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July 2008
Mission leader ‘up-from-the-bootstraps’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The new president and CEO of the Atlanta Union Mission knows what it’s like to be on the precipice of society.
But you wouldn’t know it by looking at Jim Reese’s resume. Most recently, Reese was president and chief operating officer of CCCI (formerly Comprehensive Computer Consulting). And from 2001 to 2005, Reese was CEO of the temporary employment agency — Randstad North America, also based in Atlanta.
At the Atlanta Union Mission, Reese succeeds Jay Cory, who served as interim president since January when longtime CEO David Coleman stepped down. Cory will stay on as the executive vice president of the Atlanta Union Mission.
Reese, who will start his new job on Monday, said his devotion to God has led him to the Union Mission, which “is willing to help those that no one else is willing to help,” especially during these tough times.
“When the economy goes down, you have got people who are right on the edge, and those closest to the line get hit first,” Reese said. “We are able to provide opportunities to get people out of the state of homelessness.”
Whether someone is homeless or a Fortune 500 CEO, Reese said, “Everyone has value.” And Reese can relate to people who have had a turn of bad luck.
“When I was five years old, my dad left,” Reese said. “My mom tried to raise three boys while working as a waitress. I don’t know if we were homeless, but we weren’t far from it.”
Sam Pettway, founder of BoardWalk Consulting, which handled the search, said Reese will be able to bring his executive skills to the Atlanta Union Mission.
“He’s a classic, up-from-the-bootstraps kind of a guy,” Pettway said. “And he’s a man of deep faith with first-rate executive skills.
Reese said he’s been preparing his whole life for this new role. “I believe God has given me the skills to do this job,” Reese said. “I just felt a real calling that it is my time to have an opportunity to do this.”
The Atlanta Union Mission was established in 1938, and it serves 1,142 men, women and children every day with emergency shelter, residential recovery and transitional housing.
Non-profits seek leaders
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta is looking for a new president.
Jerry Tipton, who has been president of the organization for 15 years, has announced plans to retire when his successor comes on board.
Scott Greene, a partner with the Powell Goldstein law firm and chairman of the board, said the organization will cast a wide net looking for a new exectuive including candidates both inside and outside the Boys & Girls organization. The search also will consider people who have worked in the for-profit world as well as the non-profit sector.
“We have got to find someone who has a demonstrated commitment to youth development,” Greene said. “We want a passionate advocate for our kids.” The search consulting firm of Right-Way Services/Resource Mosaic is working with Boys & Girls Clubs on finding a new president and helping modernize the organization.
Under Tipton’s leadership, the metro organization now has a $17 million budget with 24 clubs serving 17,000 children in 12 counties across the region.
The metro Atlanta organization also is launching a national pilot program — Clubs in Schools.The pilot program will start with five clubs in elementary, middle and high schools in the Atlanta region.
Families First seeking a new leader as well
Speaking of searches…. Families First also is looking for a new executive director as longtime president and CEO Patricia Showell plans to retire from the social work organization by June 2010.
It will be launching a nationwide search that will be provided free of charge by the Goodwin Group search firm. Showell has been with the agency for more than 23 years.
Families First chair Roxanne Douglas said in a statement that Showell has been the heart and soul of the organization, but she is excited to engage a new leader to build on that legacy.
The 117-year-old nonprofit seeks to ensure success of children in jeopardy by empowering families with support, such as parenting skills, homeless prevention and professional counseling.
The national search will begin immediately, and once a new executive director is identified, he or she will be given overall management of several of the agency’s key functions.
Downtown proves strategic for Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is leveraging its new downtown address with several growing partnerships and initiatives in the community.
“It’s energized our organization in so many ways,” said Greg Donaldson, a spokesman for the American Cancer Society. “Everything we do has a higher profile in the community and a great degree of energy.”
One example is a new three-year strategic collaboration that the society is announcing this week with the National Medical Association to help educate the general public, physicians and other health professionals on best practices for cancer prevention and early detection.
The effort also will focus on treatment among ethnic minority and underserved population groups. The goal is to help reduce disparities among different population groups. The effort will target historically black colleges and universities as well as Hispanic/Latino organizations.
The American Cancer Society also has received an $8.5 million gift from an anonymous individual to target thyroid cancer research. Donaldson said that gift will permit the society to research the genetic disorder that leads to several cancer risks, particularly thyroid cancer.
“The donor has the disease, and the family carries the gene that is being investigated,” Donaldson said. “That research will be run and managed from here in downtown Atlanta.”
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Historical building donated to Tech foundation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia Tech Foundation is the proud new owner of the historically-significant Academy of Medicine building on West Peachtree in Midtown.
The Atlanta Medical Heritage is donating the 1941 building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, to the foundation because it was no longer able to keep up with its maintenance.
“We just ran out of gas,” said Emory Schwall, president of the governing board. “We loved the building, but we knew it had serious problems. It needs a lot of work done to it.”
The Atlanta Medical Heritage organization donated the building with a few conditions — that it continues to be called the Academy of Medicine, that it be preserved in a way that’s consistent with its historical significance, and that the Academy’s small medical museum continue to be maintained on the first floor.
John Carter, president of the Georgia Tech Foundation, said in an email that the foundation is committed to preserving the building.
“We look forward to having the Academy, a building with major historical importance, as a part of our campus and anticipate it will play an important role in the lives of our students, faculty and staff as well as our community,” Carter said. “The exact use will be determined in the near future.”
Schwall said the donation only included the building on less than one acre of land in Midtown. He said the Georgia Tech Foundation has acquired the adjacent parking lot.
It’s one of the last remaining gems we have left in this city,” Schwall said. “It’s an historical treasure.”
The Academy of Medicine was designed by one of Atlanta’s most revered architects — Philip Trammell Shutze. Coincidentally, Shutze was a part of the first entering class of architecture students at Georgia Tech in 1908.
The building includes a 254-seat auditorium, a library and dining room. A major feature is the Czechoslovakian crystal chandelier that was part of the movie set of “Gone with the Wind.” In fact, Schwall said that GWTW author Margaret Mitchell helped arrange for the chandelier to be placed in the Academy of Medicine.” Photo from the American Institute of Architects
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A conversation with Jim Jacoby, master developer of Atlantic Station
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As soon as we meet in his conference room at Atlantic Station (complete with a built-in aquarium), Jim Jacoby asks what I want to talk about.
“We’ve got whale sharks, dolphins, turning trash into gas, turning waste treatment sludge into energy, the Ford plant, e-Learning, Atlantic Station…,” Jacoby says.
In short, Jacoby has no deficit of interests, causes, business projects and philanthropic pursuits. Spending several hours listening to him talk about his ventures is exhausting. How is one man able to juggle so many interests at once? How does he define himself and all his interests?
The questions stump him. We spend several minutes drafting a definition of what Jacoby does. “I’m a developer of renewable energy and green real estate,” he finally says.
It didn’t start out that way. Jacoby, a native of Miami and son of a contractor, moved to Atlanta in 1973. He got involved in real estate as a broker and leasing agent. That led him on the development path.
“I had a reputation as a strip-center developer,” says Jacoby, who brought Wal-Mart and Publix and other big box stores to the suburbs. “For so many years, we spread everything out. We wanted to keep everything separate — our houses, our offices.”
Jacoby, who likens his evolution to a dimmer slowly brightening a room rather than a light-bulb going on, then began to help smaller Georgia cities revive their downtowns with new retail.
“I’m not sure whether it was the world that changed, or that I changed to more sustainable development,” Jacoby says. “It was a transformation from greenfield development to redevelopment. We came back into the city in the early 1990s.”
No project was as transformational as Atlantic Station, a former steel mill near downtown. The 140 acres were plagued with environmental problems and soil contamination. It was an extremely complicated, multi-faceted development needing strong federal, state and local support.
Jacoby became interested in the project in 1996. He got an option to buy the property in early 1997, and soon after, he got the land rezoned to allow for 20 million square feet of development.
But later that same day, the federal government declared Atlanta was out of compliance with clean air standards and froze federal transportation dollars — jeopardizing plans to build the 17th Street bridge linking the project to Midtown.
“We literally had champagne in the morning and Advil that night,” Jacoby says. But in the end, Atlantic Station and the 17th Street bridge got the government green light because it was viewed as a mixed-use development that could improve Atlanta’s air quality.
Twelve years later, Jacoby is amazed at the $4 billion development on 140 acres, which he says is only half built.
“Who could not be pleased with what we ended up with?” Jacoby asks. “It’s a collage of ideas. Nobody talks about Atlantic Station being a brownfield anymore.”
Instead, developers all over the region say they want to build the next Atlantic Station, even though there are few opportunities to develop a project of that scale.
And Jacoby snagged the next big one himself. In January 2006, Ford Motor Co. announced it would close its plant near the airport, leaving 122 acres for redevelopment. Ford began negotiating to sell the land to Jacoby’s firm because of its experience with brownfield redevelopment and its Atlanta ties.
