Fresh Loaf

Maria Saporta got Mayor Franklin’s take on the flap over a memo by Aaron Turpeau, in which the longtime political operative calls for black Atlantans to throw their support behind Lisa Borders for mayor in order to prevent a victory by the very white Mary Norwood.

Here’s what Shirley told Saporta:

As the current mayor of Atlanta and someone who has sought to represent the best interests of the entire city and all the constitutents in my performance, policies and management style, I believe Turpeau has it all wrong and has missed the mark.

Franklin challenges Turpeau’s implication that the late Maynard Jackson’s legacy lies in having won City Hall for black residents and it’s up to African Americans now to band together to make sure thay don’t have to give it back:

Jackson opened doors and kept the doors open for all Atlantans and people of good will to particpate regardless of race, social status or other political party. His consensus building success are legendary.

Turpeau tells a lopsided version of the history of Atlanta politics of the last 40 years and the civic history of Atlanta for decades.

So far, the only interested party yet to be heard from is Norwood. If I were her, I’d take the phone off the hook and lay low. Ironic as it may seem, she is likely the main beneficiary from all this fuss.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Atlanta Constitution, circa 1890

We’d heard this rumor a couple weeks back, but former AJC bidness columnist Maria Saporta had the inside contacts to nail it down first: Atlanta’s daily newspaper is considering relocating its offices out of downtown Atlanta for the first time in its 141-year history.

Saporta, now a contributor to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, got her mitts on an Aug. 3 internal memo written by new AJC publisher Michael Joseph:

“The cost of operating the downtown building is very high. Since moving production out to Gwinnett, we occupy less than 30 percent of the facility. As a result, the expense to operate the building is exorbitant. No decision has been made at this time, but we are looking at options including maintaining our current downtown location or relocating to a new, smaller site in the greater Atlanta area. I will keep you informed and share any updates on this issue.”

Keep in mind that the company owns — not leases — the building at 72 Marietta St. While Joseph doesn’t specifically rule out finding another building downtown, it’s tough to imagine the AJC could find suitable rental space that would be cheaper than property it already owns.

(Or did own. There’s another rumor swirling around that the Marietta Street building has already been sold, but that will have to remain unconfirmed for now.)

If the newspaper is to move outside downtown, there are a couple of obvious choices, both of which Saporta mentions and both of which are OTP — one OTPer than the other.

(more…)

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A couple of years ago, it really seemed like the Peachtree Streetcar was gonna happen.

The studies were completed and it seemed like everything was in place to connect Fort McPherson and Buckhead with a nearly $1 billion street-level transit system.

The first phase of that vision — 10 miles of track from Woodruff Arts Center to Memorial Drive, with a downtown tourist loop — was nearly ready to go. All the initiative needed was a special tax district along Atlanta’s most famous corridor, a Legislature-approved parking tax, and everyone to exercise patience during construction.

But then the city reported its shortfall and the economy cratered. The streetcar concept was placed on the backburner, where’s it sat for months. Ask any transit wonk at panel discussions or community meetings about the project, and they’d tell you that the vision was there but the money was not.

Maria Saporta reports however that the City of Atlanta, MARTA, Midtown Alliance and Central Atlanta Progress are coming together to apply for federal transportation dollars to fund some of the project.

(more…)

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Business blogger Maria Saporta reports state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, seems to be the most likely candidate to be named the next Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner.

Smith, chairman of the House transportation committee, has been interested in the DOT job for nearly two years, and it appears he will get his wish.

The deadline for applications from people interested in the DOT job was today at 5 p.m.

Word has it that Smith’s top two potential competitors did not apply for the job, meaning that he is the last man standing.

Saporta reports one of those competitors, Georgia Regional Transportation Authority Executive Director Dick Anderson, decided to stick with GRTA to try to implement the governor’s recently completed statewide transportation plan. Interim GDOT Commissioner Gerald Ross is rumored to return to his position as chief engineer.

(more…)

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Jason at Peach Pundit hammers House Bill 614, legislation that he says would violate your privacy.

Maria Saporta says the state needs to stop plotting takeovers of MARTA and Jackson-Hartsfield International Airport.

Ben at Terminal Station has a rundown of Saporta’s report on an Urban Land Institute mayoral candidate forum.

Doug at Live Apartment Fire spotlights veteran reporter Don McClellan. The still-at-it newsman reported on — and ran in — this weekend’s ING Marathon.

Speaking of the ING Marathon, Dave at inDecatur has video and photos from the race.

Good news for Georgia’s reputation and any hope of having a biotech industry here. Jim Galloway reports that a House committee chairman says the controversial stem-cell bill won’t move out of the lower chamber.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Urvaksh Karkaria reports on a top-secret meeting of tomorrow’s media overlords at Kennesaw State University professor Leonard Witt’s home. There are photos!

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to post this. Christa, the mysterious scribe behind Pecanne Log, found a 1967 issue of GQ that’s all about Atlanta. She has photos and pullquotes.

And just because, a helping of Griftdrift’s My Morning Wooten from Friday.

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Juliana at Blog For Democracy points out that U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Springfield, need not kvetch that the stimulus plan includes $30 million to save some mice. After his theatrics, which included waving around what looks like a cat toy, it turns out the stimulus, in fact, does not earmark money for the rodents.

