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Posted inDavid Pendered

Prayers for rain, Senate takes on Supreme Court ruling – all part of Georgia’s water policy issues

by David Pendered

Editor’s Note: This is the second of three stories this week that will look at water issues that affect metro Atlanta.

Metro Atlanta probably celebrated too swiftly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year the region may continue to draw drinking water from Lake Lanier.

Though the ruling was rightly portrayed, by Georgians, as a major victory, the battle is far from over. The U.S. Senate toyed with the court’s ruling last month before it adopted omnibus water legislation. Water proposals abound in Georgia – where lakes are full six years after a governor led prayers for rain.

All of this results in water supply remaining one of the region’s major policy questions. Not to be overlooked are neighboring communities, and creatures, who rely on the same sources of water.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Column: Woodruff Arts Center campaign raises record amount

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 14, 2013

If the Woodruff Arts Center had failed to make its $9.2 million goal this year, it would have been totally understandable.

The Atlanta economy is still in a recovery mode. It has been Virginia Hepner’s first campaign as CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center. It has been the first campaign in 35 years without the leadership of Beauchamp Carr organizing the effort.

And as if that weren’t enough, shortly after the campaign was launched, the Woodruff Arts Center disclosed that a former employee had stolen more than $1 million by issuing fraudulent invoices.

Posted inLatest News

GWCCA approves teams to build and design new Falcons stadium

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk

Two more Atlanta contractors — H.J. Russell & Co. and C.D. Moody — have joined the general construction team that will be building the new Atlanta Falcons stadium, it was announced on Tuesday.

Russell and Moody, both minority-owned construction firms, will join the previously announced lead contractors of Holder and Hunt. Holder is an Atlanta-based construction firm that was founded in 1960 by Robert Holder and is now run by his son, Tommy Holder. Hunt, led by Bob Hunt, has built numerous football stadiums including six with retractable roofs.

“We are very happy to announce that we rounded out our partnership,” said Tommy Holder, when making the announcement about Russell and Moody.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Attention to Apalachicola fishing industry touches a nerve among Atlanta water resource leaders

by David Pendered

Editor’s Note: This is the first of three stories this week that will look at water issues affecting metro Atlanta.

Maybe it was just the comments about metro Atlanta’s water usage by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that triggered the outcry.

Or it could have been a story in The New York Times, which ran a few days earlier, on the potential demise of the seafood industry in Apalachicola Bay. One factor cited was a shortage of fresh water entering the bay from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee Flint river system.

Taken separately or collectively, the comments by Kennedy and the Times piece alarmed some business and government leaders involved in the management of metro Atlanta’s water resources. The ruckus reminds that despite full lakes, the region and Georgia are in a pivotal moment concerning long-term water issues.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

A bartender’s faith and the death of Robert Berry

by Michelle Hiskey

How do you love a friend who won’t stop self-destructing? How do you offer hope? And how does witnessing that change you?

Ask Kimberly “Berly” Logan.

Her friendship with Robert Berry began a decade ago at Houston’s Peachtree, a restaurant bar where she served him bottles of Amstel Light and he always questioned God’s existence and asked, “Why?”

It ended last month in a hospice where she held the 55-year-old Berry’s jaundiced hand as he waited to die from liver failure and complications from diabetes. Berry, an eccentric, flamboyant writer who once wrote features for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, passed away May 24 at age 55.

Posted inTom Baxter

Fastest-growing counties aren’t in Metro Atlanta anymore

Avatar photo by Tom Baxter

Georgia’s a big state with a lot of counties, so don’t feel bad if you can’t locate Chattahoochee and Long counties on a map. On the other hand it might be time to brush up on your geography: Chattahoochee and Long are the third and fifth-fastest growing  counties, respectively, in the United States, according to the latest report by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Over the years we’ve grown accustomed to seeing one Metro Atlanta county or another near the top of the Census Bureau’s list of the 100 fastest-growing counties, as the boom spread outwards. But this year the fastest growing metro county was Forsyth, No. 29 in the country with a growth rate of 7.1 percent between 2010 and 2012. Fulton (No. 43 with 6.2 percent growth) and Gwinnett (No. 83 with 4.3 percent growth), were the only other metro counties on the top 100 list.

Chattahoochee  (15.7 percent growth rate) and Long (11.1 percent) counties are on opposite sides of the state from each other, and neither is close to Atlanta.

Posted inSaba Long

To protect our national security, how far is too far to protect our privacy?

by Saba Long

Just a couple of months ago, I participated in a national security training simulation as part of a conference. Each table in the room represented key members of the President’s cabinet – the Secretary of State, Vice President, Homeland Security Chief and the Attorney General, to name a few. Also present were a group representing internet service providers.

My table was the Department of Defense.

While we worked through our simulation – how to respond to a cyber attack on a multinational banking institution by a terrorist cell – it became immediately clear of the numerous and complex variables to consider before making a unilateral executive decision that would affect the American public, the business community and, of course, national security.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 2

George McKerrow’s Y2K Mt. Kilimanjaro Moment led him to quit job, start Ted’s Montana Grill

Avatar photo by adminmegan

George McKerrow, co-founder of Ted’s Montana Grill, had a Y2K self-discovery Moment 19,365 feet above sea level that transformed his life, lifting him to both business success and personal fulfillment.

As a restaurant executive with RARE Hospitality, George was immersed in corporate success, developing beneficial Wall Street connections and helping build the publicly traded company. Near the end of 1999, as the world was bracing for projected computer breakdowns on “Y2K” — January 1, 2000 — George and his wife, Ginair, decided to escape the madness and take a trip to the remote east African country of Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Looking out on the mountains and valleys below, George began to reflect upon his career and his early business challenges and successes with his entrepreneurial neighborhood restaurant. At that Moment, he realized what had been missing during his successful steps up the corporate ladder.
Please watch our HD Moments video.

