Rich cultural offerings differentiate great cities from ordinary cities.
Atlanta flirts with that greatness — as was the case on the night of Thursday, Oct. 11 during the emotional production of Defiant Requiem — Verdi at Terezin.
As late as mid September, it was not sure the show would go on as the management of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was stuck in a stalemate with the musicians over contract negotiations.
By Guest Columnist THOMAS K. GLENN II, president of the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation
The excitement over Broadview Plaza (now Lindbergh Plaza) evaporated when Lenox Square opened as the first major shopping mall in Georgia.
The Atlanta Crackers were a big deal until the Milwaukee Braves moved to town. The Atlanta International Raceway brought NASCAR racing to the region.
Citizens & Southern National Bank, First National Bank of Atlanta, and Trust Company Bank of Georgia were banks at the hub of the financial center of the South.
Even during a downturn in real estate development, Atlanta can find developments to celebrate.
The Atlanta Regional Commission honored six Developments of Excellence during its annual State of the Region breakfast. All were the result of partnerships, which was a theme explored by the keynote speaker, Bruce Katz, of the Brookings Institute.
“The new mantra in this country, and around the world, is to collaborate,” Katz told an audience estimated to number about 1,000.
By Chris Schroder
If Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron had not taken a Moment in 1952 to walk off the baseball field and take a long-distance call from his brother, Major League Baseball would have missed the humble and charming reign of its home run king.
“I wasn’t just homesick,” Hank said. “I was homesick,” he told us when we filmed his Moment two weeks ago at the Turner Field’s 755 Club. “I wanted to see my mother and go home to my brothers and sisters – I had never been away from home that long,” he said. “I was about to cash the few pennies I had in to go home because I just didn’t feel like I was wanted.”
By Maria Saporta
Three wise men were in Atlanta Thursday at three separate events singing from the same fiscally-responsible hymnal.
Erskine Bowles, co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, was the keynote speaker at breakfast of the 3rd annual national conference of Purpose Built Communities, started by developer Tom Cousins and run by former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
Recently, Bowles is best known for his role with the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which is seeking a bipartisan solution to reduce the national debt. The commission was repeatedly mentioned during Wednesday night’s presidential debate, with both Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama heralding the initiative but neither fully embracing it.
By Chris Schroder
Chef Kevin Rathbun had invested months of time, as well as a lot of money and sweat on his relatively risky idea to open his first restaurant off the beaten path in Atlanta’s Inman Park neighborhood. As he prepared to open the doors on his first night, he added an unexpected ingredient to what would soon become a legendary menu: his tears.
Kevin’s defining Moment in his career wasn’t conceiving the idea for his first restaurant – it was the day it opened. “I remember getting done talking to all of the waiters and sharing a glass of champagne and I started to tear up,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that in front of the whole staff so I finished the line-up and immediately went in the bathroom and cried.”
By Maria Saporta
Although he was not physically present, Ted Turner was a guest of honor at Monday’s 20th birthday celebration for the Cartoon Network.
Turner, however, did appear on video, saying he was sorry he couldn’t be with the hundreds of employees who gathered in a large studio on the Turner campus off 10th Street. When he said he couldn’t be there, there was a disappointed “ahhh” from the crowd.
Turner reminded the Cartoon Network employees and executives that they were standing in “the very spot where we launched the network 20 years ago.” And then he asked everyone to have a piece of cake for him.
By Chris Schroder
President and CEO of Atlanta Habitat, Larrie Del Martin, had her Moment in 1972 when she and her husband Joe decided to live in and contribute to what was then a struggling intown neighborhood for the sake of community rather than an easier lifestyle.
At the time Larrie Del and her husband were making this decision, intown Atlanta was struggling. A desegregation lawsuit was negatively affecting the schools, and the Georgia Department of Transportation was bulldozing houses and trees in Inman Park and Virginia-Highland to build Interstate 485 towards Stone Mountain. Families were fleeing and property values were sinking.
“We purposefully decided, ‘this is where we want to be, this is going to be our downtown community and we are going to make a difference,” she said. “That was who we were – we didn’t ever take the easy road. We didn’t know how hard it would be, but it was the right thing.”
Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens is slated to address business leaders in Atlanta next week on the future of health care and how it affects the business community.
Olens has been on a hot streak of late, having addressed the Republican National Convention on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the health care law. Olens’ fiery remarks were deemed “mostly true” by ajc.com, which conducted a fact-check shortly after Olens’ presentation with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Olens, who is the state’s highest elected official to back Mitt Romney’s bid for president, will share a podium Sept. 25 with other national figures in a panel titled: “The Future of Health Care and Impact on Your Business.” The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is hosting the forum.
In this second of a series on K-12 design, Barbara Crum, Principal and Market Sector Leader for K-12 at Perkins+Will, discusses the concept of project-based learning and how it was incorporated into the design of Coahulla Creek High School in Dalton, Georgia. Most of us went to high schools with the same design: long corridors […]
Just as they turned the corner of Peachtree and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, a group of downtown neighbors noticed someone rummaging through one of a pair of planters flanking the entrance to their loft building. After chasing the young man away, one of the residents discovered the booty — a bag of oxycontin pills – that was in the adjacent, undisturbed planter.
Coincidentally, as they chatted about the discovery, a police cruiser stopped at the red light outside the building. The gentleman who found the bag approached the officer and motioned for his attention. The brief exchange ended as the seemingly unconcerned officer shrugged and drove off as the light turned green, leaving at least $300 worth of narcotics on the street.
