By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on November 29, 2013
When retired investment banker Bill McGahan, 51, launched Georgia Works! in early October, he knew the likely candidates for the program would fit the following description:
The Atlanta City Council has authorized Mayor Kasim Reed to take the steps necessary to accept $18 million in federal funding for the Atlanta BeltLine’s Westside Trail.
This TIGER V grant to the BeltLine was announced Sept. 9. The city council’s action is a mere formality, but one that’s required in order for Atlanta to assure the federal government it will comply with rules regarding the use of funds.
Councilmember Aaron Watson introduced the paper at the end of the council’s meeting Monday, as the final legislative act of his term. The funding will enable construction to begin in 2014, possibly as early as the summer.
By Maria Saporta
Kevin Campbell has been tapped as the advisory service leader of PwC US — succeeding Reggie Walker who recently assumed the role of managing partner of PwC’s Greater Atlanta market.
Campbell will be based in Atlanta and will oversee a growing team of more than 400 advisory service professionals in PwC’s Atlanta, Nashville and Birmingham offices. PwC also is known as the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting and consulting firm.
When Walker led that practice, the advisory service business out of Atlanta achieved double-digit annualized growth over the last five years.
Campbell has more than 20 years of experience as a consultant with PwC. He will oversee a team of consultants that provide a broad platform of advisory services, including deals, management and technology consulting and forensics.
The steps leading up to the nation’s disunion in 1861 were many. If we are looking for one of the significant cracks between North and South that foreshadowed the irreconcilable chasm to come, we might look no further than the tiny community of Oxford, Georgia, about 35 miles southeast of Atlanta.
Bishop James Osgood Andrew, one of the first residents of Oxford, was a Methodist minister who practiced in South Carolina and North Carolina, and in the Augusta and Savannah circuits. In 1832, as a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, he was elected as a bishop.
Four years ago our city came to the proverbial fork in the road in selecting a new Atlanta mayor and some freshman council members.
The 2009 campaigns highlighted tremendous concerns related to public safety and the fiscal wellbeing of the city. Significant revenue losses due to the Great Recession Atlanta led the Council and administration at the time to increase property taxes, an incredibly risky election year decision.
This year’s home buying season isn’t over yet! We discuss the perks of house hunting during the holidays.
Want to know the biggest issue currently looming over state and local government? It’s a secret. Or to be more precise, it’s secrecy itself.
Secrecy has assumed a higher profile recently because of the important role it played in the deal to move the Braves to Cobb County. But secrecy is also at the root of the biggest story one county over, in Paulding. In a lot of ways, the plan approved by the airport authority a year ago last week to bring commercial airline service to the Paulding Airport is the first cousin to the Braves stadium deal. Except that in Paulding there’s no ball team in the mix and the reaction now that the deal has been disclosed has been considerably less celebratory.
The same set of attitudes that caused the Paulding airport authority to hold an executive session the day before Thanksgiving, then approve a lease agreement that in fact amounted to a major expansion in a brief public meeting, reach up into state government as well, beginning with the vast network of development authorities created by the state, and obliged by state law only to disclose their private dealings essentially to themselves.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed prevailed Monday when the Atlanta City Council approved a community benefits deal that will release $200 million in city funds for the future Falcons stadium.
Reed wanted a deal done by year’s end, and the council approved the deal unanimously. But the issue may not be over: Some civic leaders threaten to file a lawsuit to overturn the benefits deal and block the funds.
Invest Atlanta expects to begin accepting applications for projects in January. In addition, the council is to appoint members to a committee it created Monday that’s intended to promote job creation in the stadium neighborhoods.
As if to underscore the extent of blight in stadium neighborhoods, the council approved a $59,126 contract to cover four years of back rent for a police precinct in Vine City.
In the coming weeks, as Americans rush to shove hastily written holiday cards and form letters in mail boxes to friends and family members, Randy Osborne will still pen a letter a day to a stranger.
Osborne doesn’t care if his letters arrive before a day attached to a religious figure or public cause. More than a resolution, his Letter a Day Project is about connection through a nostalgic form of messaging. It is one man’s reply to a national nosedive in personal correspondence.
“I think people really want some kind of contact even if it’s from a stranger, something that takes time and attention,” said Osborne, 58, who teaches fiction and non-fiction writing at Emory University and co-founded Carapace, a monthly storytelling event at Manuel’s Tavern.
‘Tis the season of materialism versus what really matters in life.
The juxtaposition of images and messages really collided for me this year following one of those relatively brief encounters with Bill McGahan, the founder of the just-launched Georgia Works! — a year-long program that is putting homeless men to work and helping them rebuild their lives.
