Yearly Archives: 2016

Gov. Nathan Deal today announced that Home Chef, a meal kit delivery service, will create more than 1,200 jobs and invest $3.35 million in a new DeKalb County facility by 2020. “Home Chef is among the many innovative companies using Georgia’s high-performing transportation infrastructure to grow their distribution network,” said Deal. “By establishing this new facility and utilizing the state’s skilled workforce, Home Chef will be able to reach more of the Southeastern market and meet the needs of a growing customer base.

The City of Atlanta announced today that the Atlanta Homeless Continuum of Care was awarded a three-year, $2.4 million Cooperative Agreement to Benefit Homeless Individuals (CABHI) grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Center for Mental Health Services (SAMHSA), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) will release a grant application on September 1, 2016, for approximately $3 million in new Community HOME Investment Program (CHIP) grants. The Community HOME Investment Program (CHIP) uses a portion of  DCA's HOME funds to assist local governments, nonprofit organizations, and public housing authorities to address the needs of affordable housing development in their communities.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today announced it is charging a Georgia couple with housing discrimination for refusing to rent an apartment they owned to a single mother and her son.  HUD’s investigation alleges landlords James and Ella Collier denied one woman’s application because she had a 14-year-old son and that they had a “NO CHILDREN” stipulation in multiple lease agreements with other tenants.

A Georgia real estate investor pleaded guilty today for his role in bid-rigging and bank fraud conspiracies in connection with public real estate foreclosure auctions in Georgia, the Justice Department announced today.

Office rents jumped 13 percent, placing Atlanta at No. 8 in JLL’s Global Top 10 market for office growth. In JLL’s Global Office Index report, Oakland East Bay, Stockholm, Dublin and Dubai (DIFC) took the top spots for annual office rental growth, all with growth of 20 percent or more. Apart from Oakland East Bay, and Atlanta, two other U.S. cities were featured in the top ten: Los Angeles (seventh) and Austin (ninth) showing 13.5 and 12.1 percent growth respectively.

JLL Atlanta announces that Ryan Mandrell has joined the Tenant Rep team at JLL Atlanta as Vice President. A native of Atlanta, Ryan most recently spent four years in New York City with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, where he was responsible for business & client development, tenant representation, acquisition/disposition, lease portfolio management and strategic advisory and implementation. While there, he completed over 500,000 square feet of transactions and was selected to the 2015 NGKF National Rising Star Retreat.

Plans were announced today for Pinewood Forrest, an innovative mixed-use community located in Fayetteville, Georgia. Envisioned as a community themed and centered around storytellers, the creative and the-creative-at-heart, Pinewood Forrest will go beyond traditional live-work-play plans to become Atlanta’s first Live-Create-Play community. Rising adjacent to Pinewood Atlanta Studios, Pinewood Forrest is designed to inspire and celebrate creativity, and to help people live their best lives.

A Georgia real estate investor pleaded guilty today for his role in bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies committed at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Georgia, the Department of Justice announced. James R. Patterson Jr. admitted that he agreed with other real estate investors to rig auctions of foreclosed homes in Gwinnett County from May 2007 until at least November 2011.

Mayor Kasim Reed and Invest Atlanta today announced a new omnibus Workforce Housing Policy to increase the availability of affordable housing in the City of Atlanta. The policy enhances existing economic incentives for new multifamily real estate to increase the number of housing units available to tenants at specified income levels

USGBC announced the appointment of Shelby Busó as the director of USGBC Georgia. In this role, Busó will work to advance USGBC’s mission to transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated through localized engagement and outreach throughout the state.

Mayor Kasim Reed announced today that the Atlanta City Council has voted 13 to 1 to approve a measure to put a special local option sales tax (TSPLOST) referendum on the November ballot to fund transportation related infrastructure projects throughout the City of Atlanta. The ballot referendum will ask Atlanta voters to authorize a 0.4 percent sales tax increase for a five-year period. The TSPLOST is projected to generate approximately $260 million, which will be leveraged to generate additional matching funds.

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., today joined a bipartisan effort to urge Senate and House Armed Services Committee leadership to protect dual-military families, women and junior members of the Armed Forces

The Atlanta REALTORS® (ARA), the largest association of its kind in Georgia, released its June 2016 Market Brief on residential housing statistics for 11 area counties in metro-Atlanta.  The Market Brief, compiled by First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS), provides the only regionally focused synopsis of monthly sales and home prices for single family residential properties

Congressman Collins introduced H.R. 5750, The Common Sense Postal Delivery Restoration Act of 2016. This legislation will ensure that homes and neighborhoods that were eligible to receive or were receiving mail prior to the implementation of new postal rules will still be able to receive mail to their addresses under the new rule. Recent United States Postal Services (USPS) rules are forcing home developers to tear up already built or permitted neighborhoods in order to install centralized mailboxes, called cluster boxes, so that all the mail for the neighborhood is delivered to one location, instead of individual homes