing and insurance verification services for the company’s dialysis services operations in the Southeast. The facility will initially open with 75 to 80 employees, and it is anticipated that the new center will eventually employ up to 120 employees.
A contentious issue in Atlanta’s recent airport concessions programs has come to a close, with Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration fulfilling its promise to release the names of members of the selection teams that chose food, drink and retail concessionaires.
The administration also released information it had not previously offered to provide – the score sheets that show the final rating the selection teams awarded to each team. The underlying data used to create the final ratings were not provided.
Reed had promised in June to release the names of members of the selection team as part of his effort to show that the concessions competition was clean and above board.
By Guest Columnist RAY CHRISTMAN, senior vice president of the Mid South Division for the Trust for Public Land
We are only in 2012 but already a leading candidate has emerged as word of the decade: “sustainability.”
Everywhere one turns, one hears it. Virtually every company of any size has a corporate sustainability officer, whose job
By Maria Saporta
Friday, January 6, 2012
Working closely with Gov. Nathan Deal and the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce is unveiling its ambitious legislative priority list in advance of its annual meeting Jan. 9 and its Eggs & Issues breakfast Jan. 10.