Jacoby closed on the sale in June. (He and his partners had to do a cash deal because bank loans are so tight.) Now they are demolishing and doing environmental cleanup on the site, which should take nine months.
“We are zoned for 6.5 million square feet, and we could have a $2 billion project, half as big as Atlantic Station,” says Jacoby.
The development, a combination of offices, retail, industrial and possibly a hotel, will be built to green standards and use solar energy. Jacoby also wants to take the airport’s garbage, clean it and turn it into energy. “We want to get rid of some of the air quality issues around the airport,” he says.
That leads to Jacoby’s other major business interest: alternative energy. He is working with major utilities, including AGL Resources, on to come up with alternative energy opportunities. The rising cost of fuel suddenly all of a sudden has made these ventures viable.
So Jacoby is on a project designed to reclaim methane gas from Georgia’s largest landfill — Live Oak in DeKalb County. “We can run 400 MARTA buses a day with that gas,” Jacoby says.
He has other clean energy plans in metro Atlanta, Florida and elsewhere, including cleaning up landfills and converting sewage sludge into energy. Jacoby says this side of his business could end up being bigger than his traditional developments.
But those two sides of Jacoby still only scratch the surface. Jacoby owns Marineland in Florida, which allows visitors to view or even swim with dolphins. He also is working with the Georgia Aquarium and Bernie Marcus on a proposed dolphin exhibit.
“I have three baby dolphins,” Jacoby showing off pictures as would a new dad. He starts talking about how dolphins are the “canaries of the ocean,” critical to the health of the planet. Then he reluctantly talks about another dolphin project, worried he might come off as strange: “I want to work with inner-species communications,” he says. “Who knows what we can learn from animals.”
There’s also his involvement with medical technology research at Georgia Tech. Could there be a pacemaker for the brain that helps prevent seizures?
“I have a special-needs daughter who has seizures,” he says of his youngest daughter who, at 21, is home-schooled. “That’s one of the reasons I’m out here looking for answers.”
Jacoby also has been working with school systems from Atlanta to Hawaii, giving or selling small computers to stimulate learning.
Jacoby credits his ability to work on so many diverse projects to his small team of co-workers and partners. He sees himself as an explorer in life’s challenges, as well as an orchestra leader.
“There are issues out there that need a champion. It’s exciting to be able to make a difference,” says Jacoby, 64, who shows no signs of slowing down. Despite the tough economic climate, he considers the Ford development “a pretty safe deal” that could lead to him working with Ford on other former plant sites.
“I’m fortunate that I don’t have to go out to pasture,” he says. “I can still play with my erector set and build communities.”
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Can you add commandments for business failure?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Longtime Coca-Cola President Don Keough, who retired from that job in 1993, has been observing the ups and downs of business for 60 years.
Keough didn’t want to fill the shelves with another “How to Succeed” book, partly because he gets nervous talking about success. But he sure does have a recipe for business failure with his Ten Commandments. His book appears in bookstores today.
From your experiences with business (either as an executive, employee or consumer), do you agree with Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure?
What commandments would you add to Keough’s Ten Commandments?
Here are Keough’s:
1: Quit Taking Risks
2: Be Inflexible
3: Isolate Yourself
4: Assume Infallibility
5: Play the Game Close to the Foul Line
6.: Don’t Take Time to Think
7: Put All Your Faith in Experts and Outside Consultants
8: Love Your Bureaucracy
9: Send Mixed Messages
- Be Afraid of the Future
And the Bonus Commandment:
11: Lose Your Passion for Work —- for Life
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Don Keough’s How-to-fail book exudes decades of success
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do you want to be a failure in business?
If so, Don Keough has written the right book for you: “The Ten Commandments for Business Failure,” appearing in bookstores today.
Keough, who retired in 1993 as president of the Coca-Cola Co., has remained active in the business world. He is the non-executive chairman of New York-based Allen & Co.; he rejoined Coca-Cola’s board four years ago; and he is a director of Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.
And over the years, Keough has served on the boards of McDonald’s, the Washington Post Co., Home Depot, H.J. Heinz Co. and the University of Notre Dame.
All those various roles have given Keough insights on the pitfalls in the business world, which he is now sharing with the rest of us.
The theme of the book was born when Keough was asked to give a speech 20 years ago to a convention of customers in Miami. He was asked to talk about the secrets of success, but he did not feel he could provide a set of rules or guidelines to guarantee success in business.
Instead, he delivered a “little speech” called “Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure.” It was a theme he continued to explore over the past two decades. And in 2006, fellow Coca-Cola director Herbert Allen (Allen & Co.) finally persuaded Keough to share them with the prestigious group of executives meeting at the annual Sun Valley conference.
“That’s a pretty heavy audience,” Keough said. “People started to really pressure me (to write a book). There was Herb Allen, Warren Buffett. I was cornered.”
Sitting in his office at the Galleria before his book came out, Keough, 81, almost seems embarrassed about his latest venture.
“For a man my age to write a book is kind of weird,” Keough said.
But all weirdness goes away when Keough starts talking about the lessons he’s learned in his six decades in the business world.
Keough believes that people and companies are defined by failure. He talked about growing up in the 1920s, his house burning down when he was just a young boy, and his father losing everything during the Great Depression and having to start his life over at 40.
“Success was not a word that was in your head,” Keough said.
Keough said that in his career he has followed several of his Ten Commandments. One of the best known “failures” that Coca-Cola experienced was the introduction of “New Coke.” When the sweeter Coke was introduced, a consumer uprising cried out for the old Coke, which was later reintroduced as “Coca-Cola Classic.”
So which commandments did that experience fall into? Keough didn’t hesitate: No. 4, Assume Infallibility, and No. 7, Put All Your Faith in Experts and Outside Consultants.
“We could have said: ‘No,’ ” Keough said of Coca-Cola’s executive team. “It could have been stopped in my office. It could have been stopped in (Chairman and CEO) Roberto’s (Goizueta) office. Once you get a process started in a big company, it’s hard to stop. The drum began to beat. I was a skeptic about the thing, but you get swept up in it.”
But Coca-Cola’s executives did something few executives do. “What we decided to do with New Coke was admit we made a mistake,” Keough said, adding that the company’s message to customers was: “We don’t own this brand. You do. You made it very clear you want the old formula.”
That action turned into a public relations coup so that “our image went through the roof.” Some people even wondered whether that had been the plan all along.
To that, Keough said: “We aren’t that smart, and we aren’t that dumb.” And then he thought about it for a minute. “I think that will go on my tombstone.”
Keough did talk about his age. At one point, he said: “My time is short. You look at someone my age, and you tell them: ‘Don’t buy green tomatoes.’ “
But his business savvy is still much in demand. Asked how long he will continue to serve on Coca-Cola’s board, Keough responded: “I resign every year. I came back because I was asked to come back. I have, and will do, anything the company wants me to do.”
The same is true for his relationship with Herb Allen and Warren Buffett. Both men play prominent roles in the book in explaining the opposite of Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure.
In fact, I asked Keough whether one could take the opposite of each of his Ten Commandments to come up with Ten Commandments for Success.
Again, Keough became uncomfortable talking about success.
In the book’s introduction, he actually writes: “After a lifetime in business, I’ve never been able to develop a set of rules or a step-by-step formula that will guarantee success in anything, much less in a field as dynamic and changing as business.”
Keough can’t help but undersell himself as being out of date or clueless about success.
But on his desk, there’s one of the original iPhones that he and his son will update with new software.
“If I want to know what’s happening with Coke stock, I just look at my I-Phone,” said the ever current Keough. Then he can’t help himself. Xerox could have had that technology. And then he added: “Bill Gates wishes he had it.”
IF YOU FOLLOW THESE, YOU WILL FAIL
Don Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure
1: Quit Taking Risks
2: Be Inflexible
3: Isolate Yourself
4: Assume Infallibility
5: Play the Game Close to the Foul Line
6: Don’t Take Time to Think
7: Put All Your Faith in Experts and Outside Consultants
8: Love Your Bureaucracy
9: Send Mixed Messages
10: Be Afraid of the Future
And the Bonus Commandment:
11: Lose Your Passion for Work —- for Life
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‘88 national convention: Atlanta’s coming of age
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How quickly we forget.
Until I received an email from Judith Webb a few days ago, it probably would not have occurred to me that we had just passed a milestone for Atlanta.
Twenty years ago - July 18 to July 21, 1988 - to be exact, Atlanta hosted the Democratic National Convention at the now-demolished Omni Coliseum. (Denver will have that honor next month).
Judith, a public relations consultant, was marketing director for the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s Forward Atlanta campaign. As such, she had a unique perspective on how the convention helped propel our city nationally and internationally.
Please read her email with her musings to a couple of us old-timers. They were too good not to share with the rest of you.