Ethics, a subject long unattended in Georgia, is suddenly all the buzz.
The idea of a total gift ban on lobbyists, once dismissed by the legislative brass as unnecessary, is now on the front burner, with an endorsement by House Speaker David Ralston and a bill expected to pop early in the upcoming session.
Senate Rules Chairman Don Balfour, who appeared last month to be getting off with a $5,000 handslap for filing inaccurate travel expense reports, is now said to be the subject of a GBI criminal investigation.
Lots of talk about it, everywhere you turn. But without someone to lead the charge, all the buzz comes to little.
This story has been updated with additional information about ARC’s staff lobbyists.
Whither now, Atlanta Regional Commission?
That is the conversation that began Thursday, when ARC’s board met to start figuring out what’s next for the 10-county coordinating agency, whose heritage dates to 1947.
Two things appear to be certain: There’s not a consensus for jumping back into the fray over transportation; and there is a consensus for doing something to preserve ARC’s relevance by improving relations with Gov. Nathan Deal and the state Legislature.
In addition, no objections were raised during a general discussion of ARC increasing its role in areas cited by ARC Chairman Tad Leithead: Aging, arts, education, criminal justice, economic development.
By Chris Schroder
On September 11, 2001, Dan Matthews was reading in his office when the phone rang, disturbing his quiet time. When the current rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in downtown Atlanta picked up the phone, he heard the shaken and uncertain voice of his characteristically calm and collected father.
“Danny, I’m not sure what just happened,” his father said.
Dan’s father was rector of Trinity Church in New York’s Wall Street district. His office was on the 24th floor of a building behind the church, a mere stone’s throw from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
Traffic alert: On Thursday at 7 pm, 16,000 people will run and walk 3.1 miles of closed streets in downtown Atlanta.
Jeff Galloway started this annual event — now called the Kaiser Permanente Corporate Run/Walk and Fitness Program — 30 years ago. Its growth paralleled that of Galloway’s path from elite runner to widely-traveled motivational speaker and corporate coach.
After the 1972 Olympics and winning the first Peachtree Road Races, Galloway’s reach and impact widened as he focused on the deceptively simple key to running and achieving any long-range goal.
Pacing.
In 1972, Georgia Tech student Bob Gibeling cheered Pat Nixon’s arrival at the Republican Convention in Miami. He gave interviews to national media about his generation’s support of the GOP’s progressive policies. He dreamed of becoming mayor of Atlanta, his hometown.
This week, Bob Gibeling will cheer Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. As a volunteer coordinator for a faith-based nonprofit in Atlanta, Gibeling is thrilled to be voting for a platform with a full marriage equality plank. His political career has been spent not in local politics, but working for change in his religious denomination.
Over 40 years, whose life and context doesn’t change? The constants in Gibeling’s story are a family-bred passion for politics, a lifelong commitment to the middle ground and a willingness to stand for change.
His arrival at the opposite political pole is one marker of discovering his true religious faith and sexual orientation – a secret that kept him from realizing his political dreams. As he found himself, he realized the ground he had always stood on no longer made room for people like him.
Fulton County is seeking to hire an external lobbying firm to represent the county commission at the state Capitol, and a key part of the job likely will be to oppose the creation of Milton County.
Friday is the deadline for proposals from firms that want the job. A company probably will be hired before Thanksgiving, based on past timelines. One person attended a pre-proposal conference on Aug. 22, according to the sign-in sheet.
The job looks like heavy lifting. All the tasks cited in the county’s prospectus involve fending off challenges to the county’s current authority, trying to address traffic congestion, and influencing expected legislation to consolidate MARTA and other metro transit providers.
A computer will forever spit out a list of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….”
But for those of us who want books that tell us stories about our neighbors’ tastes and experiences, and bring us into conversation and community, here’s a recommendation: Little Free Libraries.
Resembling large birdhouses, the Little Free Libraries are weatherproof cabinets with a couple of dozen books inside. Borrow one, read it, bring it back, or bring another. No cards, no fines.
It’s the charm of yard art, the wonder of a message in a bottle, sprinkled with the spell cast by a deft writer.
By Maria Saporta
After years of having an all-male board, Aaron’s Inc. has added a second woman to its board of directors — Kathy Betty, an Atlanta business woman who is the former owner of the WNBA Atlanta Dream.
She joins Cynthia Day, the CEO of Citizens Trust Bank, on the Aaron’s board. Day joined the board in 2011.
“Kathy’s deep knowledge of business management and entrepreneurism will be a tremendous asset to our board,” said Ronald W. Allen, CEO and president of Aaron’s Inc.
BeltLine CEO Brian Leary will leave the organization by the end of the month and COO Lisa Gordon will take over immediately as the BeltLine’s interim leader, Atlanta BeltLine Inc. board president John Somerhalder announced Friday afternoon.
Leary has been under increasing pressure since at least May for expenses made on behalf of the BeltLine. Atlanta City Auditor Leslie Ward released a comprehensive audit in late May that raised major questions about the manner in which BeltLine managers were spending taxpayer dollars – including an executive retreat, staff dinner, and pension benefits that exceed city standards.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is said to have been outraged by the findings of the audit. Reed reportedly predicted the findings would be used by critics of the proposed transportation sales tax to “prove” that government wastes money. Some critics did just that, as part of their successful campaign to defeat the proposed sales tax.
