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Thursday, June 26, 2008
Community urges Tech to save building
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Make no mistake. Community leaders do not want the Georgia Tech Foundation to demolish the historic Crum & Forster building at 771 Spring St.
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At the Development Review Committee meeting Thursday evening in Midtown, every single person who spoke voiced opposition to the foundation’s plan to tear down the 1926 building and replace it with a vacant lot.
“This is a first-rate building,” said Mark McDonald, the new president of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. “It is important to the history of Atlanta, and it’s important to the history of Georgia Tech. Every solution for the historic preservation of this building should be sought.”
In all, 22 people spoke out against the Georgia Tech Foundation’s plans to seek a demolition permit for the building. Some were Georgia Tech students. Some were Georgia Tech alums. Others were Georgia Tech faculty members. And most were concerned Atlanta leaders who saw this fight as a crossroads for the city’s future.
A Georgia Tech alum said he was not proud of the way his alma-mater was responding to community concerns. “There’s a way to save this building,” he said.”There are few moments in the life of cities that determine their future.” He went on to compare this fight to the effort to save the Fox more than three decades ago.
Other alums said they would no longer give money to support the foundation until it dropped its plans to demolish the Crum & Forster building.
Myles Smith, a community leader who is retired from Georgia Power, took it a step further. He called the three foundation representatives at the meeting “hired guns.” He urged the community to put pressure on members of the Georgia Tech Foundation board, many of whom are well-recognized civic leaders.
“We need to tell those board members that they’re doing the wrong thing,” Smith said. “We need to find those people and start pestering them.”
Penelope Cheroff, an Ansley Park resident who chairs the Neighborhood Planning Unit - E, agreed.
“We can not stop this as much as we’d like to,” Cheroff said. “The foundation has decided to destroy this building.” She then urged people to find out who is on the foundation’s board and urge the trustees to save the building.
The foundation’s web site is www.gtf.gatech.edu, and there’s a link to its board of trustees.
About 1,700 people already have signed an online petition urging the foundation to save the building.
Although Georgia Tech is steadfast in its desire to get a permit to tear down the classically-designed structure, foundation representative Carl Westmoreland said the foundation is “committed to looking at different alternatives for the building.”
The last person who spoke at the Development Review Committee meeting was Ellen Dunham Jones, director of Georgia Tech’s architecture program.
“I certainly would like to offer our help,” she said, explaining that the foundation has been supportive of the architecture program’s in the past. “We would like to help the foundation back by helping find out what alternatives there really are.”
At that point, the members of the Development Review Committee took a vote to oppose the Georgia Tech Foundation’s application for a demolition permit. The vote was unanimous with one exception — a Georgia Tech employee who abstained because he felt it would be a conflict of interest for him to vote.
Now that recommendation will go the city of Atlanta’s Bureau of Planning, which would either approve or deny Georgia Tech’s demolition permit.
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Change is afoot at Atlanta’s United Way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Word has it that Atlanta’s United Way will soon have a new chief operating officer.
Donna Buchanan, who recently retired as president of Junior Achievement of Georgia, has been named as United Way’s new COO. Her first day on the job will be July 7.
Buchanan is replacing Ayesha Khanna, who has been COO of the organization since 2004. Previously Khanna was head of Atlanta’s YWCA, where she had been since 1999. Khanna is expected to take a few months off to spend time more time with her daughter.
The change is seen as a way for Milton Little, who has been president of Atlanta’s United Way for nearly a year, to put his own team in place.
The news was disclosed at a United Way board meeting earlier this week, but board members were asked not to disclose the news.
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Atlanta known for its generosity, Lehfeldt says
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In talking about his upcoming retirement in August, Martin Lehfeldt, president of the Southeastern Council of Foundations, told me he had read an article recently about how generous Atlantans are when it comes to philanthropy.
The article appeared in the Dallas Morning News a while back, and it is based on data from 2002. But fund-raising leaders often believe that these numbers don’t radically change year to year.
The article stated that, from its analysis, Atlanta is actually the most generous metropolitan area in the nation.
Thanks for sharing Martin.
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More Georgians give to charity; but the average gift has gotten smaller
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
More Georgians are making philanthropic donations, but the amount of their gifts has gone down.
Those are the results of the study Georgia’s Giving Trends by the Atlanta-based Alexander, Haas, Martin & Partners fund-raising firm.
Georgia’s charitable contributions by individuals, based on Internal Revenue Service data, has gone from $2.73 billion in 1996 to $6.61 billion in 2006, the latest year available.
Between 2005 and 2006, total giving by Georgians went up $100 million; and the total number of donors increased by 45,000 between 2005 and 2006. That meant the average gift dropped from $4,207 to $4,110.
Those figures were released at a luncheon Tuesday at the Commerce Club, along with the results of the latest report from the Giving USA Foundation, also released this week.
The Georgia survey also listed the top 10 foundations in terms of their 2006 giving and 2006 assets.
The No. 1 foundation in both cases was the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, which made grants of $100.3 million in 2006; it had assets of about $2.25 billion.
The Thomas and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation has given funds for two in-depth philanthropic studies on Georgia that should be completed by the end of the year. One study will focus on where philanthropic dollars come from, and the other will look at where philanthropic dollars are given.
The national Giving USA Foundation reports show that nationally, charitable giving topped $306.4 billion in 2007, a record. It also showed that individuals give 75 percent of that. Religion is still the top recipient —- 33.4 percent, but that continues to decline. In the mid-1980s, religion received 56 percent of all giving.
The Giving USA Foundation has an important Atlanta link. Its chairwoman is Del Martin, who is a founding partner of Alexander, Haas, Martin & Partners.
Martin is turning over the day-to-day management of the firm to David King so she can focus on Giving USA. She will remain chairwoman of the firm.
Philanthropists about to retire
During this summer, several people who have played special roles in the community will be retiring.
Bobby Mays, SunTrust’s first vice president of endowment and foundations, will retire this month. But he’s agreed to help out as a consultant until the end of 2009 with the bank’s monthly grant-seeking forum.
Mays said he’s following the advice of one of his mentors: “You should always go when everyone still wants you to stay and when you’re at the top of your game.” Art McClung, a 25-year executive at Georgia Power who has been on loan to the city of Atlanta for the past six years, will retire July 1.
McClung, whose civic roles have included vice chairmanship of MARTA, plans to keep working with Mayor Shirley Franklin’s Next Steps program to help graduating high school students.
“I’m going to remain committed to making Atlanta a better place to work, live and play,” McClung said, adding that he plans to become more involved in several political campaigns.
And after 11 years, Martin Lehfeldt, president of the Southeastern Council of Foundations, is retiring from his post in August. He plans to help in the transition of his successor, Michael Howland, who currently serves as CEO of Noble of Indiana, which serves people with developmental disabilities
“I can’t think of a more exciting time to be involved in philanthropy,” Lehfeldt said, because of the growth in the number of foundations and the “intergenerational transfer” of giving.
By the way, former BellSouth community executive Jim Breedlove joined the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in February as vice president.
Bankers back to competing again
One reinvigorated community leader is Bill Linginfelter, who this week became head of Regions Financial Corp.’s Atlanta and North Georgia operations.
Linginfelter, who had been Georgia president for Wachovia, lost his job through a reorganization last fall, just a couple of months before he was to become chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
So Kessel Stelling, president of Bank of North Georgia, agreed to become the 2008 chairman of the Metro chamber.
The irony? Linginfelter and Stelling are back to being competitors in the market.
“If I couldn’t be chairman, I’m just glad that it was someone who had as much interest and passion for our city and region as Kessel,” Linginfelter said. “He is a worthy competitor.”
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