The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 308

JN4 Thursday, Feb. 8, 1996 CITY LIFE The Atlanta Journal The Atlanta Constitution Health-fitness expo goes national Firm that staged event continues with Nike .7 Entei i 30305 ZIP code gets its own paper The 1-year-old Virginia-Highland, Morningside neighborhood newspaper, IS By Mark F. Gray SPECIAL TO CITYLIFE health and fitness expo that a debuted in Atlanta last summer now is going national, and a uX Midtown-based company is the driving force behind it. Nike P.L.A.Y. Day, a project of Nike, The Atlanta Project and TREC Sports Enterprises that was staged in August at the Georgia Dome, attracted 15,000 children and their parents for a day of health, fitness and safety activities.

TREC Sports Enterprises, a year-old Midtown company, coordinated and staged the event, and now company President Craig Cason has teamed with Nike to take the concept nationwide and reach 120,000 to 200,000 inner-city youths and their parents. "I have been blessed with the gift of bringing people together," said Cason, a former Morehouse and Georgia Tech football coach. "But to have a chance at affecting the lives of over 100,000 kids is a real blessing." Through Cason's vision, TREC Sports, a marketing company that creates community sporting events for corporations, was able to bring together Nike's corporate philanthropy and TAP to create a greater awareness of health and safety for children and their parents throughout the community. During the event, participants received copies of America's Youth Passport, a permanent immunization i A. Mil lilt NICK ARROYO Staff More muscle: Craig Cason, president of TREC Sports Enterprises, hopes to reach 1 20,000 to 200,000 inner-city youths and their parents through the national tour of Nike's P.LAY.

Day. On the road, P.LAY. Day will become a traveling exhibition of sports, health and safety activities. Young people will be exposed to athletic events and have access to health screenings from community-based organizations. They also may meet some Nike-sponsored athletes.

The show will culminate in Atlanta with a second P.LAY. week during the Olympics at the Quicksilver sports club on Fairburn Road in southwest Atlanta. himself, said he sees athletics as a means of changing the direction of young people's lives. In his second season at Morehouse College, 27 of his 68 players achieved a 3.0 grade-point average. Cason also has served as the execu-, tive director for American Sports Camps for 15 years.

With that group he helps organize and manage football theater make music together 30306, will have a sibling in Apnl. I Chris Schroder, 30306's publisher, says he will begin publishing 30305 in the Buckhead community on April 1. 'We'll mail it to 12,000 homes in that ZIP code, and distribute another 10,000 copies in stores and restaurants in the greater Buckhead area," Schroder said. -The advertiser-driven publications feature neighborhood news and stories of interest to the community. They are distributed free of charge to neighborhood residents.

Buckhead is "a little scary," said Schroder, who started 30306 out of his son's bedroom a little more than a year ago. "Buckheafys different than Virginia-Highland. It has a more mature business community and seven business associations." 1 But Schroder says he won't change his successful technique. The newspaper's "nonpolitical, positive? editorial approach "satisfied a need in our community that was much deeper than we first estimated," he said. Office look-alikes If imitation is the sheerest form of flattery, the folks at Buckhead's Fitzger ald Co.

should be pleased. Bates USA, a New York-based, international advertising firm with Buckhead offices, has a new office that is startlingly similar to theirs right down to the red, antique, English telephone booth. Last year Fitzgerald Co. redesigned its offices with an open floor plan, shoulder-high walls and doorless offices splashed with bright colors. They added a red, antique, English telephone booth in the reception area.

The innovative design was featured on the June 1995 cover of Interiors magazine. Bates USA, which moved into larger offices in Buckhead's Piedmont Center complex in January, hired a New York architectural firm to design its new space. It, too, features an open floor plan, bright colors, low dividing walls and doorless offices. "About the time we were in the middle of construction, Interiors magazine came out," said Charles Kaszner, Bates' New York-based senior vice president of management services and real estate. The Fitzgerald crew is far from being annoyed at the similarity.

"I hope their office is as much fun for them as it has been for us," said Fitzgerald's vice president and associate creative director, Eddie Snyder. "But we have three red phone booths." Child-care center mired Government furloughs and snow days did more than bog down the Washington bureaucracy. The impact was felt all the way to the corner of Renaissance Parkway and Courtland Street, where construction of the long-awaited Central Atlanta Hospitality Childcare Center has been delayed while project officials await approval of tax-exempt bonds from the IRS. "Once we get that, we expect to begin construction in March," said John H. Whorton, president and chief financial officer for Americare Early Learning Centers, which is overseeing the project.

The center will provide child care for the children of workers in the hospitality industry. It is being sponsored by the Marriott Marquis, The Hyatt Regency, the Omni and the Marriott Suites at Midtown hotels. Construction should take about six months, but will be delayed again by the Olympic Games. The center is expected to open in fall 1996. Although Whorton admits frustration with the project, which is now in its fourth year, he is excited about its potential and plans for it to be a prototype for similar centers.

