Tag: Sam Massell

In what would be his final sit-down, career-spanning interview with Atlanta magazine, Massell discussed his many accomplishments, including his battles with his more conservative mayoral predecessor Ivan Allen, the anti-Semitism he faced, getting the city’s transformational MARTA mass transit train and bus system started in the 1970s, Georgia 400’s life-changing expansion into Buckhead in the 1990s, and what he hopes his legacy will be in Atlanta.

"One day, when we were all in our early 30s, Martin Luther King Jr. said to our little ragtag bunch, 'Everybody here has got to be clinically insane to think that with no money, no political power, no army, no nothing, we are going to redeem the soul of America.' And then, he said, 'We’ll be lucky to make it to 40. But if we make it past 40, we’re going to have to make it to 100 because this is not an easy job. It’ll take more than our lifetimes to get it right.' Well, I think that planted it in my mind, especially after he was killed, that I had to make it to 100."

During his term as Atlanta mayor from 1970 to 1974, the city’s first Jewish mayor, Sam Massell, oversaw the campaign to create MARTA; began construction of the Omni, the city’s first enclosed sports coliseum; increased contracting opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses; and appointed the first woman member of the Atlanta City Council. Since defeating a three-term incumbent to join the Atlanta City Council in 2013, Andre Dickens has become one of the legislative body’s most vocal champions of affordable housing, transit improvement, and equity.

Organizers say the city isn't addressing Buckhead's problems, but opponents say a Buckhead secession could bankrupt Atlanta and send a cold message during a time of renewed focus on equity and race relations.

The Ritz-Carlton Buckhead was once an epicenter of Atlanta's social scene, a mainstay for gossip and celebrity sightings, but on Wednesday, Marriott officially reintroduced the renovated and rebranded property, now named the Whitley Hotel Atlanta Buckhead, by hosting a lavish cocktail party for city dignitaries, media, and neighbors.

In Play It Again, Sam: Atlanta’s First Minority Mayor, a new biography by Charles McNair about former mayor Sam Massell, we learn life lessons from City Hall’s first and only Jewish leader.

It’s now been 15 years since Maynard Jackson’s death, but the issues explored in the new documentary film about his life—the city’s fraught racial history, the expectations placed on a black mayor, the scrutiny on minority contracts for city business—feel very relevant today.

At a Simon Property Group press conference this morning, Nobu CEO Trevor Horwell announced that Nobu Atlanta Restaurant and a 150-room Nobu Hotel may open as soon as late 2019, part of a major new mixed-use development at Simon-owned Phipps Plaza that will begin opening in spring 2020.

Atlanta's crowded mayoral race has been quietly humming along since last year, but yesterday, in a Buckhead restaurant filled with CEOs and elected officials, the race to decide who will lead the city over the next four years officially kicked off over a spread of Brunswick stew and tabletop buckets of Bud Light.

Including Roy Barnes, Shirley Franklin, Sam Massell, and more