Atlanta Business News

It felt like last summer on the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives on Friday. Legislative Democrats and one disgruntled Republican got a chance to re-air their complaints about the new House map GOP leaders pushed through the General Assembly during a two-week redistricting session last August. The occasion was a new bill containing a couple of changes to the House map adopted last summer. The bill, which passed 101-53 and now moves to the Senate, would reduce the number of House districts taking up portions of Hall County – Republican Gov...

Aquilex Holdings LLC completed its restructuring, is now majority owned by affiliates of Centerbridge Partners LP and its CEO has stepped own. Atlanta-based Aquilex Holdings is the parent of Aquilex Corp., which provides maintenance, repair and industrial cleaning products and services to the energy industry. The company said it cut debt by more than $300 million through an debt-for-equity exchange and an $80 million equity investment. Bill Varner retired as president and CEO. Aquilex also named Donovan Boyd chairman...

Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta Board of Realtors and RealValuator.com on Thursday held the inaugural Atlanta Real Estate Summit. The 90-minute event at The Home Depot Inc. headquarters featured analysis of market trends from 2011, industry panel and keynote discussion of strategy and planning for 2012. Click the photo on the right for a slideshow of the event. Tom Bell, chairman of Mesa Capital Partners and chairman of the U.S. Chamber’s Executive Committee, gave the keynote address, entitled “On The Horizon...

Jack London cozies up to Frederick Nietzsche in “The Grey,” a sweaty-palmed action film about survival of the fittest... on every imaginable level. En route to an oil rig in Alaska, Liam Neeson and a snack tray of assorted humans crash-land somewhere in the Great White North. There they must survive wolves, weather and each other. Neeson becomes the de facto leader because… well, because he’s Liam Neeson. But also because he is a sharpshooter by trade who was hired to protect the rig workers from assorted predators...

The Georgia House of Representatives passed a mid-year budget Friday that would help fund additional toll lanes and aid farmers worried about the impacts of the state’s new immigration law. The $18.6 billion budget, which will cover state spending through the end of the current fiscal year, was approved unanimously. The House made few changes in the mid-year budget recommended by Gov. Nathan Deal last month, adjustments that would result in a net increase in spending of $255 million. The most significant changes included a mid-year adjustment in K-12 spending to reflect enrollment increases in Georgia public schools...

As Georgia’s economy shows signs of recovering from the recession, rural Jackson County is emerging as the state’s big winner in the race for jobs. The latest example: the Jan. 31 announcement that Toyota Industries Corp. will invest $350 million in a new manufacturing plant in Pendergrass, Ga., one of Jackson’s nine communities dotting the farmland and rolling hills along Interstate 85, a 45-minute drive northeast of Atlanta. Toyota follows two projects announced in December: Kubota Corp...

The U.S. unemployment rate fell in January for a fifth straight month, to 8.3 percent, as the economy added nearly a quarter-million jobs. The jobless rate -- down from December’s 8.5 percent -- is the lowest in almost three years. The rate is now eight-tenths of a percentage point under what it was last August, the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. BLS’ separate survey of employers showed that nonfarm payroll jobs rose by 243,000 last month, with businesses adding 257,000 positions and a slight drop in private-sector employment...

Atlanta-based Kilgannon has merged with fellow ad and PR firm Dalton Agency. The merger’s financial terms were not disclosed. The joined companies will operate under the Dalton Agency banner with Kilgannon serving as the newly expanded group’s Atlanta office. The Dalton Agency currently has offices in Jacksonville, Orlando, Savannah, Ga., and Columbia, S.C. The companies said the combined Jacksonville, Fla.-based agency has about $35 million in invoiced billings and employs about 100 people...

A 1860s period film now in production, “Abraham Lincoln vs. The Zombies,” is being shot in Savannah and at Fort Pulaski, Ga., reports the Savannah Morning News. “It’s a historical horror film set in 1863 about Abraham Lincoln’s secret mission to the South to defeat the undead,” line producer Devin Ward told the newspaper. Honest Abe is president by day, zombie killer by night, in the production by Los Angeles-based Score Films, the newspaper reports. The film has a budget of less than $1 million, and is intended for distribution by DVD to outlets including Red Box and NetFlix, rather than theaters, Ward said Filming started Jan...

Officials with the company that owns the Georgia State Fair announced Thursday the event will return to Macon's Central City Park this spring, reports the Macon Telegraph. The 150-year-old event faced cancellation after the Macon Exchange Club voted in August not to hold a fair in 2012. Universal Fairs of Memphis, Tenn., which bought the fair, will host the fair April 27-May 6, the newspaper reports.

Top executives at some of the U.S.’s largest home-building companies, including the head of Atlanta-based Beazer Homes USA Inc., said Thursday that they think the housing market has stabilized, reports The Associated Press. Even so, they stopped short of being overly optimistic. As the news service points out, housing experts a year ago forecast housing would begin recovering in 2011, only to see it play out as the worst year for new home sales on records going back a half-century. At Beazer Homes, (NYSE: BZH) customer traffic has been rising, reflecting what its president and CEO, Allan Merrill, sees as “significant pent-up demand for new homes forming in many of our markets,” AP reported...

