Blog

Roundtable meeting noon, Thursday, October 19th, at the Capital City Club downtown.

Our speaker is Mike Egan, Senior Vice President of AMB Group, the holding company for the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United. Mike provides executive oversight for the development and construction of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. He will speak on the construction process and the work streams that operate the stadium.

Prior to joining AMB Group, Mike was a partner at King and Spalding, serving as primary outside counsel to Arthur Blank. In his 25-year career with K&S, Mike represented GE, Home Depot, Sprint, UPS and other leading companies.

Mike received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1982 and clerked for former Chief Judge Elbert P. Tuttle on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The new stadium is an architectural and engineering wonder. Architectural Digest reports that Mercedes-Benz is “one of the most beautifully designed stadiums on the planet”. The stadium will host the college football final this January, the Superbowl in 2019, and the Final Four basketball games in 2020. Atlanta is a leading contender for hosting the World Cup soccer championships in 2026.

At the May 18th meeting, we’re honored to have as speakers Tread Davis and John Orr of the Atlanta Regional Commission. They will discuss the Commission’s recently-adopted Walk, Bike, Thrive! plan for Regional Trails, a network of hiking and biking trails extending outward from the Beltline and covering the entire Atlanta Region. The implementation of the Plan is on a fast track and the basic framework should be in place within the next five years.

Tread and John will report on the plans, discuss recent encouraging developments, and obtain members’ thoughts on priorities and ways to improve the Plan.

John Orr is the Manager of the ARC’s Transportation Access and Mobility Division. Before joining the ARC in 1999, he was a senior planner for the Athens-Clarke County planning department. John has an MS in Planning from the University of Tennessee and a BA in Business and Public Administration from the University of Virginia.

Tread Davis is a long-time Roundtable member, Senior Counsel of Dentons, and a long-time member of the Board of ARC. He heads an ARC task force which proposed a system of trails for our Region, and the proposal was unanimously approved and adopted by the ARC Board last month.

At our April 20th meeting, our resident, world-renown BBQ expert Bob Herndon will have BBQ samples from around Atlanta. After our traditional Capital City Club meal, you will taste and judge the BBQ. The kitchen staff and catering staff will also participate.

The BBQ is for tasting only—it does not replace the Capital City Club fare. We’ll be judging three samples of pulled pork. Tasting and judging procedures of the Kansas CIty BBQ Society will be in effect. Bob will instruct us on judging for taste, appearance, and texture. His presentation will include an assessment of the state of BBQ in Georgia and its wider potential to bring together a deeply-divided nation.

Bob Herndon is president of the Atlanta BBQ Club and has run the popular Atlanta BBQ Festival for the last eight years. Bob has appeared on “Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsey”, “BBQ Pitmasters” and the Emmy award-winning GPB “The BBQ Show”. He is a certified BBQ judge in the Kansas City BBQ Society, the Memphis BBQ Network, and the International BBQ Association. He has been a guest judge at international festivals in Sweden and Germany.

Bob graduated from Emory University and is retired from the Decatur City Schools system His daughter, also an Emory graduate, is currently a student at Columbia University. He has a son at Georgia Tech.