The Metro Atlanta Chamber put revitalizing downtown, improving public safety and ending homelessness in the city’s core at the top of its agenda in 2025 as downtown sees not only a historic wave of investment but also megawatt events that will shine international spotlights on Georgia’s capital city.
The call to support revitalizing downtown into a vibrant, 24-hour community with ample housing comes as Atlanta will play host to the college football national championship in January, World Cup matches in 2026 and several other marquee events in the next five years.
The chamber held its 165th annual meeting Thursday at the Georgia Freight Depot, the oldest building in downtown, where the region’s business leaders gathered to discuss key priorities within this plan, which included addressing the city’s unsheltered population and boosting the housing supply.
It’s a long-term plan, one in which the chamber will work alongside governmental, nonprofit and business partners to accomplish, Southern Co. Chairman, President and CEO Chris Womack, who is the outgoing chairman of the chamber, said during the meeting.
“This is no small feat,” Womack said. “And it’s going to require an abundance of help. It’s going to require an incredible degree of resilience because it’s going to be hard. But I say this inside of Southern Co. all the time — guess what? We can do hard things. We will seize this opportunity.”
The chamber’s focus on downtown comes as more than $8 billion of investment from both public and private sources pours into the city’s historic core. Multiple redevelopment projects are underway from one end of downtown to the next, including Centennial Yards, a $5 billion project turning 50 acres of parking lots and old rail yards into an entertainment district across from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and South Downtown, a plan to renovate dozens of century-old brick and stone buildings into a haven for entrepreneurs. That’s not all: Georgia State University is working on a 3.7-mile walking path connecting classroom buildings with residence halls and the student center, Georgia-Pacific is planning a mixed-use makeover of its headquarters, the city is planning to rehab a 44-story office building into mixed-income housing and MARTA is renovating the Five Points station.
Many of the projects aren’t expected to deliver until a few years down the line. But what is coming on a tight two-year timeline, however, are infrastructure improvements ahead of the FIFA World Cup coming to downtown in 2026. Last month, the city approved $120 million in infrastructure bonds to resurface streets, repair sidewalks and restripe intersections, among other actions.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
The World Cup is one deadline and a point to focus efforts of downtown stakeholders. But the broader transformation of the city core is one that is likely to take decades worth of effort. There are precedents — the Midtown of today is largely the product of city planning efforts dating to the 1990s.
Pointing toward examples of downtowns in other metro area cities such as Roswell or Decatur, Chamber CEO Katie Kirkpatrick said downtowns are the centers of the community. But downtown Atlanta, which often empties after the 9-5 workday or large entertainment events end, hasn’t lived up to its full potential.
“When downtown Atlanta thrives, the region thrives,” Kirkpatrick said. “The perception of downtown Atlanta shapes the perception of our entire region.”
Adding and improving infrastructure is one part of bringing change to downtown. Another is to combat homelessness, the chamber leaders said. It’s a commitment that requires all stakeholders, from city and state agencies to social service organizations, to come together to find both temporary and permanent shelter solutions, and determine how to deal with mental health issues that could lead to homelessness, Womack said. The chamber didn’t detail specific steps or initiatives it will take to do this, but promised to be the convening place for all stakeholders and to support and enhance work already underway.
Housing affordability is another challenge the chamber will confront this year. Incoming Chair Ryan Marshall, who is the president and CEO of national home builder PulteGroup, asserted that the supply of housing in Atlanta is inadequate, and there is a need for large housing development projects and increased density to meet the demand.
The city has to think creatively about its housing options, Marshall said, and ask itself if housing is available near jobs, how diverse that housing is and if it is making it possible for all socioeconomic groups to live together in a community where they feel like they belong.
“These questions aren’t easy to answer,” Marshall said. “But they can be guided by the broader question of, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’”
The chamber also discussed its campaign from the past year, which focused on boosting the state’s talent pipeline. Three new initiatives were launched by the chamber: an app that helps place young adults in early career opportunities like internships with the chamber’s investor companies, a program connecting entry-level job seekers from underinvested communities with employers and a system that will catalog the types of credentials valuable to a specific job function, whether it’s a degree beyond a high school diploma or a certification.
It also refined its program that introduces summer interns within the region to investor companies. About 1,670 interns representing 21 countries and 179 colleges attended events this summer, Kirkpatrick said. About 90% of them said they planned to start their careers in Atlanta.
“Now is the time for 100-year plans,” Kirkpatrick said. “Now is the time for bold ambitions and generation-defining ideas. Now is the time to look back at the legacy of our accomplishments and to push forward together with ambitions 10 times their size. So let’s do that together.”
Future of Downtown
This story is part of an occasional series by the AJC to look at the future of Atlanta’s downtown. Several high-profile developments are poised to bring billions of dollars into the city’s core while it continues to grapple with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and a challenging real estate financing market. Downtown will also soon garner international attention when the World Cup comes to Atlanta in 2026, providing a deadline for the city and downtown stakeholders to make promised improvements.
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