From Judith Webb
Revisionist history has always been big in Atlanta, and current wisdom would suggest that we finally became an international city July 19th, 1996, when the Olympic torch arrived here.
But actually it was 20 years ago today, with Henry Grady’s words ringing in our ears, that Atlanta had its coming out party. Our brave and beautiful city made its global prime time debut with the opening gavel of the 1988 Democratic National Convention, and for a few of us it would forever change how we marked time, and measured success.
By some reckoning, probably half of the people that live in greater Atlanta today weren’t here then. But those who were — well, most of us were well rooted in the red clay and restive times the 1980s had brought to our city. And we knew we’d been handed a gift so precious, so unique, that we frequently held our collective breath, hoping, praying we were worthy of the task.
It wasn’t a small one. Despite our self-confident swagger, we were as insecure as your average 16 year old on a first date. Would we be pretty enough? Smart enough? Could we keep from embarrassing ourselves with our naiveté and our self-promotion hormones in overdrive?
From the AJC to WSB to CNN, from the Atlanta Chamber to ACVB, from the Mayor’s office to Industry and Trade, we went into high gear.
And in so many ways, because of hundreds of physical assets and a thousand intangible ones, we pulled off something extraordinary, and things were never quite the same.
From the city’s leadership to the world media, there was an overwhelming sense that our hosting of the convention was a success. Nothing happened from any standpoint to cast a shadow on the city (Rob Lowe’s escapades, not withstanding). The economic impact turned out to be better than expected. Everything worked mostly. The complaints were mostly related to convention logistics. The Omni was too small (though we know part of the problem was that the podium and stage kept growing) and the hotel rooms were too far out.
But we showed off our city as a modern, efficient metropolis, a great place to live, and work, and do business. And in the days leading up to the gavel, we came together as a true community with a renewed sense of urgency to get some projects underway or off the drawing board — MARTA to the airport; the widening of International Boulevard, just to name two. Delta began air service to Tokyo and Seoul, and Midtown was being birthed, with IBM and AT&T painting a new skyline. There was an interesting effort going on in the background with something called the Georgia Amateur Athletic Foundation that was morphing into the Atlanta Organizing Committee even as the gavel struck.
But it was how we told the bigger story that summer — the story of a city coming of age— that even today makes me so proud. We developed what is still a wonderful video about Atlanta that was rich with imagery and imagination, and distributed more than 14,000 media kits. We trained some 200 PRSA volunteers and deployed 50 students to help out in four round the clock media centers. We answered 51,000 questions (my favorite one still was the earnest call from the Today Show asking if grits was singular or plural) assisted with 2,600 stories (first time we’d hosted a live Today Show and we had huge profiles in National Geographic, the FT, Economist, USA Today and all manner of European and Asian papers). W coordinated more than 550 interviews (OK — Andy Rooney’s interview with me about why there weren’t peach trees on Peachtree Street was a personal favorite). But my real heroes were Andy Young and George Berry, who always made time for talking to the media and always hit their marks.
And all that effort, the coordinated, seamless, do the right thing approach, paid off in spades. For days, you couldn’t turn on a TV newscast, read a newspaper or magazine that did not mention Atlanta, (and yep, for all intents and purposes, the Internet was still an engineer’s wet dream).
For the most part, it was everything we could have hoped for. The stories talked with some astonishment about the reality of Southern hospitality (remember the Boston Globe reporter who wrote about TRYING to get someone to be rude to him and not being able to make it happen?) The beauty of our city in a forest took a lot of people by surprise as much as the modernness of it. Our thriving business environment got lots of attention — accomplishing one of the key reasons we went after the convention in the first place. And of course the strength and leadership in our African American community got a lot of well-deserved attention.
Some of the coverage reminded us of problems we still needed to address. An effort to move the homeless out from under the viaduct got lots of coverage and led to a white hot spotlight on the vast divide (racial and economic) that was still present then. And, to be fair, is still present now — at least the economic part.
We went on later that fall to be named the US city that could compete for the opportunity to host the 1996 Olympic Games, and with that, a not so subtle shift in our sense of community began. When the torch was lit that July night 8 years later, we weren’t the same city as we had been, and because of events — some beyond our control and some of our own making — it was a very different Atlanta that was showcased to the world.
But for a handful of us, it was 20 years ago today that our brave and beautiful city was - for a moment — the shining city on the hill. And it was really something.
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Atlanta region begins looking 50 years out to 2060
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over the next two years, the Atlanta Regional Commission will embark on its Fifty Forward planning initiative to help steer the way metro Atlanta will be in 2060.
The kick-off meeting of the Fifty Forward steering committee Monday confirmed that this will be a massive undertaking tackling a host of issues such as sustainability; demographics and diversity; megaregions, globalization and the economy; science, technology and innovation; land use and planning; pubic health and health care; workforce development and education; transportation; and energy.
Individual forums will be held on each topic followed by a series of community meetings that will be convened by the Civic League for Regional Atlanta.
“What we hope we will get in Fifty Forward will be to engage in different kinds of thinking,” said Tom Weyandt, the ARC’s director of comprehensive planning.
It will be a public, private and nonprofit initiative. That make-up is reflected in the leadership of the Fifty Forward steering committee with its three co-chairs. Secretary of State Karen Handel is representing the government sector. Suzanne Sitherwood, president of Atlanta Gas Light, is representing the private sector. And Milton Little, president of the United Way of Metro Atlanta is representing nonprofits.
About 33 people attended the first steering committee meeting Monday morning at the offices of the Nelson Mullins law firm in Atlantic Station.
Raymond King, an executive vice president of SunTrust, questioned whether the planning process would conclude with an action plan so the vision for the region could be implemented.
“Our hope is that there will be some specific action taken,” Weyandt said.
The group also discussed whether there were more issues that should be looked at. Jim Stokes, president of the Georgia Conservancy, wondered if water, the environment and land conservation needed more attention.
Ray Christman with the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing questioned whether the issue of governments and governance needed to be explored. He mentioned the increasing number of local governments and the region’s relationship with the state as issues that needed to be addressed.
Kay Pippin, president of the Henry County Chamber of Commerce, said it all boils down to leadership in the region. How would leadership development be included, she asked.
And Alicia Philipp, president of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, said the effort should include others that the traditional leaders.
“We need to get younger people involved because we won’t be here in 50 years,” Philipp said.
This is not the first time there’s been a longterm visioning process for the region. Back in the 1990s, former Georgia Gov. George Busbee chaired a comprehensive effort called Vision 2020.
The Fifty Forward initiative will hold its next forum on Demographics and Diversity on Sept. 10 at the Leadership Center at Morehouse College
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Bernie Marcus to guest host CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder turned philanthropist, is doing a one-day stint as a talk-show host on Tuesday morning’s “Squawk Box” on CNBC in New York City. From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., Marcus will be a guest host on the popular business show doing his own interviews.
On the line-up: Ken Langone, another Home Depot co-founder who also served as a director of the New York Stock Exchange; and Frank Blake, Home Depot’s current CEO. This will be Blake’s first extended television interview since he became CEO in January, 2007.
The idea for Marcus to guest host “Squawk Box” came up in May when the show came to Atlanta to broadcast from the new World of Coca-Cola and the Georgia Aquarium. As the benefactor of the Georgia Aquarium, Marcus was interviewed on the show along with several other local executives.
The show’s producers asked Marcus if he would be willing to be a guest host in the near future. Marcus jumped at the chance, and even offered to invite a few of his colleagues.
Marcus spokeswoman Donna Fleishman said Langone will talk about why they could not repeat the Home Depot success story if they were starting out today. Blake will talk about the current and future issues facing Home Depot.
Also Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) will call in to talk about the Employee Free Choice Act. Marcus will then close out the program by talking about the Share Initiative with the Shepherd Center on their efforts to help the military wounded with brain or spinal injuries.
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Civil rights museum picks exhibit design firm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A national design firm has been selected as the master planning and exhibition firm for the Atlanta’s proposed Center for Civil and Human Rights.
Gallagher & Associates, which is based in Bethesda, Md., was awarded the contract through a competitive bidding process. The firm has designed exhibits at the Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg, Va; the Gettysburg National Military Park and Visitor Center in Gettysburg, Pa; and the National Archives Experience exhibit in Washington, D.C.
Doug Shipman, executive director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights Partnership, said in a statement that Gallagher’s project team will create “an immersive visitor experience” for the center.
Other consultants on the Gallagher project team include: Dr. Deborah L. Mack of Savannah and Atlanta-based Turner Associates, led by architect Oscar Harris.
The team will develop preliminary plans for the interior space and the exhibit design. Interested citizens also will have an opportunity to participate through a series of publlic meetings.
Patrick Gallager, principal with the desing firm, said in a statement that “there is a critical need to find a common voice to communicate across generational and cultural lines about civil and human rights experiences and our responsibilities for the future.”
Gallagher added that the “Center will have national resonance and will make Atlanta the nucleus of dialogue for change worldwide.”
