New Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Meria Carstarphen officially met the city’s media this week, speaking at the Atlanta Press Club and making the trek out to Dunwoody for the obligatory audience with Atlanta Journal-Constitution editors, who fled the city for the suburbs several years ago. In corresponding interviews with TV and radio stations, Carstarphen pledged to move the APS past the cheating scandal that ingloriously ended the administration of Beverly Hall, who began her reign with similar optimistic expressions. Hall and 10 other educators will undergo a criminal trial this fall resulting from the nationally ignominious scandal. Like Hall, Carstarphen has received the support of the city’s business community, some of whom anonymously donated money through the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta to allow Carstarphen to begin working before her official hiring date, according to the AJC. She’s consulting with retiring Superintendent Erroll Davis on filling an alarming number of principal vacancies, including those at Buckhead’s prominent Sutton Middle School and North Atlanta High. A native of Selma, Ala., who has also led the St. Paul, Minn. school system, Carstarphen comes to Atlanta from Austin, Texas, receiving a much larger salary to lead a system with about 40,000 fewer students. Her goals sounded familiar: improving graduation rates, reducing the system’s swollen bureaucracy and, according to the AJC, pursuing a “culture change” that focuses on student education rather than outside issues such as school board political squabbles. Carstarphen can point to graduation-rate success in Austin, where about 80 percent of students receive high school diplomas, compared with 59 percent in Atlanta. Those graduation rates in the Texas state capital might be kept in mind as Carstarphen already adds to the APS bureaucracy, bringing with her the Austin school system’s human resources head and chief performance officer, the AJC said. BitPay Receives Big Bite Atlanta-based BitPay, which processes payments in the bitcoin digital currency, has received a $30 million venture capital investment from an internationally prestigious fund. Geneva-based Index Ventures counts Virgin Group honcho Richard Branson and Yahoo founder Jerry Yang as participants, according to numerous national reports about the investment, said to be the largest ever for a bit coin startup. The deal is a major boost for the Atlanta Tech Village, the tech startup community in Buckhead begun by high-tech entrepreneur David Cummings that BitPay calls home. Presumably, the BitPay investment won’t be made in bit coins. However, Branson’s Virgin Galactic reportedly will accept bitcoin payments for space travel tickets. Bitcoins are traded online like commodities, although folks with higher mathematics ability can “mine” them through a complicated formula. Despite problems such as bitcoin exchange Mount Cox’s recent bankruptcy, the currency is gaining acceptance from merchants and other businesses.
New Buckhead skyline soaring The revitalized heart of Buckhead is rapidly taking shape, as a cluster of construction projects rise in the Buckhead Village area. Work progresses on San Diego developer OliverMcMillan’s Buckhead Atlanta, while Restoration Hardware’s six-story retail building grows skyward across the street at the old ESPN Zone site. Meanwhile, the Camden Paces Apartments are under construction at 77 East Andrews. At the center of it all, Charlie Loudermilk Park, the triangular landmark where Roswell and Peachtree roads merge near West Paces Ferry Road, is undergoing a facelift funded by the Buckhead Community Improvement District. By next Christmas, Buckhead will at last resemble the world-class urban oasis envisioned by community leaders when the old Buckhead Village bar strip at last succumbed to crime and bad publicity. While the developments undoubtedly will boost the city, state and regional economies, they will pour even more traffic to an already severely congested area. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that 28 retailers and restaurants, including European brands Christian Louboutin and Helmut Lang, are committed to Buckhead Atlanta, a six-block, 8-acre site that will also include 100,000 square feet of luxury office space and 400,000 square feet of high rise residential. The openings will begin in fall 2014, heading into 2015, the Chronicle said. The Camden Paces site is taking applications for 380 apartments and a summer 2014 opening at 77 East Andrews, according to the Camden web site. Retail development is a future possibility. The Buckhead CID plans traffic and pedestrian reconfiguration for the Charlie Loudermilk Park bottleneck, some of which has begun. Alas, the clang of hammers, the roar of equipment and the rise of buildings are rapidly outracing those plans. Perhaps a Buckhead trolley?
