By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on November 15, 2013
A chance encounter in Copenhagen in October 2011 opened up the conversations between the city of Atlanta and the Atlanta Braves about the team’s future at Turner Field.
Michael Plant, the Braves’ executive vice president of business operations, ran into Peter Aman, then the chief operating officer for the city of Atlanta, at a restaurant in the capital of Denmark.
A local physician, Dr. Steve Cohen, has launched a free website to help people find the best Medicare D or Advantage Plan.
A new report that calls for overhauling Georgia’s method of paying for K-12 education has landed near the starting gate of a potentially contentious gubernatorial campaign.
State Sen. Jason Carter (D-Decatur) has put education reform at the front and center of his new platform. Gov. Nathan Deal responded immediately that he has increased the state’s contribution to school funding despite the recession.
The timing couldn’t be better for a report from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute that calls for the creation of a funding program to replace the state’s existing school funding formula, known as QBE (Quality Basic Education).
Pierce Mease Butler and Fanny Kemble had a tempestuous marriage and divorce, the effects of which passed on to their children and grandchildren — not unlike the separate regions of the nation where they lived.
Fanny Kemble was a brilliant Shakespearean actress and prolific writer, born to a London family famous for its performances before kings and queens.
A few weeks ago I offered an idea for what to do with Tom Watson’s statue: move it down to Marietta Street where it could stand in eternal debate with Watson’s old nemesis, Henry Grady. Circumstances having changed, here’s an improvement on that idea.
Let’s move Hank Aaron’s statue from the Ted to Marietta Street as well, and arrange the three of them in a permanent tableau to represent a huge swath of Atlanta’s history. Grady could be following the arc of the home run ball Aaron just hit, while Watson could be gesturing northwesterly toward the new home of the Atlanta Braves, which some city wags have already unkindly dubbed Mary Phagan Stadium.
All three statues have been jilted, in their separate ways. Watson’s been banished from the Capitol steps by the governor, Grady was left in 2010 by the AJC, which made the move from Marietta Street to Dunwoody (with considerably less analysis than has been afforded the Braves’ move in the past week), and now the Braves are leaving the scene of Aaron’s greatest triumph.
This past weekend proved Govathon is easily becoming one of the most important events hosted at Atlanta’s City Hall.
Its second civic hackathon was ripe with ideas from city department heads, including finance, public works, Invest Atlanta and the airport.
In less than 24 hours, the teams presented 22 projects to judges and participants, three of which were specific to Atlanta Public Schools. One such application, RightRoute, allows parents and school administrators’ track real-time bus locations and arrival times.
How passionately Atlanta leaders respond to last week’s news that the Braves plan to abandon Turner Field for Cobb County will signal if Atlanta’s spirit lives on.
One only has to go back in history to the mid 1960s when the original Atlanta Fulton County Stadium was built — primarily with the tenacity of then-Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. and the business community.
Or we could go back to the mid 1990s when the City of Atlanta was given a brand new Olympic Stadium that was transformed into Turner Field for the Atlanta Braves at virtually no cost to taxpayers.
Even though Walmart will likely take over Suburban Plaza shopping center in Decatur, Brian Sherman still isn’t giving up. Late last week, he stood among a couple of dozen placard-waving protesters from Good Growth DeKalb insisting Walmart can still be stopped.
Their unflagging commitment intrigued me. I stopped at their protest, feeling cynical in the wake of news that the Atlanta Braves will move to Cobb County. Why continue to fight Big Money, the Power, the Man, or whatever you call It when It always seems to get Its way? That was my question to Sherman, who at 70 has been fighting the fight since the 1960s.
“Because,” said Sherman rather defiantly, “We eventually win.”
If your income is higher than $200,000, there is currently a 1 in 27 chance you will be audited. But what do these audits entail – and how can you avoid them?
At the Atlanta Regional Commission’s State of the Region breakfast on Nov. 1, national urban observer Chris Leinberger declared the end of sprawl in metro Atlanta.
Sixty percent of development in the last four years had gravitated towards walkable urban places — primarily in the City of Atlanta close to transit. Walkable town centers in the suburbs also could expect future investment, Leinberger said as he repeated: “Sprawl is over.”
Tad Leithead, chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission, released the results of a new “Atlanta Speaks” survey of residents from throughout the region.
“A majority of our residents believe in transit,” Leithead said, adding that they also believed in the “redevelopment of older areas in our region.”