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How do we expand regional transit?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When voters in Gwinnett were asked whether they would support a one-cent sales tax to expand MARTA in their county, the outcome showed growing acceptance for regional transit.
Democrats overwhelmingly supported the non-binding MARTA vote while Republicans decisively rejected the idea. When the results were combined, the measure lost by only 53 to 47 percent.
The outcome of the MARTA vote in Gwinnett could hold clues on how we can expand transit in our region. Currently, MARTA rail lines only exist in Fulton and DeKalb, the only two counties that have been supporting the transit system for 35 years.
To read my column on the Gwinnett vote…
Few question the need to expand transit throughout our region — be it light rail, heavy rail, commuter rail, express buses or local buses.
But how do we get there?
Can we have one agency oversee all public transit operations in our region?
(Currently, MARTA’s buses serve Fulton and DeKalb. There are separate bus systems in Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton. And the Georgia Regional Transit Authority operates its own regional bus service: the Xpress coaches).
The Transit Planning Board, which includes representation from all of the above, has been reached consensus on a plan for the region called “Concept 3.”
Now the board is working on a regional governance structure for transit and whether there should be one agency delivering transit to the entire region.
What are your thoughts?
Should we have one transit agency to serve all of metro Atlanta?
If so, what should it look like and what should it be called?
What role should MARTA, which handles more than 90 percent of all our region’s transit trips, play in that new agency?
Let me hear from you….
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Outcome of MARTA vote in Gwinnett signals shift to regional transit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Was Gwinnett’s straw poll on MARTA a victory or a defeat for transit?
Did the split decision in Gwinnett’s non-binding vote on a 1 percent sales tax for a MARTA expansion hurt or help plans for a regional transit system?
And was the wording of the MARTA question on Tuesday’s ballot designed to get a “no” vote?
The question on the Republican ballot was:
Would you support an extension of the MARTA Rail line into Gwinnett County, which would include an additional one-cent sales tax?
The vote was 63 percent against and 37 percent in favor.
The question on the Democratic ballot was:
Would you support a 1 percent sales tax increase to extend MARTA into Gwinnett County?
That vote was 70 percent in favor and 30 percent against.
The combined results of the straw poll show 53 percent against and 47 percent in favor.
Interestingly enough, MARTA was not involved in putting the question before Gwinnett voters. Neither was the regional Transit Planning Board. Nor was the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce or the Gwinnett County Commission.
“Contrary to popular belief, MARTA had nothing to do with it,” said Beverly Scott, MARTA’s general manager. “If I had been able to ask the question, I would have asked it differently.”
So who decided to put the question before voters?
“If you find that out, I would love to know,” said Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District.
So who was behind the straw poll?
“I have no idea except to say it was a Republican Party and a Democratic Party question,” Commission Chairman Charles Bannister said. “It didn’t come from me.”
Warbington believed putting the word “MARTA” on the ballot was done to get a negative response. “The intent was to get people to shut up about transit,” Warbington said. “But it ended up backfiring on them.”
In Warbington’s mind, the combined vote lost by only 3 percentage points even with MARTA as part of the question and with no specifics on where the rail would go and how the money would be allocated. “Nobody knew what they were voting on,” he said.
Cheryl King, staff director of the Transit Planning Board, said her personal view is that the Gwinnett ballot questions actually had two questions in one. Do you support rail in Gwinnett? And do you want MARTA to run it?
“When you put them together, you confuse the issue,” she said. “This is not about MARTA. This is about how we are going to address our congestion problems.”
Currently, the Transit Planning Board is working on a new governance structure for a regional transit system. The configuration and the name of MARTA could change in that proposal.
Scott said as the region’s transit footprint expands and new funding partners emerge, “there will be a modified governance structure.”
What’s most important in Scott’s mind is for the region to have an integrated transit system no matter what it’s called or configured. “We will not wind up being the people holding this region back from moving forward,” Scott said.
Bannister, who supports the Transit Planning Board’s Concept 3 plan for Gwinnett, said voters have said they want rail but not MARTA as it is currently structured.
The vote did show that Gwinnett’s opposition to MARTA and transit has softened since 1990, when it was last on the ballot. That proposal failed overwhelmingly with a 70 percent to 30 percent vote.
Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, said the vote shows the impact of $4-a-gallon gasoline, as well as traffic problems.
“I’m surprised that the way the ballot was worded that it came out as well as it did,” Williams said. “But commuters are having to reconsider the way that they get to work.”
So, once again, who did put the question on the ballot and what was the motive?
Greg Howard, chairman of the Gwinnett Republican Party, had the answer.
“We did that,” Howard said. “This is one of the best ways to see how the citizens feel.”
Howard, who called himself “pro-transit,” said he used to be a regular MARTA rider when he lived in DeKalb County.
But he acknowledged that he is uncomfortable with the current governance and operation of the transit system. And he believes that MARTA by another name would still be MARTA.
Still, Howard said the question was not designed to get a “no” vote or to skew the outcome.
“I wanted to see if there was acceptance in the community,” Howard said.
The final question: Was the Gwinnett vote a victory or a loss for regional transit?
Howard’s take: “I think it did a little better than I was expecting.”
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Women’s Foundation gives $1 million to nonprofits
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Women’s Foundation has reached a historic milestone.
On Tuesday, the foundation awarded more than $1 million to nonprofits that serve women and girls in metro Atlanta —- the most it has ever given in one year.
“It’s so exciting to be able to do something like this,” said Karen Webster Parks, who is serving as interim CEO of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation. Being able to donate $1 million in grants in one year was a goal the foundation set last year.
The 22-year-old foundation also set another milestone. With this year’s grants, the foundation has given more than $10 million to women- and girl-related nonprofits.
This year’s grants also included two major multi-year grants —- $200,000 to Friends of International Community School and $100,000 to the Women’s Resource Center to End Domestic Violence.
The foundation also has a couple of other major events happening this year. It has a search under way to hire a permanent CEO, which it hopes to have in place by September.
And on Oct. 30, it will hold its major fund-raising event —- Numbers Too Big to Ignore —- when it will feature the next generation of women leaders.
NEW CHAIRWOMAN FOR FOUNDATION
Community leader Jane Black has been elected as chairwoman of the Piedmont Hospital Foundation board of directors. She is the first woman and the first non-physician to hold that post.
Black has been a volunteer leader to many nonprofits in Atlanta. She was honored as the 2007 Georgia Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year by the Greater Atlanta Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
She has served as chairwoman of the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s capital campaign, as president of the board for the Ben Franklin Academy and as chairwoman of the EARTH University Foundation. She also is president of the Atlanta History Center’s Exposition Foundation.
And Black also has been honored with the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Westminster Schools.
Five other Atlanta leaders have been named to the hospital’s board: Tom Asher, a civic leader who used to be executive vice president of Robinson-Humphrey Co.; Larry Klamon, former president and CEO of Fuqua Enterprises; Ann Estes Klamon, a community leader who is retired from SunTrust Bank; Neil Williams, a former managing partner of Alston & Bird and retired general counsel of Amvescap; and Frannie Graves, a civic leader who has been active with Agnes Scott College, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Trinity Presbyterian Church.
JEWISH FEDERATION SELECTS NEW LEADER
The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta has a new board chairwoman. Carol Zaban Cooper is a community leader who also is the daughter of Erwin Zaban, the longtime CEO of National Service Industries.
Cooper succeeds Marty Kogon, who led the board the past two years. Kogon is CEO of Pull-A-Part.
Cooper said in a statement that she will focus on increasing participation among three groups —- young adults, young families and newcomers to Atlanta.
The Jewish Federation, a philanthropic organization, conducts an annual fund-raising campaign to support a host of charities that provide social and human services.
Meanwhile, the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce has re-elected Laurence Olivier as its chairman. Olivier is an Atlanta-based partner of the Israeli venture firm Venture Partners.
The other officers are Charlie Harrison of Wynden Pharmaceuticals as chairman-elect; Lorin Coles of Allianceshere as vice chairman; and Benjamin Fink of Berman Fink Van Horn as treasurer. Tom Glaser will continue to serve as the chamber’s president.
LAND CONSERVANCY HAS NEW CHAIRMAN
The Georgia chapter of the Nature Conservancy has named Braye Boardman, president of Beacon Blue, as its new chairman. He succeeds Dwight Mathews, the board’s leader for two years.
Boardman has been on the Nature Conservancy’s board since 2002. In the release, Boardman said he “grew up fishing in the Savannah River, hunting in Georgia’s deep forests and exploring the mysteries of nature in my backyard.”
The Nature Conservancy also has a relatively new director in Georgia —- Shelly Lakly.
LAWYER CONFIRMED FOR FEDERAL PANEL
Eric Tanenblatt, senior managing director of McKenna Long & Aldridge’s Atlanta office, was confirmed earlier this week by the U.S. Senate to serve on the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
The bipartisan board sets policies and direction for the independent federal agency that administers AmericCorps, Senior Corps, Learn and Serve America, and other programs.
