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Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Column: City of Atlanta toots its horn in Fortune special section

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, March 8, 2013

In the current issue of Fortune magazine, Atlanta has a 22-page spread just in front of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” — perhaps one of the most coveted spots in the publication.

To celebrate the promotional placement, Fortune invited top Atlanta CEOs and civic leaders to the Commerce Club on the 49th floor of the 191 Peachtree building on March 4, where they were able to witness how the city has grown over the years.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Police raids, building price lift veil on business district south of Five Points

by David Pendered

A string of narcotics arrests near Five Points last week, plus arrests for several outstanding warrants and the recovery of a stolen handgun, are among the latest examples of the challenges of sprucing up the city’s southern business district.

This section of downtown Atlanta remains a place of competing objectives. The planned billion-dollar redevelopment of the gulch and neighboring area may spark a restoration of Atlanta’s historic urban core, even as an underground economy seems to thrive in the current environment.

The pedigree of one building where drug arrests were made highlights part of the economic tension. The building was purchased in 2009 for a sum higher than may be expected in the recession: 175 percent of the value assigned by Fulton County’s tax assessors.

Posted inLatest News

CARE USA’s Helene Gayle of Atlanta to join board of the Coca-Cola Co.

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Just one day after the announcement that two legendary Atlanta directors were not standing for re-election to the Coca-Cola Co. board, it was announced that Dr. Helene Gayle, president and CEO of Atlanta-based CARE USA would be joining the board at the company’s annual meeting in April.

Gayle, 57, leads one of the world’s leading international humanitarian organizations whose poverty fighting programs reached about 122 million people in 84 countries last year, according to the company’s press release.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Appetite for groupon to farm-to-table cafe shows demand for organic foods

by David Pendered

The farm-to-table movement has reached the point in metro Atlanta that today it is attracting buyers in a deal-of-the-day internet coupon.

Sweet Potato Cafe, in Stone Mountain, is offering a half-price deal for brunch, lunch or dinner through groupon.com. Over 100 deals had been sold by mid morning.

Georgia’s movement of sustainable agriculture also marks another milestone: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, has signed on as the keynote speaker of the Farm Rx conference sponsored in February by Georgia Organics.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Atlanta-based Hardin Construction being sold to DPR Construction

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, January 18, 2013

Longtime Atlanta builder Hardin Construction Co. is being acquired by DPR Construction, a national technical builder based in California.

The two companies will focus on expanding their operations in the Southeast and Texas, where both firms already have a local presence. The two companies have signed a letter of intent, and the acquisition is expected to close in March.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Invest Atlanta to use view from 29th floor offices to spur job creation

by David Pendered

Atlanta’s development authority, Invest Atlanta, is open for business in new office space that offers a panoramic view of the city and region.

Invest Atlanta now fills the 29th floor of the Georgia-Pacific Center. The modern architecture is a far cry from the exposed brick-and-beam look of the old space, so popular among start-ups at the end of the 20th century.

The new space is all about gleaming fixtures and views that intend to convey a confident message about Atlanta’s future. The look speaks to the agency’s renewed focus on creating jobs, as opposed to incentivizing development.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Southern misperceptions tackled in Decatur author’s “Eat Drink Delta”

by Michelle Hiskey

So much of the South is misunderstood by outsiders, and a trustworthy guide like Susan Puckett helps the rest of us understand where we live. Her new book, “Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler’s Journey through the Soul of the South” (University of Georgia Press), takes readers on a trip into the complicated culture and food of a strip of Mississippi often maligned for its poverty, obesity and backwardness.

Her ground-level stories of the people and crops, their traditions and dishes, bring to life the coexistence of different races and classes in one of America’s most fertile areas. The Delta is synonymous with blues, and Puckett, a Decatur author of six previous books who served as food editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 18 years, explored the connection between the hard stories and soulful food.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Behind the high price of peanut butter is a tale worth spreading

by Michelle Hiskey

Quit fretting over Twinkies that you can’t buy and the Thanksgiving groceries that you have to purchase.

Take a look at the crazy-high shelf price of a Georgia-grown staple – peanut butter.

Paying well over $3 per 18-ounce jar – more than a buck more than a year ago — made this choosy mother ask what was going on in peanut country a hundred miles south.

Big swings in peanut production are causing price increases — and future price cuts — for this pantry staple. And a closer look at the peanut’s powerful simplicity is quite inspiring.

In a nutshell, behind the high price of peanut butter is a story worth spreading.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Atlanta’s NYC Marathoners: It’s the journey, not the storm cancellation

by Michelle Hiskey

For Atlanta’s sizable community of runners, the first Sunday in November belongs to the New York City Marathon. First there’s the luck of getting in via a lottery of hundreds of thousands of applicants. Then there’s hours of training that can feel like a part-time job. Finish the 26.2 miles through the five boroughs, and chalk a big one off the bucket list.

After a week of mixed messages from New York race organizers, Hurricane Sandy ultimately led to canceling the race and detouring the disappointed runners. While disaster response is of course more important than a big athletic event, the following Atlanta marathoners illustrate the trait that will fuel New York’s recovery: endurance, resilience, optimism and more.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

For working parents, new childcare solutions sprout like Bean

by Michelle Hiskey

Amid the Presidential debate chatter of workplace inequality and “binders full of women” catchphrase is the real bind that working parents find themselves in every day: how to succeed at work and childcare.

Adela Yelton is in the middle of that daily juggle herself as an entrepreneur serving working families. Her business is a novel answer to that need for working families. Bean Work Play Café near the Agnes Scott area of Decatur offers a portal into how these moms and dads are making ends meet, and seeking more flexibility, in the Great Recession.

At Bean, a parent can plug in down the hall from the childcare area. No rush to leave the office to beat traffic and late pick-up fees. Since Bean opened in March 2011, and began offering a flexible preschool a few months ago, about 200 “co-working” families have dropped in.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Replica of D-Day cemetery asks: Who is the hero of your story?

by Michelle Hiskey

For the past nine years, at the end of May, one man’s yard in northeast Atlanta quietly turns into a replica of a World War II cemetery in France. He covers his immaculately trimmed zoysia lawn on Ridgewood Drive with carefully-place white crosses in honor of D-Day.

David T. Maddlone, who works at nearby Emory University, always sets up in time for Memorial Day. He wants people not to forget 10,000 men who died on June 6, 1944. When asked to give everything to a cause much bigger than themselves, they answered yes.

Their answer poses this question today: What does it take for someone to be a hero like that — to risk one’s life for a greater good?

Posted inDavid Pendered

Forums aim to help small firms win work as Legislature debates “small businesses”

by David Pendered

Two upcoming forums will provide information to small and minority companies seeking contracts to design and build projects in Atlanta to be funded with proceeds of the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation.

Presenters will talk about the procurement processes to be used to award contracts for planned transportation projects in Atlanta, MARTA, DeKalb and Fulton counties. Registration for the session Wednesday is closed, but openings remain for the March 6 event.

The forums occur as the state Legislature debates a proposal to redefine small business as it relates to state purchasing contracts. House Bill 863 would change the size of a small business, for purposes of competing for a state contract, from 100 employees to 500 employees.

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