All-male Masters golf club will draw new PINK protesters

Move over, Martha Burk.

PINK magazine CEO Cynthia Good plans to be at the Masters next month to protest Augusta National Golf Club’s all-male membership. Activist Burk caused quite a stir over that in 2003.

“We’re not going to be throwing ripe fruit or anything,” Good says, “but we’ll make our presence known. We absolutely believe women ought to be admitted to private clubs.”

The protest is one small way PINK is trying to “move the needle on issues that impact professional women.” The company, which targets women 25 to 54 who are successful, high-income and influential, has become more than a magazine —- by design.

The business model has been “flipped upside down,” Good explains. The emphasis is more on PINK’s interactive online component, and on its growing events-production business. Says Good, “We’re right on track.”

> 180 Peachtree, the splashy downtown Macy’s redo, opens in November.

What people will see then is different and, developers say, a better fit than what was first planned.

Out is the festive retail center. Now, says Robert Patterson, there will be fewer shops, but three prominent restaurants (including a Meehan’s and a Sweet Georgia’s Juke Joint), a grand special events space and, on the Terrace level, an exhibition center for top touring shows. Think King Tut.

“We’ve taken what we thought would be a mostly retail complex and scaled back the retail to be focused on Peachtree Street,” says Patterson. “The exhibition center can be really powerful for downtown.”

The recession was a spur, but, “I think the uses we have now are truly the highest and best uses, not just ports in a storm.”

The search is on for a corporate partner to put its name on the center. The buyer stands to get heavy media exposure with every show.

> SunTrust Bank and CEO James Wells III have been sued by a pension fund that claims the bank inflated its stock before it plummeted.

The class action, filed for the Waterford Township, Mich., General Employees Retirement System, says bank assets, including loans and mortgage-related securities, were worse off than was made known, and that SunTrust was not as well capitalized as it represented.

John Herman, the Atlanta attorney who filed the case, notes that losses resulting from inadequate disclosure “are becoming less and less tolerable.” Herman’s firm, Coughlin Stoia, was counsel in the Enron investors case as well as the flap between Home Depot investors and Bob Nardelli.

Says SunTrust: “This type of lawsuit has become a predictable reaction any time a company or an industry experiences a large drop in stock price. We believe the lawsuit against SunTrust to be without merit, and intend to defend ourselves vigorously.”

dmarkiewicz@ajc.com