Tanenblatt is founder and chairman of Hands On Georgia. He recently served as co-chairman for the National Conference for Service and Volunteering that was held in Atlanta last month.
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Downtown Macy’s retail space has a new owner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An Atlanta-based investment group has closed on the purchase of the former Macy’s department store on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta.
The new owners — the 180 Peachtree Retail Group — are acquiring the lower three floors of the historic department store with plans to create a lively space with a host of stores and restaurants.
The investment group purchased the lower three floors, about 185,000 square feet, from the Peachtree Carnegie limited partnership, which will continue to own the upper five floors.
Robert Patterson, managing partner of 180 Peachtree Retail Group, said the group plans to enliven the front entrance to building by highlighting the three central arches with glass.
“We have got to signal to people that we are a big, fun, festive, multi-tenant complex,” Patterson said. “We want people to feel that there’s a lot going on, and that once you’re inside, you are in this grand lobby area.”’
Patterson said the plans call for the retail-restaurant complex to be open before the 2009 Christmas shopping season.
“It’s going to feel much more like a Faneuil Hall Market Place (in Boston) with boutiques and restaurants,” Patterson said. “Atlanta does not need us to be another strip center or power center. What Atlanta needs is a place with a fair amount of food, a fair amount of specialty retail with a fair amount of local color mixed in.”
Patterson said the interior likely will involve expanding the mezzanine floor to create more space for retailers. Even though some of the chandeliers may have to be removed or relocated, he said he sees the chandeliers as “signature pieces to showcase an artifact of what used to be here.”
The building dates back to 1927. It operated as the flagship Davison’s department store for decades before it became Macy’s in 1985. The department store was closed in April, 2003, and the space has been mostly vacant ever since.
The 180 Peachtree Retail Group has had an option to buy the lower three floors since December. Wachovia Bank is providing financing for the project.
Patterson said the investment group, which is made up primarily of Atlanta natives, wants to bring life back to the elegant department store.
“It’s really important that we create a center that’s a destination and a experience,” said Patterson, who added that the development will cater to residents, office workers, students, tourists and conventioneers. “We have to give them a reason to come into our space.”
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City gives Crum & Forster building a lifeline
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia Tech Foundation’s plans to demolish the historic Crum & Forster building in Midtown Atlanta took a big hit.
The city of Atlanta’s Bureau of Buildings has denied the foundation’s application to demolish the 1927 structure at 771 Spring St.
More importantly, the city also sent the foundation a letter expressing its intent to nominate the Crum & Forster building for landmark status. That designation would provide the building greater protection from being demolished
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The foundation had bought the building late last year for possible future expansion of its Tech Square development on the corners of Spring and Fifth streets. The Crum & Forster building, which helped influence the design elements of Tech Square, is located just south of that development.
But the foundation also said it had no immediate plans to develop the site, and that the property would be a vacant landscaped lot for the foreseeable future.
Community leaders and historic preservationist orchestrated a widespread campaign to save the building, including an online petition with about 2,000 names and comments.
In the past few weeks, critics of the foundation’s plans also started appealing to individual members of the foundation’s board as well as lobbying the city to take actions to save the building.
The campaign to save the building seemed to be having some influence with the foundation, which announced last week that it had hired an architectural firm with strong preservation credentials to re-evaluate the foundation’s plans.
The foundation still could file an appeal to the courts to fight the city’s decision to deny the demolition permit and to designate the building as a landmark.
Note to Readers: The date of the public meeting in the following letter is incorrect. The public hearing will be held on July 27 at 4 p.m. at Atlanta’s City Hall.
To read the letter from Atlanta Urban Design Commission to the Georgia Tech Foundation …
July 11, 2008
FIRST CLASS MAIL RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
Mr. Mark W. Long, Secretary Georgia Tech Foundation Real Estate Holding Corporation 760 Spring St., NW, 4th Floor Atlanta, GA 30308-1028
NOTICE OF INTENT TO NOMINATE
Dear Sir:
This office has been informed that the Special Administrative Permit (SAP-08-24) for the property located at 771 Spring Street, NW, has been denied by the Bureau of Planning.
Due to its historic, cultural and architectural significance, and in accordance with the City of Atlanta’s Historic Preservation Ordinance (see enclosed), Section 16-20.005(b) of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Atlanta, this letter constitutes official Notice of Intent to Nominate the Crum & Forster Building and the real property located at 771 Spring Street, NW, Land Lot 80, in the 14th District (hereafter referred to collectively as the “property” and as shown on the enclosed map, which is incorporated herein by reference). This property is proposed for nomination to the zoning category of Landmark Building/Site (LBS). The property is currently zoned SPI-16 (sub area 1) The Zoning Committee may modify this nomination to another category as provided by Section 16-20.006(b).
You are hereby further advised that the Urban Design Commission of the City of Atlanta will hold a public hearing regarding this proposed nomination on Wednesday, August 23, 2008, beginning at 4 p.m. This hearing will be held in the Atlanta City Council Chambers, Second Floor, City Hall Complex, 55 Trinity Avenue, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia. Also enclosed is a copy of the Commission’s Rules of Procedure that will be used during the hearing. The owner(s), or his or her representative(s), will have a reasonable opportunity to present testimony and other evidence concerning the historical, cultural and architectural significance of the property, or lack thereof. The public will also be allowed a reasonable opportunity to be heard, and may present testimony or other evidence regarding the same considerations.
Please be further advised that, in accordance with Section 16-20.005.C. of the Code of Ordinances, the property herein referenced is protected and controlled by these regulations to the extent provided by that category of protection to which it has been nominated. This protection begins on the above date of this Notice of Intent to Nominate and continues for a maximum of 180 days. During this interim development control period, no alterations of any kind are permitted on this property unless the required Certificates of Appropriateness for such alterations have been secured from the Urban Design Commission of the City of Atlanta.
You are invited to carefully read the enclosed Historic Preservation Ordinance. This Notice of Intent to Nominate is the first step in the process of reviewing the property for possible nomination and designation to one of several categories of historic protection. The Urban Design Commission staff is in the process of preparing a detailed report on this property, which will be available for public review approximately ten days prior to the public hearing referenced above. After the public hearing, the Urban Design Commission will decide whether or not to nominate your property for designation to a category of historic protection. If the Commission nominates
Notice of Intent to Nominate - 771 Spring St., NW July 11, 2008 Page Two
the property, the Zoning Committee of the Atlanta City Council will introduce an ordinance to designate the property to the appropriate category of historic protection. That ordinance will then go through the City’s procedure for all zoning papers, which includes another public hearing before the Zoning Review Board prior to final designation action by the Atlanta City Council.
For further information or questions concerning this matter, please contact the Urban Design Commission at 404-330-6200.
Very truly yours,
Karen Huebner Executive Director
Attachments 1. Atlanta Historic Preservation Ordinance 2. Map of the Property 3. Urban Design Commission Rules of Procedure 4. Economic Incentives Summary
cc: James Shelby, Deputy Commissioner Department of Planning and Community Development & Acting Director Bureau of Code Compliance
Ibrahim Maslamani, Director Bureau of Buildings Ann Heard, Chief Zoning EnforcementPermalink | Comments (51) | Post your comment |
Ways to preserve our natural environment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over the years, the state and the region have had several strategies to conserve open space and making metro Atlanta greener.
When Gov. Roy Barnes was in office, the state sought to preserve the land that was most threatened by sprawl and development. That meant that property in and around the Atlanta region was being permanently set aside for green space.
The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, working in concert with governments, foundations and the private sector, also embarked on an ambitious plan to protect the banks of the Chattahoochee River from Helen to Columbus.
In recent years, Gov. Sonny Perdue has emphasized protecting large acreages of land, primarily in outlying parts of the state.
At the same time, the city of Atlanta and TPL have invested in future park land around the Beltline. Also, DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties have passed significant bond referendums to acquire green space and conserve land.
Plus, other efforts like the PATH Foundation, have been hard at work. PATH has been developing bicycle and pedestrian trails throughout the region, often working in concert with the counties that have passed bond referendums for green space.
Lastly, Paulding County — with help from the state, foundations and voters — has successfully acquired a major wildlife management area for permanent protection.
But the threats remain. Several wildlife management areas, which many believe is in public hands, actually are privately owned. At any time, they could be sold off for development.
Then, in the last few years, timber companies have sold thousands and thousands of acres of forests to development companies. All those tracts potentially could be converted from an attractive natural amenity to subdivisions and strip shopping centers.
And to make matters worse, the state has no source of dedicated funding to acquire and protect land from being developed.
Unlike our neighboring states that have large pots of dedicated funding, such as Florida, we rely on a modest appropriation of funds from the governor to support our state’s green space program. Given that those dollars are allocated on an annual basis, there is no guarantee Georgia will set aside money to preserve our natural environment.
