Note: The story has been updated to reflect additional comments from Atlanta Mission and South Downtown leadership.
On Aug. 24, SoDo founders David Cummings and Jon Birdsong sat in front of a ballroom packed with Atlanta’s most powerful people. They had a simple plea:
“I would love for Atlanta Rotary to make downtown one of their most important causes.”
Every Monday, the Atlanta chapter of Rotary International meets to hear from guest speakers about the region’s pressing issues. With over 500 members, the organization brings together business leaders to engage in “community service.”
Together, they throw financial and social weight behind causes like an end to human trafficking or boosting early education. The South Downtown founders want downtown Atlanta added to the mix.
According to founder David Cummings, Rotary support could help revive downtown and fix its “challenges.”
South Downtown, nicknamed SoDo, is one of many recent efforts to bring back the once-booming urban core. The redevelopment spans 10 city blocks and 58 buildings, with a mix of restaurants, park space, apartments, retail and office space.
It’s been called a “once in a city’s lifetime” project. But it sits alongside several other downtown revitalization projects: the Centennial Yards entertainment complex and Underground Atlanta’s nightlife hub, in particular.
But many people are still unfamiliar with SoDo. On a walking tour after the rotary meeting, SoDo CEO Jon Birdsong took a group of rotarians through the development. Several had no idea what it was, including a Metro Atlanta media leader and an employee at the state capitol building blocks away.
To boost awareness for the project, the SoDo team looked to the rotary club. But Cummings also decided to “hijack” his presentation on the project to talk about the so-called challenges in developing downtown.
“How do we bring it back to life, from a financial point of view?” he asked. “This is going to be difficult, so bear with me: restore basic order.”
Cummings said people avoid downtown Atlanta because of “uncomfortable situations,” like getting harassed or asked for money. He called out the lack of police and homeless people in the area.
“It’s 220 city blocks, hundreds of people living on the street, and a limited police and ambassador force,” Cummings said.
According to Cummings, there is an environment “of visible public disorder” on the city streets. He points to public camping on sidewalks and bike lanes, or the homeless people dropped off in downtown Atlanta from across the metro area.
He even claimed the outreach organizations are part of the issue. Organizations like Atlanta Mission and Safe House Outreach provide direct care to homeless people in Atlanta, but Cummings said they are “breaking the law every day.”
“They have to record the people they are servicing,” Cummings explained. The nonprofits are supposed to put the person in a “coordination of care” database. The SoDo founder said they are missing the step.
Atlanta Mission emailed SaportaReport regarding the “false allegation” on Sep. 2. Director of Marketing Rachel Reynolds said the nonprofit welcomes “honest debate” about how Atlanta should handle homelessness, but denied Cummings’ claim.
“Atlanta Mission is in full compliance with all applicable laws and requirements. The Mission shares required data with Partners for HOME and works alongside them and other service providers throughout our city to help our neighbors break the cycles of homelessness, poverty and addiction,” Reynolds said via email. “Any suggestion that Atlanta Mission refuses to participate in Atlanta’s response to homelessness is simply inaccurate.”
South Downtown CEO Jon Birdsong said the SoDo team spoke with Atlanta Mission, and they “believe they are in compliance with the law” through the third party software.
His full statement via text is below:
(Mission) also said they do not participate in the separate coordination-of-care database that allows providers to share shelter occupancy and real-time bed availability. Their concern is that organizations sometimes reserve or request a bed for an individual experiencing homelessness, but that person ultimately does not show up, leaving the bed unused.
Other leaders in Atlanta’s homeless-services community believe Atlanta Mission should participate in that coordinated system. However, because Atlanta Mission does not accept government funding, they are not legally required to participate in that particular database.
Birdsong did not name the other service community leaders.
It’s the most straightforward (and conflict-driven) SoDo leaders have been about their issues with downtown – and their long term vision.
But what’s their proposed solution? Cummings had two main plans. The first is relocating some of downtown’s nonprofits.
“Our homeless challenge is in downtown, because that’s where the service is,” Cummings said.