Decaturite wonders how blogs can be robust tools to connect communities as newspapers continue to dwindle in size and shape.

Sara agrees that “video lottery terminals” are not what a casino make. Griftdrift brings the thunder on the issue and wins 10 points for best blog post title of the day. Two points for great art, too.

Atlanta Business Chronicle columnist and blogger Maria Saporta says not to believe the Georgia Department of Transportation and Amtrak’s assertion that much-needed commuter rail running into a still-unbuilt downtown train terminal doesn’t have to run along tracks for the Beltline near Piedmont Park.

Ben at Terminal Station has a bunch of good posts. Most recent: He’s not too upbeat about the fact that Atlanta City Councilmember Mary Norwood leads in a poll for the next mayor.

A giant bowl of strawberries in your bathroom. Style, indeed!

Jim Galloway posts a moving account of Freddie Norman, a Cobb County police whose patrol car was struck by a drunk driver 21 years ago. Norman, who was left nearly comatose from the accident, died this weekend.

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Yep. That’s billion.

According to the first phase of a study conducted by a consulting firm tasked with developing a statewide transportation plan, Georgia needs an extra $100 billion over the next 20 years if we want to move around this congested mess.

The always-excellent Maria Saporta at the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports:

The study explores improving mobility in the Atlanta region through three different ways:

• Demand management: teleworking, compressed workweeks, employee vanpools, congestion pricing, better clear of accidents and converting existing HOV lanes to High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, where people pay a premium to drive in faster-moving lanes.

• Connecting infrastructure: HOT lanes connecting major employment centers, an express bus system, commuter rail to Griffin and additional arterial roads.

• Invest in most congested corridors: replace express buses with light or heavy rail in dense corridors, build high capacity road projects and build commuter rail between Atlanta and Athens.

The “scenario study” defines those high-capacity road projects as a tunnel underneath the Downtown Connector from I-675 to Georgia 400; and another tunnel paralleling the northern arc of I-285.

That thing about commuter rail? Really cool. The thing about the tunnel snaking under the Downtown Connector tunnels? Well, as the also-excellent Joe Winter once wrote in CL — not so cool.

The price tag for the statewide transportation plan over the next 20 years is between $142 billion and $251 billion. About a half of those funds would likely come from existing sources, such as federal highway dollars, the motor fuel tax and the MARTA sales tax.

Which means the rest will have to come from a new source. The next phase of the study will focus on that conundrum.

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Former AJC business columnist Maria Saporta will be plying her trade for the Atlanta Business Chronicle, journalism blogger Chris Roush reports.

This is a major coup for the business weekly, which has been going toe-to-toe with the declining business reporting staff of the daily. Saporta, who wrote her column in the AJC for 17 years, probably owns the highest profile byline of any of the 73 journalists who left staff positions there as part of last month’s buyouts.

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In deference to the obsolete “inverted pyramid” style of news writing that all veteran journalists grew up with, I’ll start with the lede: 73 reporters, editors and other newsroom personnel at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution applied for the paper’s most recent buyout offer and all 73 were accepted.

We’re told the mood is pretty upbeat right now over at the Grey Lady of Marietta Street following a memo this morning from editor Julia Wallace announcing that, because the company’s workforce-reduction target was met, there’s no need for layoffs.

Understandably, the potential of a layoff had been a Sword of Damocles hanging over the newsroom for the past couple of weeks. The paper’s brass had said they wanted to shave the news staff by 58 – and only 58. Would enough people take the buyout?

We’d reported that business desk veteran Bill Hendrick and longtime business columnist Maria Saporta were early takers of the buyout, which offered two weeks of salary and benefits for every year of AJC employment. But it wasn’t until just before noon that AJC rank and file learned the good news that the staff-cutting is over – for now.

In fact, we’ve heard – although not had the opportunity to confirm – that some staffers might have been so worried about the prospect of being laid off that they applied for the buyout even though they didn’t want to leave the paper.

Wallace’s brief memo doesn’t explain why the honchos changed their minds and decided to let an extra 15 people go, but the safe guess is that they figured it would help postpone future trimming of the payroll. For the time being, the AJC will make do with a 335-member newsroom, down from a high point of nearly 500 before last summer’s buyout.

We’ll post more names of departing AJCers as we learn them. Feel free to share what you know.

(An earlier version of this post contained a stupid, brain-fart error of terminology brought to my attention by the first comment. Thanks.)

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Longtime business columnist Maria Saporta is taking the AJC buyout, according to the Atlanta Press Club.

To my mind, this is a big blow to the paper. Saporta, who’s cultivated links with the business community for more than two decades and who’s dad was a well-known and well-liked Atlanta architect, understands the business, civic and political circles of this community like no one else at the AJC.

As I understand it, the AJC doesn’t have to accept her application for the buyout, but I suspect it will let her go.

Today’s the last day for employees who’ve worked at the paper for at least five years to apply for the buyout, as the AJC tries to reduce its edit and sales work force by 185 people. If there aren’t enough buyouts, the paper will likely resort to layoffs.

I’ll try to get more on this.

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