The MillionMile Greenway is one response to the situation. The nonprofit is working to build grassroots efforts throughout the region and the state to develop interconnected greenways.
What should we do to conserve our natural environment?
I would love to hear from you….
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MillionMile Greenway: Nonprofit envisions greenways far and wide
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Imagine a million miles of greenways across metro Atlanta, the state and the nation —- connecting hundreds of communities with parks, waterways and trails.
That’s the vision of the newly formed MillionMile Greenway, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that will work with communities to help them develop green spaces and trails that will interlock with greenways in other communities.
The champion behind this vision is Jim Langford, a longtime entrepreneur and environmentalist.
Between 2004 and 2007, Langford served as state director of the Trust for Public Land and was instrumental in the organization’s investment in buying parkland near the 22-mile Beltline around Atlanta’s core.
TPL, in partnership with the Nature Conservancy, also helped preserve hundreds of acres of green space along the Chattahoochee River from Helen to Columbus.
Langford has observed the skyrocketing popularity of land conservation and greenways by the public. DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb counties have all passed multimillion-dollar bond referendums to preserve open spaces and parks in the midst of rapid development.
But Langford also realized there was a void in the region’s environmental landscape. Some of the fastest-growing counties outside the core didn’t have the organizational ability to implement a green space plan or an acquisition program.
“Looking at the spectrum of the 25 metro counties out there, only four or five are strong enough to do a bond referendum,” Langford said. “I started to look around to see who could go out and help those other communities.”
Although there are several conservation and environmental organizations in the state, none was designed for an outreach effort with the outlying suburban counties still trying to form a green space plan. Most organizations, like TPL, were “transaction-oriented,” designed to help buy specific tracts.
So after he left TPL a year ago, Langford began talking to other environmental and civic leaders about creating an organization that could fill that void.
Langford drafted Ryan Gravel, who as a student at Georgia Tech first proposed the concept of the Beltline.
Gravel’s response to Langford was: “This is like the Beltline, only bigger.”
In June 2007, MillionMile Greenway was incorporated as a nonprofit.
It just announced its board: Gravel, who now practices urban design with Perkins+Will; Jesse Glasgow, program manager for Photo Science, which is helping develop technological tools for communities; Angela Graham of Silverman Construction Program Management (and formerly with TPL); Phillip Hoover, a partner with Smith, Gambrell & Russell; Tom Parker, a vice president for Georgia Transmission Corp.; Susan Rutherford, manager of the Greenway Division for the city of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management; Bo Spalding, a founding partner of the Jackson Spalding communications firm; and Robert Turner, who practices transactional law at Stites & Harbison.
Langford also is on the board and serves as MillionMile Greenway’s president. He continues to serve as a consultant for Linger Longer’s Jekyll Island redevelopment proposal (which will include a network of greenways with bicycle and pedestrian paths).
The organization has just launched its Web site: www .millionmilegreenway.org. It also is beginning a fund-raising and membership drive. It has received more than $100,000 in pro bono services.
And it already is working on several pilot projects.
For example, the group is working with Newton County. Using mapping technology made available by Georgia Transmission, it is helping the county and its residents locate the optimal areas for greenways.
The group also is working with community leaders to provide the expertise to implement greenway plans.
“This needs to be a community-focused, citizen-focused initiative,” Langford said. “We want to empower local communities.”
In addition to the software and technical expertise, the organization is working on a tool kit to give its community partners on the various ways to conserve land and build greenways.
As the community groups evolve and partner with their local governments, Langford said the intent would be to connect them with TPL and other conservation groups to help acquire land, and to work with the PATH Foundation to help build bicycle and pedestrian trails.
“People love trails, and they’re very inexpensive to build,” Langford said. “We want to help build the organizational infrastructure in each community so they can build parks and trails.”
MillionMile Greenway also has other pilot projects under way. It is working with Georgia’s coastal counties to create a greenway initiative. It also is working with three counties near Athens on a similar plan.
And Langford has been working with areas in Northern Virginia on a greenway system that connects Civil War battlegrounds. The Virginia and Georgia coast pilot projects are being done in concert with the East Coast Greenway Alliance.
“We want to sow seeds everywhere,” Langford explained.
For him, success in five years would be to work on projects in a number of states, help create numerous local greenway initiatives, have a membership base in the thousands and create interconnecting greenways between the various local organizations.
It’s all about watching communities grow organically, Langford said. “We want people to create greenways in their own backyards.”
The need for more greenways and parks is becoming even more critical, given that metro Atlanta continues to lose about 50 acres of green space every day.
MillionMile Greenway’s vision can capture the imagination of communities —- large and small —- throughout our region, our state and our nation.
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Bill Tush tells a Ted Turner-Bob Hope story
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For years, Bill Tush was the entire news staff for Ted Turner’s embryonic media empire.
When Turner spoke at the Atlanta Rotary Club this past Monday, he shared a couple of Bill Tush stories. Since he couldn’t afford a news staff, Turner hired Tush to do the news late at night at WTCG-TV, which later became the SuperStation on Channel 17.
Turner said Tush would basically just read the headlines from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But he would provide a humorous angle on the news, in some ways a precursor to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.
Interestingly enough, after my column on Turner’s talk appeared on Thursday, I got an email from Tush, who lives in Atlanta.
Tush found it funny that at Monday’s lunch, Turner was being interviewed by Bob Hope, who had done public relations for the Atlanta Braves during the early years of Turner’s media empire.
Here is Bill Tush’s email:
Maria,
I read and enjoyed your story on Ted at the Rotary in this mornings AJC.
I thought I wuld pass this story along and hopefully give you a laugh. I was the original so called “talent” hired back in 1974 long before it was the empire it is today and was just WTCG-TV. My career lasted there for thirty years.
Anyway, shortly after Ted bought the Atlanta Braves and Bob Hope was the PR person for the team Ted and I were in the parking lot walking to our cars. He said to me, “Hey! Bill, I’m going up to Nashville to have dinner with Bob Hope.
I said, “So what’s the big deal?”
Ted came back with, “No! The real one.”
Have a nice day.
Bill
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Midtown church told to save historic buildings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For more than five years, Elston Collins has been a member of the St. Mark United Methodist Church at the corner of Fifth and Peachtree streets.
That is, until now.
Collins resigned from the congregation in protest of the church’s desire to demolish three historic buildings along Juniper Street and to replace them with a surface parking lot.
“It’s really disappointing for me on lots of fronts,” said Collins, who also serves as president of the Midtown Neighbors Association. “Neighbors couldn’t believe my church was doing this.”
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Originally, it appeared as though the church was willing to work with the community and historic preservation leaders to explore solutions that would keep the buildings yet provide parking and future development opportunities. In May, St. Mark agreed to defer its demolition permit request for at least 30 days to explore those solutions.
“We pulled in so many resources from the community,” Collins said. “We had experts who presented them alternatives with potential funding streams. What really sent me over the edge was that while we were trying to find solutions, the church decided to go ahead with demolition. I was just appalled that the church could be so two-faced.”
Collins is not alone with his frustration.
At a meeting of the Development Review Committee Thursday evening, not one member of the public spoke in favor of the church’s plans.
The committee then voted unanimously to oppose the demolition permit and against any variances that would permit the church to develop a parking lot. The committee’s vote reaffirmed similar votes taken by the Midtown Neighbors Association and the Neighborhood Planning Unit - E.
St. Mark member Bill Sanders, who spoke on behalf the church, said preservationists “made some excellent suggestions, but it involves land we don’t own and money we don’t have.” Later he described the alternative solutions as “half-baked.”
In addition, Sanders said the church wanted to consolidate its land holdings on its block so it eventually could develop the site into a 20-story building. But he said that could five, 10 or 50 years out.
After committee members voted in a closed door session, Clifford Altekruse summed up the group’s position that the church did not seriously explore alternatives.
“It’s our sense that the church is turning down that opportunity so it can demolish the buildings,” Altekruse said. “That strikes us as wrong because it’s hurtful to the neighborhood and it’s unnecessary because financing was available. The committee is srongly opposed to granting any of the variances.”
Currently the three buildings, built around 1905 as residences, have no historic designation. Committee members acknowledged there might not be a legal standing to prevent their demolition.
But they also read from land-use and zoning regulations that the church’s proposal to build a surface parking lot on that site is not permitted.
NPU-E Chair Penelope Cheroff, who sits on the committee, explained that having driveways and parking lots fronting major streets only take away from Midtown’s growing pedestrian environment. “It flies in the face of all we’re trying to do in Midtown,” she said.
The committee’s recommendation and the demolition requests are now headed to City Hall. If the city denies the permits, the church then could appeal the decision in the courts.
In the meantime, Elston Collins will be looking to join another congregation.
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Turner marks 70th birthday with autobiography
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November will be a big month for Ted Turner.