The center also will offer related family services, such as health care and credit counseling to member families. WHAT'S GOING ON? Tell us your business news. Are you open-Ing, changing locations or expanding? Call Tinah Saunders at 404-332-3480. Fax 404-332-3499 or write CityUfe, The Atlanta Constitution, 55 Marietta St. N.W.

Suite 1820, Atlanta. Go. 30303. 1 4 1 1 Department of Family and Children Services. With P.L.A.Y.

Day, Cason developed an event that exposed youths and their families to sporting activities and community-based organizations such as the Boy and Girl Scouts and Scottish Rite Children's Medical Center. It was similar to Nike's "Roam the Dome" event that before its official opening in August 1992 allowed youths a chance to participate in football skills activities on the floor of the Georgia Dome. "We were looking for a way to expand our 'Roam the Dome' event, which was successful when the building first opened," Cason said. "This gave us an opportunity to not only stress the importance of physical fitness," said Jason Labeach, Southeast regional marketing manager for Nike. "It was more attractive because of the i health and safety components." P.LAY.

TOUR For more information on Nike's P.LAY. tour; call TRECSports at 404-817-9541. Puttin' on the ritz: Workers prepare the interior of the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts for its grand opening. The center's elegance, however, takes a back seat to its most heralded asset: its acoustic design. NICK ARROYO Staff piano.

There are a gift shop and a solid cherry "donor wall," which features glass panels etched with the names of major benefactors. No detail has been overlooked even the women's restroom has twice the number of stalls found in most public venues, assuring female concert-goers of a quicker return to the show. DOWNTOWN'S STAGE Tour the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 22 when GSU holds an open house.

The free event will feature music and entertainment. 404-651-1234. record for children that includes fingerprints and photographs. Cason will take P.L.A.Y., which stands for Participate in the Lives of America's Youth, to 10 cities across the country beginning March 2 in Philadelphia. On the road, P.L.A.Y.

Day will become a traveling exhibition of sports, health and safety activities. Young people will be exposed to athletic events and have access to health screenings from community-based organizations. They also may meet some Nike- sponsored athletes. The show will tour for two months, taking in cities from San Francisco to Chicago and Washington. It will culmi nate in Atlanta with a second P.L.A.Y.

week during the Olympics at the Quicksilver sports club on Fairburn Road in southwest Atlanta. Cason, who coached football for 18 years before going into business for GSU, Rialto Center hopes superior acoustics help revive Fairiie-Poplar By Tinah Saunders STAFF WRITER There won't be a bad seat in the house when the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts holds its first performance March 23. Besides an unobstructed view of the stage, the hall will offer an acoustical treat for music lovers and theatergoers alike. Housed in a former downtown movie house, the center is the official perfor mance hall for Georgia State University and the showcase of its recently relocated School of Music. It also will become a drawing card for the historic Fairlie-Poplar District, which has been undergoing an extensive revitalization spurred by the Olympics.

"I see the Rialto as one of the major catalysts for Fairlie-Poplar becoming a major center for art, culture, education and entertainment," said Fairlie-Poplar revitalization manager Gail Collins. "It is the one piece of the puzzle that makes it all come together." Richard Koehler, the center's execu tive director, said the university drew on the latest techniques in designing the center, which will house performances of all kinds. "From the start, it was designed with acoustics in mind," said Koehler, who pressed GSU to buy the old theater. "We raised the roof 12 feet to kake it one of the three best halls in theSSouth-east." Renovated over 18 months at a cost of $14 million, the center was funded by the first capital campaign in GSU's 83-year history. The Rialto will be home to the newly formed 53-piece Rialto Pops Orchestra conducted by Charles Sayre.

It will offer concerts much like the heralded il ill Jv wvit 1 ir-M til I1 camps for more than 2,000 youths around the country. Those organizational skills laid the foundation for TREC Sports' involvement with youth health, fitness and safety programs locally. Last year, in addition to P.L.A.Y. Day, Cason's company during spring break coordinated the "Still We Rise" program for youths in foster care in conjunction with the tures is an auditorium designed to control the amount of sound projected to the audience, making it suitable for everything from a single speaker to a full-orchestral concert. There's also a recording studio, which is tied into the theater's sound system.

Recordings made from live performances "will help generate a heck of a lot of money for the school," Koehler said. Another moneymaker is the elegantly contemporary lobby, which will be rented out for special events. The space can seat 250 for dinner or 600 for receptions. There's a full catering kitchen adjoining the space. Just below the lobby's grand staircase is a small stage for a concert grand Boston Pops.

The center also will have a symphony orchestra made up of in-house professional musicians. In addition to concerts, the center will host theatrical performances and has a "sprung wood stage" to accommodate dancers. Its smaller size and state-of-the-art audio and lighting equipment will make it attractive to nationally known performers. For example, Koehler said, Liza Minnelli might prefer to book the more intimate, Rialto for a one-woman show, rather than the Fox Theatre. "In every sense of the word, this is a performance center, and not just a concert hall," Koehler said.

Among the center's outstanding fea-.