Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens is set to take the stage at the Woodruff Arts Center for his 2025 State of the City address that marks the beginning of the final year of his first term.
As he gears up for reelection, the mass gathering of the city’s most important political, business and community leaders gives him the opportunity to tout his administration’s successes and pitch an agenda for the remainder of the year.
During an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board earlier this month, Dickens boasted about a “stabilized” city and noted that City Hall was still shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, violent crime rates were up and some residents in Buckhead were leading an effort to split Atlanta apart when he took office in 2022.
“This point in time is a lot more comfortable as a mayor,” Dickens said.
Sources inside the mayor’s office said that with those threats under control the mayor is looking forward at jump-starting promised development across neighborhoods, particularly in downtown as the arrival of the FIFA 2026 World Cup looms.
That means making more progress on ambitious projects like the 2 Peachtree office-to-residential conversion and the Stitch — a $713 million project that would turn the Downtown Connector into a tunnel with parks, retail and affordable housing on top.
Affordable housing has been a cornerstone of Dickens’ policy priories. He ended 2024 with a flurry of affordable housing projects in an effort to meet a lofty goal of creating or preserving 20,000 such units by 2030.
And the city’s controversial public safety training center is now open after years of pushback from community members surrounding the site. The mayor is likely to highlight improvements in crime around the city and his efforts to bolster the police force.
“I’m glad to be on the other side of it,” he said of the conflict surrounding the project. “We did the right thing.”
Dickens major announcement at last year’s State of the City related to a plan to build four new MARTA infill stations — the largest expansion to the city’s train network in decades.
Transportation advocates are wondering this year if he’ll address the big question of whether he still backs light rail along the city’s Beltline, or if the city will move forward with plans to extend the Atlanta Streetcar alongside the Eastside Beltline trail.
“We’ve already started toward that,” Dickens told AJC reporters and editors. “I think we don’t want to waste those dollars, so we should continue to move forward with that.”
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Credit: Riley Bunch/riley.bunch@ajc.com
Credit: Riley Bunch/riley.bunch@ajc.com
The mayor has also made a commitment to achieve “100% clean energy” for all Atlantans by 2035 — a goal that the city is far from hitting.
But the Dickens administration is still making some headway.
Last week, standing alongside sustainable energy partners, the mayor celebrated 21 new electric vehicle chargers at the parking garage that caters to City Hall employees. The city has also swapped out nearly 100 cars in its fleet with electric vehicles.
“Atlanta, like many other cities, is really set to face head on the climate crisis that we’re dealing with,” Dickens said in the bitter cold on the top level of the garage. “This is a another step forward in our work to move Atlanta forward and make us a more sustainable, resilient and equitable city.”
But the funding streams that will help make the clean energy goals a reality are at risk. As the Trump administration slashes federal grants, a number of local energy projects are on the chopping block across metro Atlanta. Dickens told the AJC there’s reason to be concerned.
“Federal support makes this possible,” he said. “All of the things that we’ve been doing in sustainability really was being helped by the Biden-Harris administration and Congress that said ‘yes’ to these (projects).
“So as we hear about potential cuts, we get worried that our goals are going to be in jeopardy,” he added.
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Got tips, tricks or just want to say hello? Email me at riley.bunch@ajc.com.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
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