First, his autobiography, “Call Me Ted,” is coming out Nov. 10. Nine days later, he will turn 70.
It was an older, wiser Turner who spoke to the Atlanta Rotary Club on Monday. In his unique, humorous way, Turner shared his philosophies and perspectives with Rotarians about the world, politics, business, international relations, the environment and the aging process.
For starters, Turner gave a great deal of credit to Rotary International for his international views and for his philanthropy. “I love Rotary,” he said. “My dad was a Rotarian. I’m a Rotarian born and bred. When I die, I’ll be Rotary dead.”
He said Rotary provided “the genesis of my strong international beliefs” and that the international organization believes in “a world of friends” with clubs all over the globe.
“If you want to go out and look for enemies, you can find them anywhere, like this administration has done. Drop bombs, and you make enemies,” Turner said, adding that he supports dialogue with controversial world leaders. “How are you going to make friends with someone if you don’t talk to them?”
One of Turner’s charitable causes is the Nuclear Threat Institute, which has been working to reduce weapons of mass destruction worldwide. As Turner said: “The next world war will be the last world war.”
Another one of Turner’s causes is the environment. And he has become a strong proponent of alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind and biofuels.
“I think we have to move away from fossil fuels,” Turner said. “Or we are going to be living in a hell of our own making; it’s going to be so hot.”
Turner also opposes the fence going up along the U.S. border with Mexico —- calling it the “Great Wall of Texas.”
“I remember when this country was in favor of tearing walls down,” Turner said, referencing when President Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall and said: “Tear down this wall.”
Closer to home, Turner described his practice of taking walks around his downtown residence and filling bags up with litter.
“I pick up trash when I take a walk,” Turner said. “If we picked up more trash than we threw down, we would live in a clean world.”
As a conservationist, Turner owns more acres of land than any other individual in the United States.
“I wanted to have some land without a mortgage on it,” Turner said. “I think when you are 60, you should be out of debt. I have no debt. But then again, I’m almost 70.”
The lunch format was a change for Rotary. The dais was gone, and Turner sat on a sofa chair while he was interviewed by Rotarian Bob Hope (a former employee). Hope asked Turner: “What’s next?”
“Stay alive,” Turner said while recommending a recent book he has read: “Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80 and Beyond.”
“We have to take care of ourselves. If you’re not here, you can’t make a difference.”
And about his charities, Turner said: “The rich should help the poor. That’s what philanthropy is all about.”
As for the book, Turner said his publishers are real happy with it, but he did say that he left some stuff out because he wanted to keep it private for his family’s sake.
Turner also told the Rotarians: “I thought it was great when you let women in.”
To that, Hope said: “You’ve always liked women.”
“I do,” Turner said.
Then Hope said: “You once told me, ‘Pretty women make you feel like you can live forever.’ “
At the end, Hope asked Turner to sing “My Old Kentucky Home.”
Turner stood and proudly sang every verse. Although many of the club’s members are likely far more conservative than Turner, they were so impressed that they gave him a standing ovation.
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Campaign generates $9M for low-income workers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A delighted Bill Bolling, executive director of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, is amazed.
For a $200,000 investment, the Atlanta Prosperity Campaign has been able to generate $9 million to go directly into the wallets of the working poor.
“Show me any one who can get that kind of return, be it a for profit or a non-profit,” Bolling said.
This is the first year of the Atlanta Prosperity Campaign, which helps the working poor apply for available federal tax benefits that they can receive if they submit the proper paperwork.
Bolling has said that this is a form of economic development because it helps people who have some of the greatest needs and it pumps money into the local economy.
Several entities are partners on the Atlanta Prosperity Campaign, including Atlanta’s United Way and the hospitality industry.
Because of the first year’s success, the plan is to double the investment of the campaign in the coming year.
And Bolling, who can detect economic trends by the number of people who are seeking support from the food bank, said the working poor is being particularly hard hit today.
“Forty percent of the people who come through our doors have full-time jobs,” Bolling said. “Those are not the people we were set up to serve.”
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Ted Turner, Murdoch have ‘buried the hatchet’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Arch rivals in the media world — Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch — are no longer at war.
When Murdoch announced that he was going “green” with his media empire by buying carbon offsets and instituting stronger environmental practices, Turner sent Murdoch a letter.
‘I had to congratulate him for it,” Turner told a luncheon crowd today at Atlanta’s Rotary Club. “Not many people take the time to write letters any more. I haven’t sent George Bush many notes.”
When Murdoch received Turner’s letter, he reached out to Turner and invited him to lunch, which happened a couple of months ago.
“I have buried the hatchet with him so I’m officially not at war with anybody,” Turner said.
Turner and Murdoch had been arch rivals with major philosophical differences.
Turner ran CNN, a 24-hour cable news network that some critics have said has a liberal bent, but one that Turner saw as a channel to increase global understanding.
Murdoch started Fox News, also a 24-hour cable news network, that often provided a conservative slant on its channel and described itself as a fair and balanced source of information.
Their competition did get personal. But as Murdoch’s empire grew (it now includes the Wall Street Journal), Turner lost control of Turner Broadcasting System and CNN after the acquisition by Time-Warner and merger with AOL.
At today’s lunch, Turner was asked what he would do differently if he was still running CNN.
“I would make Lou Dobbs shut up,” Turner quickly responded. After he thought about it some more, Turner said: “They don’t run as much international news as I’d like.” He also said the news is “lighter” and more “frivolous.”
Turner did say he misses the sports scores on the ticker of Headline News. And then he acknowledged: “I’m an old fuddy duddy now.”
As has become customary in his talks, Turner mentioned his estrangement with Time Warner. He got quite a laugh when he said: “A Time Man of the Year (Turner) got let go by Time.”
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What should we do to strengthen our megaregion?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shifts in population are contributing to the emergence of megaregions.
We are no exception. Metro Atlanta is part of the Piedmont-Atlantic Megaregion, which links Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte and Birmingham. Our megaregion actually includes areas in six states that form a common economic and commercial center.
Urban experts believe the economic viability of the world’s megaregions will be critical in the age of global competition.
So what can we do to make sure our own Piedmont-Atlantic Megaregion is globally competitive?
How can we work with our neighboring states to adopt policies that foster sustainable growth?
What is the role of the federal government in encouraging such growth in our megaregion?
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Same old urban policies won’t work in megaregions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back in the 1960s, the federal government focused on the needs of cities —- from poverty to housing to transportation.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the suburbs took center stage. More people began moving away from the urban core.
Now a dual phenomenon is under way.
First, people are moving back to urban areas —- driven by higher gas prices, traffic congestion and a desire to live closer to where they work and play.
Second, megaregions are emerging.
Megaregions —- defined as corridors with several major metro areas with economic ties —- have been sprouting throughout our nation and the world.
Metro Atlanta is part of the Piedmont-Atlantic megaregion, which connects Raleigh-Durham to Charlotte to Atlanta and on to Birmingham. The megaregion also includes a host of other cities in the Southeast corridor.
Urban experts now believe the global competitiveness of our regions will depend on how well we provide mobility within these regions and how well we share our limited resources as we grow.
One such expert is Catherine Ross, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development. For the past four years, Ross has been studying megaregions —- both in the United States and in countries throughout the world —- but especially the Piedmont-Atlantic megaregion (PAM) in the Southeast.
“The core that really grounds the Southeast is the four cities of Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham and Raleigh-Durham,” Ross said. “It’s a bundling of economic life, commerce, mobility, transportation, finance, telecommunications and other infrastructure. It’s about linking this region to the global economy. It helps us have a strategy to reflect the way the world has changed.”
Our world has been becoming more urban for centuries as people have moved from rural, agricultural economies to service-oriented cities.
Doug Allen, acting dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, put it this way.
“Rome, in about 300 A.D., reached a population of about 1 million,” Allen said. “As far as we know, there was no other city in the world with 1 million people until London in 1806.”
Today, in China alone, there are 92 cities with more than 1 million people, Allen said. A similar explosion of cities and metro regions is happening around the world. And as those metro areas have grown, they’ve formed the even larger economic engines —- the megaregions.
In the United States, 10 megaregions have been identified —- such as the Northeast megaregion (New York and Boston) or the Midwest (Chicago-Detroit).
A research paper published in the Transportation Research Record last year says that “megaregions are geographic areas that will contain two-thirds of the nation’s population by 2050.”
Ross says development of megaregions will require new investments in infrastructure —- particularly in transportation and commerce.
“We need to increase our capacity to move people and freight in a sustainable way,” Ross said. “We need strategies that recognize climate change. And we need more alternatives. High-speed rail and commuter rail have got to be on the table. The rest of the world —- like China, Europe and South America —-is not wrong.”
Back in 2001, more than a dozen chambers of commerce in the Southeast formed an alliance to push the development of high-speed rail between the major cities. The Southeastern Economic Alliance was housed at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and provided an unusual level of cooperation among cities that often compete against each other when trying to attract companies.
