The younger Goldstein is a Marietta High grad and is now a sophomore at the University of Georgia. The property — his first — was acquired through JRG 30 Whitlock Ave LLC, which was set up recently by the new owner. Financing for the $800,000 purchase was provided by the owner and BB&T, according to the new owner’s father. Closing on the property was Aug. 16.
The site is now available for lease, the councilman told Around Town.
The Krystal in question opened in the early 1970s and was closed abruptly in April after the chain chose not to sign a new 20-year-lease with then-owner F.C. Brooks Sr. for the .54-acre property. The Marietta Krystal was owned by Krystal, not by a franchisee.
The purchase by the younger Goldstein makes him the fourth generation of his family to do business in downtown Marietta. His great-grandfather Philip Goldstein (namesake of the councilman) opened a retail store at 119 Church St. just off the Square in 1912. His son Herbert (Councilman Philip’s father, now age 88) made his first purchase at age 22 just after returning in 1946 after serving as a Navy Seabee during World War II when he bought 15 East Park Square, part of the block on which the State Court Building now stands.
Various family members continued buying downtown properties as they became available, with Councilman Goldstein making his first purchase (89 Cherokee St., present site of the House of Lu) at age 18 in 1977.
All told, the Goldsteins are now the largest private property owners in downtown Marietta. Other recent acquisitions include the former Coca-Cola Bottling Plant at 358 Roswell St. across from the National Cemetery, which Goldstein purchased early this year for $2.12 million. The family’s holdings also include The Strand Theatre and the Theatre in the Square building.
Just ask Untie Atlanta and the other groups that raised and spent $6.5 million this summer to promote the TSPLOST referendum, only to see it deep-sixed by voters in the July 31 referendum.
Just ask former Gov. Roy Barnes, who raised and spent $16 million en route to what was supposed to be an easy re-election campaign in 2002, only to be upended by little-known and little-financed Sonny Perdue.
And just ask Cobb Commission Chairman Tim Lee. Even with a roughly 6-to-1 advantage in fundraising (or around $440,000 to $75,000), Lee was barely able to scratch out a victory over former Chairman Bill Byrne in Tuesday’s Republican Primary runoff.
Lee’s huge fundraising advantage enabled him to plaster county roadsides with whopper-sized campaign signs and fund multiple mailers to likely voters, all of which helped raise his name recognition and boost his turnout. And he needed every one of those votes on Tuesday. He netted 14,309 votes (52 percent) to Byrne’s 13,014 (48 percent), with Byrne actually leading in the vote-count for part of the evening.
Had Lee not been the beneficiary of such lavish funding, Bill Byrne might be the chairman-elect today.
Lee may have to fight a continued perception in some quarters that he is a weak incumbent, based on the hair’s-breadth victory this week. But he can counter that he survived a TSPLOST debacle that would have sunk many incumbents and that he withstood a furious challenge from Byrne, one of the hardest campaigners and most dependable vote-getters in Cobb commission history.
The narrowness of the outcome is a reminder that your vote does count.
The closeness of the outcome would seem to argue against such a course, but one never knows. Lee told Around Town late last week that the county’s FY13 budget will be unchanged from the $322 million general-fund budge that commissioners approved a year ago for FY12.
“At best, we’ll reduce the budget if possible,” Lee said. “After all, the digest is down.”
Cobb’s current tax digest is down slightly from 2011 to $29 billion.
Lee also promised there would be no staff cuts, and “absolutely” no furlough days of county employees. He hedged on whether any county staff will get raises, after several years of going without.
“We’ve talked about it, but I don’t know if we can do it,” Lee said.
None of the service cuts made in early 2011 — such as reductions of library hours and bus routes — will be reinstated if he has his way, he said.
Smith served from 1984-88 as chairman of the Cobb Board of Commissioners. He also chairs the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority, chaired the successful fund drive for the renovation of the Strand and is the former president of the Marietta Country Club.
Smith, 80, launched his company in 1962 at a location on Church Street Extension in north Marietta. It now has grown to 60 employees and is managed by Debbie and Barry Abernathy, his daughter and son-in-law.
“The governor of Florida came in a few minutes ago and said it appears that we’ll get about 30 mile-an-hour winds around Tampa, and a lot of rain on Monday and Tuesday, but other than that we should move forward, so we went to a place and bought 500 ponchos for the Georgians because you can’t take in umbrellas,” she said.
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He is going to do whatever his handlers at the Cobb Chamber and CID's want him to do. No questions asked.
That's the way it has been since he took office two years ago and that's the way it will be for the next four years.
I guess you have to give him gredit for being consistently spineless and obedient.