Never let it be said that the Atlanta City Council doesn’t have a sense of hope and humor.
The council will ask the Atlanta Braves to serve on a task force to recommend ways to spiff up the Turner Field area. The Braves intend to leave the Ted for Cobb County in the the 2017 season.
In addition, the council expects to adopt Monday the community benefits deal regarding the future Falcons stadium, which has riled some civic leaders, and a slate of recommendations on how to bolster Atlanta’s central business district – where the office vacancy rate is among the region’s highest.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on November 29, 2013
Not so long ago, it appeared that a quota system was being used when a woman would be named to the board of a public company.
But the 2013 study by OnBoard, formerly the Board of Directors Network, reveals that many of Georgia’s public companies have moved beyond the quota system when it comes to women directors.
By Guest Columnist JENNIFER WILSON, environmental mediator and consensus builder with Mellifera Mediation, LLC
Members of the Community Benefits Plan Committee learned Nov. 20 that a draft version of a redevelopment plan for neighborhoods surrounding the new Falcons stadium had been submitted to the Atlanta City Council without the consent – or knowledge – of the committee. Already a tense process, this turn of events angered community representatives who had been involved in this work since July of 2013.
As someone who never had much use for Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac — the persona as well as the work — I wasn’t all tied up in literary raptures at the prospect of finding more (finding anything) about them.
Thus, “Kill Your Darlings” which is about an obscure but apparently true incident in their young lives, held little interest for me.
The title, is derived (perhaps) from a Faulkner quote — and frankly, I can’t think of anyone farther away from the Beat sensibility — in which he advised would-be writers — “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
Or perhaps the reference is to Stephen King who wrote. “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
This is the conclusion of our three-part series on Georgia’s sustainable food movement. Links to previous stories are at the bottom of this report.
Gordon – Farm weddings are all the rage these days, but that’s not why Chelsea Losh and Bobby Jones chose a rustic setting.
They live and work on Babe+Sage Farm. These two graduates of Georgia College have worked since summer 2011 to reclaim the old Oetter place and grow it into a sustainable vegetable farm.
Their wedding celebration showed that they have grown a way of life, as well. Friends traveled from farms as far as West Virginia and as near as Sparta. And there was a surprising link involving relatives in Alabama and the Jenny Jack Sun Farm in Pine Mountain.
Rain threatened to dampen the Losh-Jones wedding day, Nov. 23. There never was any real question the venue would be moved from an altar in a pecan orchard, a reception at a barn, and dinner and dancing on a field near the farmhouse.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on November 22, 2013
The Atlanta-based CDC Foundation has just passed two major milestones.
Since its inception in 1995, the CDC Foundation has launched more than 700 programs and it has raised $400 million to advance the work of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Editor’s Note: This is the second story in our three-part series on Georgia’s sustainable food movement. The series concludes Thanksgiving Day with a visit to a farm-to-table wedding.
People should be allowed to grow food for their own consumption on their own property. At least, that’s the theory behind legislation pending in Atlanta City Hall and the Georgia General Assembly.
“Especially during these hard economic times, people ought to be able to raise their own food in their own yard,” said state Rep. Karla Drenner (D-Avondale Estates), who sponsored House Bill 618.
By Maria Saporta
Executives with the Atlanta Braves were in a celebratory mood Tuesday night after the Cobb County Commission voted 4 to 1 in favor of the agreement to build a $672 million stadium near the I-75 and I-285.
“This is a most significant and historic day for our franchise,” said John Schuerholz, president of the Atlanta Braves, after the vote. “This gold standard franchise is joining with this gold standard county. We are thrilled with how this turned out tonight.”
The meeting of the Cobb Commission lasted for more than two-and-a-half hours with most of the time being turned over for public comment.
About 275 people filled the standing-room only meeting area and dozens of others were able to watch the proceedings from an overflow room.
This story has been updated.
The Atlanta City Council is slated to vote Dec. 2 on the community benefits deal that must be approved before the city can provide $200 million in construction funding for the future Falcons stadium.
The council’s Community Development Committee approved an amended deal at 7:20 p.m., almost four hours after residents of stadium neighborhoods first gathered in a crowded council meeting room.
The outcome of the city’s $200 million in stadium funding remains uncertain. Opponents have said they will file a lawsuit to prevent the city from issuing the funds.
You’ve probably noticed those signs that read “We’ll Buy Your Home Fast!” So who is behind these vague signs? Real estate investors looking to buy your home quickly, for cash. The rapidly changing housing industry has given rise to these types of real estate investors. They approach home sellers looking to buy their properties. The […]
