By Maria Saporta
What do the Atlanta Community Food Bank, MedShare and Lifecycle Building Center have in common?
Each nonprofit provides an opportunity for products to be used or reused, and each one of them prevent products from being thrown away and ending up in a landfill.
Executives from each organization were part of a panel discussion on Friday at the Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable on “Transforming the World through Reuse.”
Atlanta has opened its newest facility in the city’s never-ending quest to improve public safety and promote neighborhood cohesion.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed presided over the ribbon cutting ceremony on June 6, the 69th anniversary of D-Day. Reed sounded little like a candidate for reelection, and a lot like a community leader, as he summed up a wide array of interests that are bound up in the new Fire Station No. 28.
“A building like this should represent the best version of ourselves,” Reed concluded. “God bless you. It’s only going to get better in the city of Atlanta.”
Often times when reading the story of a successful company, the entrepreneur started exploring business opportunities at a young age. It has been no different for JuShawn Carter, a recent participant of Youth Entrepreneurs Georgia (YE- GA) and a May graduate of Benjamin E. Mays.
“My family has always encouraged me to work for and support myself,” said Carter, a college-bound senior. “I even started a bean bag businesses with my grandfather once.”
During her junior and senior year at Mays, Carter honed her entrepreneurial skills through a Youth Entrepreneurs Georgia sponsored elective.
Tough times serve as a crucible for revealing the true nature of a leader, and how he or she can handle – or not – the inevitable shocks to the system.
Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to add to the evolving case law dealing with how states share their increasingly precious water resources.
This time it’s not our water war that the court is concerned with. But how it rules in a long-running dispute between Texas and Oklahoma could affect how ours turns out.
There have been 38 interstate water compacts, two of which were involved in the water war involving Georgia, Florida and Alabama over how much water Metro Atlanta can draw from Lake Lanier. Both those compacts were allowed to expire, although the issues they sought to address continue. Another is the Red River Compact, agreed to by the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana in 1980 for the “equitable apportionment among them of the waters of the Red River and its tributaries.”
With her two-month-old baby strapped on, Brit St. Clair of Decatur was not in prime position for clothes shopping. Her body wasn’t back to where she wanted, and she didn’t want to spend a lot of money on an in-between wardrobe. On a rainy Sunday afternoon in late spring, she and 40 women enjoyed the girlfriend vibe as they reinvented their look for less by trying on each other's discarded clothes.
Given Take Boutique – a pop-up clothes swapping business – is the brainchild of energetic entrepreneur mom Adrienne Lewis Tankersley of East Atlanta. After she left her career to stay at home with her children, budgeting on a single income made her extra mindful of stretching a dollar.
“This is my first swap, and I’ve found pretty good stuff,” St. Clair said. “It’s an awkward transition between maternity and the size I was before. And I like the idea of recycling, that what everybody gives to the swap gets reused.”
They say what goes up must come down. The reverse is true of mortgage rates. We’ve been enjoying historically low rates but it seems that they are on the rise.
When Wright Mitchell was on a run with his two dogs one day, he inexplicably turned up Chatham Road in Buckhead, a street not on his normal route. As he neared the top of the hill at West Paces Ferry, he looked to his left and saw a strange stone obelisk sticking out of the trees and bushes on an abandoned lot.
“It seemed completely out of place so I went in to investigate and discovered that one of Buckhead’s most historically significant cemeteries had been right there on the corner and had become completely overgrown and neglected,” Wright told us in our accompanying Moments HD video.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, June 7, 2013
Fifty years ago, Sam Williams came to Atlanta for the first time as a Georgia Tech freshman from a small Tennessee town of 900 people “where you knew whose check was good and whose husband wasn’t.”
When his parents dropped him off at the doorstep of his Tech dorm, Williams saw Atlanta as “a great big, scary place.” He was a young man leaving the farm and a 4-H scholarship in Tennessee to study electrical engineering at Georgia Tech.
For more than 75 years, Atlanta has been a birthplace of housing innovation for people with lower incomes.
It was back in early 1933 when an Atlanta real estate developer Charles Palmer drove through what was then Techwood Flats and became distressed with the living conditions in the 14-block slum area.
He organized a group of Atlanta leaders to write a proposal to the federal government for $2.375 million from the federal government to clear the slum and build public housing to give the poor an opportunity to get back on their feet.
The first annual budget to be presented by MARTA’s (somewhat) new GM/CEO provides something for both employees and passengers. The board is expected to approve the proposed budget Monday.
Keith Parker started at MARTA in December and made it clear during several meet-and-greet events that he intends to focus on both riders and employees. His goal is to improve the perception and reality of metro Atlanta’s largest transit system.
For passengers, MARTA’s budget proposal provides for a 12-month deferral of a planned fare increase, heightens sense-of-safety measures, and provides for the reopening of bathrooms in stations. For employees, there’s to be a no-cost package including a relaxed dress code and telecommute program, plus pay incentives. For system well-being, there’s $155.5 million in capital investments.