Posted inLatest News

Refined Falcons stadium design presented at GWCC committee

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk

A more detailed conceptual design for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium was approved Monday by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s Stadium Development Committee.

The revised conceptual design by 360 Architecture, which expands upon the proposed “Pantheon” concept presented in April, will be presented to the GWCCA’s board for approval on Tuesday.

Bill Johnson, 360’s senior principal, showed new sketches of the design and how it would sit on the “south site” adjacent to the Georgia Dome, which will be demolished once the new $1 billion stadium opens in 2017.

Posted inMaria's Metro

Renewed call for an Atlanta Regional Economic Competitiveness Strategy

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

How many economic development plans does it take to market a region?

It depends. If it’s metro Atlanta, the answer is countless.

The most recent effort is the Atlanta Regional Economic Competitiveness Strategy that has been done for the Atlanta Regional Commission by Market Street Services.

The ARC’s effort is a requirement of the Economic Development Administration for each region to have a “Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy.” Although the ARC is required to go through this process every five years, it decided to take a more robust approach this time around.

Posted inDavid Pendered

New reports show metro Atlanta’s economy improving, but still sluggish

by David Pendered

A handful of recent economic-types of reports portray metro Atlanta and Georgia as continuing a slow recovery from the depth of the recession.

The news offers little hope for the type of immediate turn-around that’s needed by folks who post blogs saying they’ve been out of work for more than six months and aren’t getting call-backs to their job inquiries.  But most signs do point toward a rising tide that eventually will reach most boats.

A new report from the Metro Atlanta Chamber showed job postings in high tech and a few other fields grew faster in this region than nationally. The Federal Reserve’s report for the first quarter indicates a slow recovery in Georgia that’s broad-based. A Georgia State report in May predicts continuing headwinds from the sluggish global economy, with 2014 expected to be a better year for the economy.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Rotary Club of Atlanta celebrates its100-year anniversary on June 18

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 14, 2013

The glue that has kept Atlanta’s civic and business communities intact for the past century has been the Rotary Club of Atlanta.

One hundred years ago — June 18, 1913, to be exact — Ivan Allen Sr. sent a letter to the secretary of the International Association of Rotary Clubs in Chicago requesting that Atlanta establish its own Rotary Club.

Posted inGuest Column

As hope replaces despair, Atlanta’s role in housing innovation continues

by Teresa Johnston

By Guest Columnist CAROL NAUGHTON, senior vice president for Purpose Built Communities

Atlanta has indeed been a national leader in affordable housing innovations, as SaportaReport noted in the June 11 Maria’s Metro column.  The invention, and more importantly, reinvention of public housing, are examples of the kind of innovation of which Atlanta is capable.

The Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) remains a leader in affordable housing innovations that create better outcomes for people and neighborhoods. Having spent much of my career in community development, I know first-hand how revolutionary its approach to affordable housing has been.

AHA shifted the paradigm that had written people off by isolating, warehousing and marginalizing them in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty with substandard housing and living conditions, into neighborhoods that provided much higher-quality, more desirable options through mixed-use, mixed-income communities.

Posted inLatest News

Falcons stadium design team will include three local architectural firms

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Three Atlanta firms have joined 360 Architecture to partner in the design of a new football stadium, the Atlanta Falcons announced Friday afternoon.

The three firms are: Goode Van Slyke Architecture (GVSA), Stanley Beaman & Sears and tvsdesign. The three firms were selected because are thought to bring “unique skills to the table,” according to the release.

“The three partners selected provide an attractive combination of skill sets, chemistry and capacity,” said Bill Johnson, senior principal of 360 Architecture. “Coupled with their knowledge of Atlanta, and the new stadium area in particular, we look forward to their many contributions to this project.”

Posted inDavid Pendered

Interchange to memorialize Atlanta police officer killed by drunken driver

by David Pendered

An Atlanta police officer who was struck and killed by a drunken driver at the Brookwood Interchange has been memorialized with the naming of the interchange in her honor.

Senior Patrol Officer Gail Denise Thomas was honored with a sign to be placed at the interchange of the Downtown Connector and exit 251. The exact location and date of installation is still being determined, the state Transportation Department said Friday. The ceremony was Thursday at Atlanta’s Public Safety Headquarters.

Thomas, 46, died Jan. 24, 2012 while working a car crash scene shortly after 11 p.m. near the intersection that leads from southbound I-75 to northbound I-85. The driver who struck Thomas pleaded guilty in February and was sentenced to 16 years in prison on two counts – vehicular homicide and failure to obey the directions of a police officer.

Posted inEleanor Ringel Cater

Don’t begin with – ‘This is the End’; Enjoy instead – ‘Before Midnight’

Avatar photo by Eleanor Ringel Cater

If I had to name four actors I’d love to see burn in Hell, they would be, in no particular order, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen and Danny McBride.

Hence my admittedly twisted interest in “This is the End,” that stars out at a party at James Franco’s house and ends up dispatching various people in various to various locations (the choice is limited to Heaven and Hell).

Mid-party, all hell breaks loose and what is initially presumed to be another earthquake is, instead, the End of Days, the Rapture, the Apocalypse or whatever you like to call the craziness going on in Revelations.

Posted inLatest News

National Fund for Workforce Solutions meeting in Atlanta seeking to train low-wage workers, build middle class

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta has been the setting this week for a national conversation on the future of our workforce and how we can help those with the lowest paying jobs graduate to the middle class.

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions, a five-year-old organization of foundations and organizations interested in improving the job opportunities for low-wage employees, has spent the last three days in Atlanta looking at the results of its 30 community partners across the country to see if they have made a different. About 275 people from around the country have been exploring the best practices in job training and placement in various communities.

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