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Dewberry moving into luxury hotel market
Former Tech quarterback branching out from mixed-use, office projects
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John Dewberry is adding another job title to his resumé: hotel magnate.
The developer and former Georgia Tech quarterback is creating Dewberry Hotel Co., a luxury brand he hopes will resemble the high-end standards set by famed British hotelier Rocco Forte.
“I love his hotels,” he said of Forte, whose holdings include the Hotel de Russie near the Spanish Steps in Rome and the Hotel Savoy in Florence. “They are classic, elegant, clean, not over-designed.”
And the first hotel he’ll add to this new strategy will be the Wyndham Hotel he owns on 10th Street between Peachtree and Juniper streets. While he does not think it will carry the Dewberry Hotels name — he says the building physically doesn’t fit his vision for the chain — he will re-flag it at the end of August with a yet-to-be-determined name.
Dewberry, who is known for mixed-use developments and office projects like Peachtree Pointe in Midtown, hopes to open 10 Dewberry hotels over the next 10 years, he said. He is scouting locations in Atlanta, Washington, New York, San Francisco and Chicago, as well as some secondary markets like Charleston, S.C.
Interest in the hotel industry has grown over the years — especially in Atlanta — as demand has outstripped supply in some segments, like the luxury market and extended stay, experts said. While the weak economy has slowed the pace of hotel growth this year as it has other industries, lodging experts still see demand increasing over the next decade.
In Atlanta such well-known entrepreneurs as former Ritz-Carlton head Horst Schulze and Novare Chief Executive Officer Jim Borders have gotten into the game. Schulze has developed the Solis and Capella brands through his company West Paces Group while Novare launched Twelve Hotels in 2006.

ajc.com

Imagine a home with a teenage girl where the most contentious argument over clothes involves whether it’s OK for the lace on a camisole to peek through the top or bottom of a shirt.
That seems to be the case with 15-year-old Morgan Morrissette, whose mother, Shelley, is the founder and organizer of a local Pure Fashion group, a Catholic-based organization that promotes modesty and purity among teenage girls.
“I think it’s modest because it’s a camisole with lace on it,” Morgan says. “And my dad’s like, ‘you know what the guys think, they think it’s underwear with lace on it.’”
It’s a small quibble in these days where fashion seems to find a new body part to expose each season — from bare midriffs to cleavage to the cheeks not on the face.
Pure Fashion is one group of teenage girls moving the other direction. At spring fashion shows by 18 affiliates in the U.S. and Canada, teens model clothes that abide by guidelines such as “necklines no lower than four fingers below the collar bone” and pants that fit loosely enough that they can be pulled away from the leg.
Groups such as Pure Fashion could be a mere blip on the fashion radar screen, aided by a poor economy that says hemlines go up when life is good and down when the dollar plummets. Or it might be the start of a movement to excise from public memory images of Janet Jackson’s nipple or Britney Spears’ nether regions.

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Atlanta Pride has put a “hold” on the Atlanta Civic Center for next year’s annual celebration due to uncertainty over when or if the event can move back to Piedmont Park.
The state’s severe drought forced major events, including Atlanta Pride, the Dogwood Festival, the Peachtree Road Race and the city’s jazz festival, out of Piedmont Park this year. City officials say because they do not know when the drought will end, they cannot promise these events when they can return to their traditional home of Piedmont Park.
“What we have is a ‘hold’ on the Civic Center for June of ’09 to ensure we can use the same facility next year if we are still unable to return to Piedmont Park,” said Atlanta Pride Executive Director Donna Narducci.
While the "hold" on the weekends of June 20-22 and June 27-29 is not a firm commitment the event will be held at the Civic Center next year, there are no other suitable options if Piedmont Park is not available, she added. If Piedmont Park does become available, Atlanta Pride will look at holding it there the same two weekends, Narducci said.
“The Civic Center is truly the only viable option for us, and I think people who come to Pride this year will really like what the Atlanta Pride Committee will do with the facility for this year’s Pride weekend,” she said.

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ATLANTA, March 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — ING, one of the world’s leading financial services organizations, announced today the launch of a new integrated marketing campaign entitled ‘Your Number.’ The goal of the campaign is to help simplify the process of retirement planning for Americans — by encouraging them to identify and calculate the total amount of money they need to have saved by the time they retire. This ‘number’ is unique to each individual or couple, and depends upon their individual retirement goals.
As proof of how daunting retirement planning can be today, ING conducted a survey in conjunction with the new campaign and found that nearly 50% of Americans say calculating their retirement number is not easy and they wouldn’t know where to begin. More than 35% admitted that all they could do is guess.(1)
"Americans today are shouldering a greater part of the retirement planning burden than ever before. This can be overwhelming, and lead many people to take little or no action at all," said Tricia Conahan, Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing for ING Americas. "The average investor often doesn’t know how much they should be saving, or even how to go about achieving this number. ING’s ‘Your Number’ campaign is meant to make the process less intimidating. We believe one of the easiest ways to do this is to start by knowing your retirement number."

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