By Guest Columnist DANA RICKMAN, director of policy and research for the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education
Recently there has been no education topic more hotly debated than the Common Core State Standards.
For those of you new to this debate, the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS) are Georgia’s version of the national Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It is important to understand the purpose of the standards, why Georgia led the nation in adopting them and why they were created in the first place.
In 2006, it was evident that the United States was falling behind other countries in our ability to educate a competitive workforce for the global market. American 15-year-olds ranked 25th globally in math and 21st in science achievement on the most recent international assessments.
Sometimes in Atlanta, the news about historic preservation is measured in terms of buildings that weren’t demolished. This is one of those times.
The Atlanta City Council has approved a deal that will reduce the economic pressures to further develop the Georgian Terrace. The council authorized the owner to sever the development rights of the property and sell them at some point in the future to the owner of another parcel in Midtown.
In the heart of Atlanta’s downtown business district, a “For Sale” sign is hanging on the second floor office condo at the Healey Building. The proposed sale, priced at $840,000, indicates there are no dramatic changes planned for the building that was renovated in 2007.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said he is on the verge of making an offer to acquire Friendship Baptist Church to make room for a new Atlanta Falcons football stadium.
“My issue was to make sure the Congregational support was above two-thirds,” Reed said. “We are getting there.”
When asked about the timing, Reed said it will be in a matter of days.
“I want to move this forward,” Reed said, adding that the city would be presenting an offer to Friendship “definitely within the next 10 days.”
The Atlanta Falcons are anxiously waiting on the outcome of the city’s negotiations to buy Friendship as well as the culmination of negotiations that the Georgia World Congress Center is having with Mount Vernon Baptist Church, which is across the street from Friendship.
Getting Greta Gerwig hasn’t been easy.
Cast in middling-important semi-glossy indies like “Greenberg” and “Damsels in Distress,” she seemed a kind of Parker Posey follow-up. Not that she is anything like Posey — who’s small-boned, beautiful, angular, and brunette. Gerwig is large-ish, pretty-ish, blonde-ish and more odd than quirky.
And as the title character in “Frances Ha” (the name is explained in a lovely last-minute moment), she’s not only irresistible; she’s spectacular.
An interesting meeting is set for June 10, one that will bring elite bankers together with street-wise advocates of the working poor in order to help a low-wealth community in Atlanta.
The goal is to devise a program that will teach financial literacy to those who don’t live in a world where financial advisors reach out to them. There’s a chance that lessons in entrepreneurship may be in the curriculum that is to begin this autumn.
Sun Trust Banks and Operation HOPE are partnering to offer the program. It’s a way for Sun Trust to return to its roots of community building, and Operation HOPE already is a good partner, Sun Trust executive Dan Mahurin said Wednesday.
By Maria Saporta
The City of Atlanta improved its “park score” in 2013 — earning two-and-a-half park benches from the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore index, an improvement from its two bench score in 2012.
Atlanta was one of only four cities to improve its park bench rating in the 2013 ranking. The other three cities that improved their park bench ratings were New York, Long Beach and Fresno.
Still the Atlanta results were mixed. The Trust increased the number of U.S. cities in its ranking from 40 to 50 cities. As a result, Atlanta’s ranking went from being 26th among 40 cities to being tied for 31st among 50 cities.
One of the new cities that was added to the list was Minneapolis, which actually bumped San Francisco to be ranked as the nation’s top park system, according a press release from the Trust for Public Land. Minneapolis was the only city to have a perfect score of five park benches.
Atlanta's Office of Cultural Affairs would be moved into the mayor's office under a proposal now pending before the Atlanta City Council.
The office currently is located in the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs. The office is headed by Camille Russell Love, who reports to parks Commissioner George Dusenbury. Dusenbury reports to Atlanta COO Duriya Faroqui, who reports to the mayor.
Reed is an outspoken advocate of public arts programs and has provided city funding of the arts despite the recession. The Office of Cultural Affairs oversees Atlanta’s most prominent arts programs, including the 36th Annual Atlanta Jazz Festival – for which Reed hosted a preview party at Loews Hotel.
By Maria Saporta
After 17 years as president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Sam A. Williams told the organization’s executive committee at a specially-called meeting Tuesday morning that he will retire at the end of the year or when his replacement is hired.
Williams, 68, has been one of the leading voices of the Atlanta business community for decades — at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, three years as president of Central Atlanta Progress and 22 years at the Portman Companies.
In his role as president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Williams has been instrumental in a number of civic initiatives — helping save Grady Hospital; working to change the Georgia flag; meeting the standards of the Clean Water Act; trying to reduce congestion and increase investment in transportation; revamping the region’s economic development strategies; improving the area’s quality of life; and trying to improve the outcomes of students attending public schools.
To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate? The decision has far reaching consequences, and affects more people than you might expect.
