The Atlanta Press Club hosted its first Newsmaker Leadership Series Event of 2024 with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens on Feb. 7, where press and media leaders in the city gathered for remarks from the mayor and a discussion between him and Atlanta Press Club Chair Keith Pepper. He also answered questions from attending journalists.
Dickens talked about the city government’s priorities moving into 2024, particularly ahead of the
city’s designation as a host city for eight matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Now entering his third year as mayor, Dickens split his term into three parts: 2022 was about “getting started,” 2023 was about “delivering on promises” and 2024 will be about “accelerating and continuing” the work of the past two years.
As an Atlanta native, Dickens said he has watched the city grow significantly in the past 50 years.
“We went from being just Atlanta to now this Olympic city of Atlanta and now with this World Cup city of Atlanta,” Dickens said.
With that growth, though, the mayor said the city has “become a victim of its own success.” Inflation and high rent have made it difficult for working-class people to live in Atlanta. He pointed to servers, nurses, teachers, and police as the types of jobs that he wants to be able to live in the city instead of commuting.
To combat expensive housing costs Mayor Dickens set the goal of building 20,000 units of affordable housing across Atlanta by 2030. He announced on Feb. 7 that the city had already built 3,500 units and had about 8,000 more in some form of development.
“The goal is to make sure that people can live, work and play in Atlanta,” Dickens said.
Dickens also touted crime and safety statistics, like a 21 percent decrease in homicides and a 50 percent decrease in rape in Atlanta. He said the goal is for people to feel safe walking in the streets or parks of the city.
“Safety is important; safety is justice,” Dickens said.
The mayor said Atlanta is taking major safety precautions ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Infamously, when Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics, over 100 people were injured in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
Dickens said safety is essential moving towards the international event. The city has spent the last year in contact with the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and other safety partners to prepare for the games.
“We are making sure that our firefighters, police officers, all the strategic leadership around safety has been meeting and planning and staying in touch directly with the FIFA organization,” Dickens said.
Preparation for the World Cup is well underway on multiple fronts. Several developments, including the finishing pieces of the BeltLine Southside Trail, are set to be completed by 2026 — in time for the eight World Cup matches.
Dickens said the city has been having “preliminary infrastructure-based calls” about what the so-called “village” for fans to watch games and celebrate would look like. He also plans to make calls with the business community and cultural community.
SaportaReport Executive Editor and founder Maria Saporta asked the mayor about city plans for transit and pedestrian projects ahead of 2026, specifically the status of MARTA and the Five Points Station and Northside Drive.
The downtown station is the city’s busiest and largest travel hub. It’s set for construction that will close access to the station for over a year once construction begins. MARTA doesn’t plan for the station to be finished in time for the 2026 matches, but it has stated the agency will ensure the station is “ready to host soccer fans around the world.”
Dickens said MARTA will soon release an audit, but in the meantime, he said he would “push it right ahead” to make some changes to Five Points in time for the World Cup.
Northside Drive in downtown Atlanta features an elaborate pedestrian bridge from the Mercedes-Benz stadium to the Vine City MARTA Station. The $23 million project doubles the number of steps to cross the road, and the surrounding pedestrian crosswalks and sidewalks remain underdeveloped.
Dickens made clear he did not support the project, which was championed by former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. He said while he is grateful people use the bridge, the state has control over Northside Drive and its pedestrian paths.
“We’ll continue to try to make sure that we make it a safe way to cross, and some of that is going to be through new development that occurs that’s going to just bring people closer and closer,” Dickens said.
Ultimately, the mayor stressed that he wants the World Cup to be a collaborative opportunity for everyone in the city.
“We don’t want the World Cup to be something that happens to Atlanta,” Dickens said. “We want it to be something that happens with Atlanta.”
He sees the event as an opportunity for people to “get to know the city” and a way to provide opportunities for Atlantans.
When asked if he has any concern that the controversy surrounding the Public Safety Training Center, commonly known as “Cop City,” could “bleed into” the 2024 presidential election, Dickens said he thinks the issue is primarily local.
“I don’t think it shows up on the national landscape,” Dickens said. “It shows up here a little bit because it’s proximate to here.”
The construction of the center in the South River Forest area has gained national attention over ongoing protests against its development, landing headlines in major newspapers like the New York Times.
Dickens said the project, which is 65-70 percent completed, will be active by the end of the year. Once it’s open, he said opposition will die down because “they’ll see the citizens are more in favor of it than those that aren’t.”
The “Stop Cop City” petition, which demands the fate of the center be put to a public vote, has over 108,000 signatures, according to a hand count by the Associated Press. However, it found that nearly half of the signatures in a group of 1,000 may be ineligible.
The Atlanta City Council passed a resolution on Feb. 5 that would create a process for municipal referendums like “Stop Cop City,” requiring the city to verify signatures with the official state voter registration database. Signature-matching, opposed by activists at the meeting, is a process criticized as discriminatory by voting rights advocates.
“We’re on the right side of this,” Dicken said.
He called opposition to the training center “loud, rowdy and wrong,” arguing it will be a destination for de-escalation training, cultural sensitivity training and an opportunity for “social justice.”
“I think that for a presidential election, they’ll be fine with it,” Dickens said. “When you’ve got the crime stats headed in the right direction, and you’re working together with your partners to do so, I think people won’t have much of an argument against our way of doing things.”