What started as an interview with WXIA-TV about his latest book, ended in former UGA Athletic Director and Football Coach Vince Dooley saying he'd probably fire current University President Michael Adams if he were his boss. WXIA reporter Paul Crawley said his hypothetical question to Dooley was whether he would renew Adams' contract if the roles were reversed. Dooley’s response: "I do think that from time to time that it's necessary to move on, to make a change. He thought in my situation that it was time to make a change and didn't renew mine, so I would say that he's at the point where I could also say the same thing about him...

Georgia farmer Raymond Parks never thought he’d be attacked by a rabid cow, but that’s exactly what happened at his Jackson County farm state health department officials have confirmed. Park was attacked by a 900-pound cow that caused a gash on his head and threw him into a barbed wire fence, reports Atlanta Business Chronicle broadcast partner WXIA-TV. "I thought she would kill me before she'd leave me alone," Parks told the station. Parks said he went for his shotgun as the cow head-butted him and broke some of his ribs...

The Wall Street Journal takes a look this week at exactly what goes into producing a $155 polo shirt launched by Atlanta couple Katherine and Jared MacLane under the brand KP MacLane. The pair met while working as sales managers at Hermes in Beverly Hills and discovered they shared a fondness for polo shirts. Getting a shirt to market has provided more twists and turns than they anticipated. Everything from their initial choice of fabric, buttons and vent ribbon changed during the process. For example, the $1 mother-of-pearl buttons preferred by the couple cracked and broke during testing and were replaced with less expensive, durable plastic ones that have a pearl-like look, the WSJ reports...

Shooting for the movie “Killing Season” starring John Travolta and Robert De Niro moves Friday to Sweetwater Creek State Park in Douglas County, Ga., reports website onlocationvactions.com. The movie is about a military veteran (De Niro) who lives in a remote mountain cabin and is visited by a former Serbian soldier (Travolta) out for revenge. Killing season has been filming in Rabun County, Ga., at the Tallulah Gorge State Park and Black Rock Mountain State Park. Crews are scheduled to film in Douglas County through Feb...

A baggage handler and a former baggage handler for Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) were arrested Thursday on suspicion of stealing tens of thousands of dollars in cash and property from passengers' luggage at Los Angeles International Airport, reports the Los Angeles Times. Police on Thursday allegedly seized more than $100,000 in cash and stolen property from their Los Angeles homes. The two men were arrested as part of an investigation into criminal activity at the airport. The men’s names were not yet available.

The state government would regain the right to approve charter schools in Georgia under a constitutional amendment that cleared a legislative committee Thursday. The Georgia House of Representatives Education Committee voted 15-6 to ask voters this fall whether to reverse a state Supreme Court ruling last year that overturned a 2008 law giving the state the power to approve charter school applications rejected by local school boards. Charter schools are an alternative form of public schools that are allowed to operate without many of the government mandates that apply to other schools...

Atlanta-based hot wings chain Hooters of America LLC named Kaylee Farris its “Hooters Girl of the Year 2012.” Farris works at the Hooters in Fort Smith, Ark. During her more than four years as a Hooters Girl, she has been on the restaurant’s international training team, opening Hooters locations regionally and around the world. She also has been featured on Hooters Dream Girl TV Show. Hooters of America is the franchiser and operator of more than 430 Hooters restaurants in 44 states and 27 foreign countries.

Jennifer Schwartz is on a crusade to boost art collecting. That’s why the owner of Jennifer Schwartz Gallery at the Brickworks at 1000 Marietta Street on Atlanta’s West Side hosted a “Walk Away With Art” event Feb. 1. The art show/cocktail party featured 50 pieces of original, signed art from photographers Lori Vrba, Lisette de Boisblanc, Heidi Lender, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Heidi Lender, Jeff Rich, Kathleen Robbin and Laura Griffin. Schwartz’s “Walk Away With Art” gatherings go something like this: Host 50 ticket-buying patrons at the gallery, let them pick numbered tickets at random, encourage them to browse, introduce them to the artists whose works are displayed, and then let them, in order of ticket number, pick their favorite piece of art to take home...

Jennifer Schwartz is on a crusade to boost art collecting. That’s why the owner of Jennifer Schwartz Gallery at the Brickworks at 1000 Marietta Street on Atlanta’s West Side hosted a “Walk Away With Art” event Feb. 1. The art show/cocktail party featured 50 pieces of original, signed art from photographers Lori Vrba, Lisette de Boisblanc, Heidi Lender, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Heidi Lender, Jeff Rich, Kathleen Robbin and Laura Griffin. Schwartz’s “Walk Away With Art” gatherings go something like this: Host 50 ticket-buying patrons at the gallery, let them pick numbered tickets at random, encourage them to browse, introduce them to the artists whose works are displayed, and then let them, in order of ticket number, pick their favorite piece of art to take home...