By Guest Columnist MELONIE THARPE, the EcoDistrict coordinator at Sustainable Atlanta
Ever heard of an EcoDistrict? If not, you are not alone. This Portland-originating term refers to a new neighborhood-level approach to sustainable development that integrates building and infrastructure projects with community and individual action.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on November 15, 2013
When it comes to new stadium negotiations, the Atlanta Braves and Cobb County officials are in the early innings of what could be a long game.
Probably the most important movie about JFK ever made was also the most tragic.
It’s the Zapruder film, shot by Abraham Zapruder on that historic fatal day in Dallas—Nov. 22, 1963. Zapruder, the man who accidentally filmed the actual assassination, was just another on-looker who’d come to Dealy Plaza to see the Kennedy motorcade as it sped through downtown. Instead, he recorded one of the key moments in our nation’s loss of innocence.
I’m sure you’ll see plenty of it this week since about a zillion and one 50th Anniversary specials are planned.
A new report by Atlanta on the city's housing stock confirms a view of the city documented in March by urban demographer Richard Florida – Atlanta is split in half, with strong neighborhoods to the north and vulnerable ones to the south of a dividing line that passes near the Georgia Tech campus.
One interesting finding in the city’s report is that Buckhead isn’t listed as an exceptional investment area. Instead, that designation is reserved for an area that stretches south from I-85 through Morningside and Poncy-Highland toward Druid Hills. The Buckhead area is ranked as strong or trending.
Atlanta says this report on the city’s housing is the first-of-its-kind study of 285 neighborhoods. It’s intended to enable policymakers to promote equitable residential development throughout the city. The city has scheduled two community meetings to discuss the study’s results – on Monday and Thursday evenings.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is to leave Monday to meet with Panama President Ricardo Martelli and tour the Panama Canal expansion with Sen. Johnny Isakson and Vice President Joe Biden.
The mayor’s participation in the economic development trip was announced Friday, as discussion continues over the decision by the Atlanta Braves to move to Cobb County.
The trip comes right after Gov. Nathan Deal announced his plans to provide an additional $35 million in state funding for the proposed deepening of the Savannah port. The deepening is needed to handle the larger vessels expected to transit the bigger Panama Canal.
By Maria Saporta
Earlier this week, I wrote a story about what it would have taken to keep the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. The story was based on interviews that I had had with team officials as well as people close to the situation during the negotiations.
Late yesterday, I received an email with a response from Duriya Farooqui, chief operating officer for the City of Atlanta, who was one of the key players in the negotiations with the Braves, taking issue with several of the points I made in the article.
I believe her letter provides great insight and more detail on the issues that were involved in the negotiations with the Braves, so I wanted to share the entire letter with readers.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on November 8, 2013
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter commemorated the 15th anniversary of the Decatur-based International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) at a celebration at Pfizer headquarters in Manhattan on Nov. 5.
The stage is all but set for the Atlanta City Council to approve on Dec. 2 the community benefits deal that’s required for the city to provide its $200 million to help pay for a new Falcons stadium.
Whether that will happen remains a huge question. There likely is a good deal of political pressure mounting on one side for the council to pass the measure, and on the other to defer a vote until two newly elected citywide councilmembers take office in January – Andre Dickens and Mary Norwood. Both were opposed by Mayor Kasim Reed.
In addition, a scathing YouTube video was posted late Thursday. The two co-spokesmen are the Rev. Anthony Motley and the Rev. W.L. Cottrell, Sr. – both with deep ties to the stadium communities and both of whom have criticized the city’s process for crafting a community benefits deal.
The planned commercial airport in Paulding County won’t do well in the competitive airline business, the chief of Atlanta’s airport on Wednesday told members of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
“The possibility of a second airport thriving is not so likely,” Louis Miller, general manager of Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport, told a group gathered in Atlanta for the annual State of the Ports Luncheon and Transportation Conference.
Hurdles at the proposed commercial airport include high operating costs for airlines, the trend toward bigger jet aircraft, and the history of aviation that favors new airports being built to relieve crowding at smaller, older airports, Miller said.
By Maria Saporta
As soon as he found out about the Atlanta Braves’ plans to build a new stadium in Cobb County on Nov. 7, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed asked for a meeting with Gov. Nathan Deal.
The meeting between Reed, Deal and Mike Plant, executive vice president of business operations for the Atlanta Braves, occurred Wednesday morning — 48 hours after the baseball team made an official announcement.
It was going to build a $672 million stadium on a 60-acre tract in Cobb County near I-75 and I-285, and it would be part of a mixed-use development that would help bring the stadium area alive through-out the year and not just on game days.