In the past couple of years, that effort has been dormant as the federal government has been reluctant to make a major investment in high-speed rail.
But that could change after the November elections.
At a speech two weeks ago at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Miami, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, spoke of the need to invest in “clusters of growth and innovation” and rebuild the “crumbling” infrastructure of our roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, as well as our electrical grids.
So far, the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has not released his urban agenda, but he has been more sensitive to environmentally sustainable growth than the current administration.
Such concepts would be welcomed by many who work on the tough policy issues in metro areas. Figuring out how to deal with transportation, water, air quality and other issues is difficult enough when there are multiple cities and counties in the mix. The issues become more complex when the role of the state is included.
And megaregions will require cooperation among many states (six in the Southeast) to tackle those issues on such a large scale. It’s essential that the federal government play a role in helping states work together on regional issues.
“We are going to have to figure out how we can coordinate so we can remain globally competitive,” said Chick Krautler, director of the Atlanta Regional Commission. “Atlanta is going to be a big player in how to build linkages with Raleigh, Charlotte and Birmingham, as well as with Savannah and the coast. In the future, our planning is going to look outward. It’s a huge challenge.”
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Apparently, AT&T’s heart deep in Texas
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once again, Atlanta has missed out on becoming AT&T’s headquarters town.
Last week, the telecommunications giant announced that it was moving its corporate headquarters from San Antonio to one of Texas’ top business addresses —- Dallas.
Was Atlanta ever in the running?
AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp sent me an e-mail saying the company had looked at “several other cities that provided us with access to a world-class airport and to large communities of technology partners, suppliers and human resources needed for future growth.”
But he did not say whether Atlanta, a city that seems to fit that profile, was seriously considered before the decision was made to move to Dallas.
“To our knowledge, there was no corporate relocation consultant retained,” said Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, adding that the chamber wasn’t contacted.
But Williams is not surprised the telecom company chose Dallas.
“The senior leaders and decision-makers at AT&T really have a strong emotional tie to Texas,” Williams said. “As far as I’m concerned, the decision to stay in Texas was made two years ago.”
When AT&T announced a deal to acquire Atlanta-based BellSouth in March 2006, Gov. Sonny Perdue and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin reached out to then-CEO Ed Whitacre about possibly basing the company’s operations out of Georgia.
Whitacre said Perdue called him and invited him to come to the mansion to talk about the headquarters (usually it’s the other way around). Whitacre came to Georgia to meet with the governor, but he let leaders know that the company would stay in San Antonio.
But AT&T did commit to keeping its wireless division (formerly Cingular Wireless) in Atlanta for at least five years. AT&T Mobility now is headed by Ralph de la Vega, a loyal Atlantan who returned here from San Antonio last fall.
“If I had to pick a division of AT&T to be based in Atlanta, it would be AT&T Mobility,” Williams said. “There’s nothing any more high-growth than wireless. And Ralph de la Vega has assured me that they are not going anywhere.”
New president for Atlanta Rotary
The Atlanta Rotary Club on Monday had a changing of the guard —- from hotelier Dick Stormont to Alec Fraser, president of Turner Properties.
Stormont thanked the Rotarians for all their philanthropic efforts worldwide, from polio eradication in India to clean water efforts in Africa.
Fraser said his theme for the club in the coming year will be “Time Well Spent.” He plans to spend his year improving the club’s offerings, including better technology. By the way, the first speaker under his leadership will be media pioneer Ted Turner, who will be there on Monday.
Following Fraser as Rotary’s president will be Bill Nordmark, who runs a consulting firm and has been a longtime leader with the club.
Developer named to Boy Scout post
Doug Mitchell, the founder of Pathway Communities, which helped guide the development of Peachtree City, is now taking on a major community role.
Mitchell has been named Southern regional president for the Boy Scouts of America, one of the highest volunteer jobs with the organization. Mitchell first became active with the Boy Scouts in 1956. He has been awarded the Distinguished Eagle Award by the National Eagle Scout Service.
In his new role as regional president, Mitchell will become one of 64 members of the organization’s executive board. The Southern region, the largest of the organization’s four regions, serves 1 million young people, with 270,794 volunteers stretching from Florida to Arkansas.
Power couple heads to hills
Two of Atlanta’s longtime international leaders are moving to the mountains. Carol Martel, who recently retired from Coca-Cola Co., used to head the international division for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. During the 1980s, she organized several high-level trade missions —- often led by then-Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young.
Her husband, Carlos Martel, headed the international trade division for the Georgia Department of Economic Development until a few years ago. He also worked on the now-stalled Hemisphere Inc. project for Atlanta to become the headquarters for the Americas.
Now they have decided to move full-time to their “little horse farm near Blue Ridge.”
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Sorry to be a bit out of touch for a couple of days
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In one of my other lives, I chair the debate committee for the Atlanta Press Club. We partner with Georgia Public Broadcasting and other media outlets to give voters a better idea of who is running for public office.
These last couple of days, we have been holding a total of nine different debates, including congressional races and the Public Service Commission races. All are available online at www.gpb.org and at www.atlantapressclub.org. Some of the races are televised live on GPB.
We will hold another five debates next week in partnership with PBA-Channel 30. Our primary debate series will culminate on July 13 with a live debate among the Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate. Tune in at 7 p.m. that evening if you love politics or if you need help making up your mind before election day, July 15.
So please forgive me if I have been a bit lax submitting on-line entries. As soon as I catch my breath, I will reconnect.
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Janie Maddox retires from Post Properties
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Janie Maddox, senior vice president of public affairs at Post Properties, has retired after 32 years with the apartment development company.
Maddox’s last day was Friday.
In her role as a Post executive, Maddox served on the board of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce heading up its regional education policy committee.
She also served as chair of the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce in 2003.
Maddox’s decision to retire has been planned for months and was unrelated to Post Properties announcement last week that it had not received any qualified buyers for the company.
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State: Five new jobs coming to Macon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Has it come to this?
The Georgia Department of Economic Development just sent out a news release announcing that the Ferry-Morse Seed Co. is locating a new light manufacturing and distribution center in Macon — creating a total of five jobs. The company also is investing $1 million in the facility.
The announcement seems to point to the sad state of Georgia’s economy when the addition of five new jobs in Macon is news.
Just so I’m not misunderstood, every single job is important to our state — especially in this environment with a depressed housing market, a downturn on Wall Street, sky-rocketing fuel prices and higher unemployment.
But I can’t ever remember a time when the state would send out a press release announcing five new full-time jobs in one of Georgia’s major metro areas.
An addendum: After this blog item went up, Alison Tyrer, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, called to respond.
She explained that the department works with both large and smaller companies in trying to attract jobs to Georgia. One of the services the department offers to companies locating operations in the state is sending out press releases. She also stated that all jobs are important for the state’s economy.
For the full release….
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Maggie Large
Georgia Department of Economic Development
404-962-4830
mlarge@georgia.org
Seed company taking root in Macon
Ferry-Morse Seed Company to create five jobs and invest $1 million
ATLANTA, July 1, 2008- Ferry-Morse Seed Company announced today it is locating a new light manufacturing and distribution center in Macon, creating five jobs and investing $1 million.
“Georgia’s strength in logistics continues to draw distribution centers from companies like Ferry-Morse Seed Company,” said Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD). “Our strong network of interstate highways and extensive rail system connect to our fast-growing ports and the world’s busiest airport, helping companies move goods all over the world.”
The Kentucky-based company has leased a 115,000-square-foot space in an existing building on White Elk Springs Court in Macon. Ferry-Morse plans to hire five full-time employees and as many as 20 during seasonal needs. The Macon facility will manufacture and supply plant propagation products such as peat, wood pulp and coir pith.
Ferry-Morse Seed Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jiffy of the Americas, Inc., is the oldest active seed company in North America. Ferry-Morse caters directly to the consumer market, selling seed-related products such as seed starter products, grass seed and a variety of gardening aids to be used for planting seed.
“Ferry-Morse is pleased to locate in the state of Georgia and we look forward to the challenges that are inherent with opening a new facility. We feel that the Macon area is a strategic location for our company and our industry and we feel that we will be better equipped to service our customer base,” said Daniel Schrodt, president, Ferry-Morse Seed Company.
“The Ferry-Morse Seed Company has a long history in the American seed business and we are delighted that the company has selected Macon for the location of its full bagging operation. Ferry-Morse will be a great addition to the growing family of companies that have taken advantage of our strategic location, great workforce and training programs,” said Billy Pitts, chairman, Macon Economic Development Commission.
Annie Baxter, project manager for GDEcD, assisted Ferry-Morse in its location.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) is the state’s sales and marketing arm, the lead agency for attracting new business investment, encouraging the expansion of existing industry and small businesses, locating new markets for Georgia products, attracting tourists to Georgia, and promoting the state as a location for entertainment projects, as well as planning and mobilizing state resources for economic development. For more information, visit www.georgia.org.
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