Downtown Atlanta is also home to robust public transit and proximity to medical centers. But Cummings wants the organizations to relocate. He pointed to a piece of data from Downtown Atlanta, Inc. In 2025, the group reunified 301 homeless individuals with their families — only 8 percent were from Georgia.
The rest came from out of state. Cummings told the crowd homeless people are dropped off in downtown because of the resources nearby. He thinks Atlanta is a “super regional magnet.” And he wants that to change.
“The next time you’re about to make a donation to a shelter or outreach organization downtown, ask them when they’re going to relocate outside of downtown,” Cummings suggested.
He said other counties need to “share the regional responsibility of downtown.”
Locally, SoDo’s proposed solutions skew a bit more futuristic — robot security dogs, for one. One of the companies based inside SoDo’s offices is the local startup Undaunted. It’s a robotics security company that leases out “dogs” to fill security and policing gaps.
The website markets the dogs as a way to deter incidents “before a crime is even committed.” There are several dogs already leased out to Atlanta, but SoDo is a hub for the technology. The dogs are monitored and controlled by real people, not AI, though the operator is often internationally based.
Cummings says they are dramatically less expensive than police, “and they run 24/7 without complaining.”
In the SoDo vision, robot dogs can deter homeless people from public camping, or prevent evening break-ins. “We need robots, APD and MARTA to enforce the existing law,” Cummings said.
It’s no coincidence that Cummings said these desires in front of Atlanta bigwigs, including leaders from the Atlanta Police Foundation. He told the crowd to “build a committee” around the 220-block neighborhood cause.
“To wrap it all up, every world-class city has a world-class downtown,” Cummings said. “Atlanta’s downtown has structural issues that, until we fix them, we are never going to have a world-class downtown.”
He said other counties need to “share the regional responsibility of downtown.”
Why? What does Gainesville need from Buckhead/Midtown?
Jobs? Alpharetta has them. The battery place has them.
Houses? Athens/85 area is the fastest growing.
What draw does the city of Atlanta have for this region? I think that is the key point of point. You can thank me for not charging a Boston area consulting fee for it
The State certainly has focused on the coast as the growth spot and basically touted that.
what do gainesville, alpharetta, and athens need from Buckhead/Midtown? What draw does the city of Atlanta have for the region?
idk, why don’t you ask the overwhelming majority of commuters who drive south in the morning to work in Atlanta’s urban core and north in the evening to their McMansions and refuse to fund education, transit, or outreach in the urban core that they leach their salaries from every day? the people who vote down expansion of MARTA (which they shamelessly call “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta”) and have the gall to complain about the traffic that they themselves contribute to?
This is why I don’t cater to suburbanites and believe we should shit on them any chance we get. Parasites on the city, its services, and infrastructure while paying nothing.
I’m glad he has broached the shelter issue. It has been well known for a very long time that a busy commercial area with all its’ temptations is the exact wrong place to keep individuals who have chemical dependency issues of “self medication”. These facilities were most recently located where they are for political reasons, often because the majority those who serve their boards lived further out and certainly did not want them near their home. Historically, however, these facilities; poor houses, pest houses, homes for the mentally ill, homes for the infirm, were often located on what was then, the edge of town on large multi acre plots, fenced and residents given the run of the grounds as medical professionals thought the natural surrounding were calming and led to greater therapeutic. success. To make matters worse, someone came up with an excuse that these facilities “had” to be located adjacent to a bus line-why there are shuttles…the why was because of the same reason and worse yet established the now so very entrenched notion nationally that public transit is a bad thing, a now pervasive attitude in the Atlanta metro. It is time we learned a little from our Enlightenment Era founders and attempt to do what is best for the patient because whether it is the mentally ill, or a homeless female headed household with children, downtown is simply not the best location…and never has been.
This is the product of racism going back to before Georgia became a state. “what do gainesville, alpharetta, and athens need from Buckhead/Midtown? What draw does the city of Atlanta have for the region?” describes the problem succinctly. Why should I care about the victims of my ancestors’ racism? Dump them downtown, dump them on the people of their own race who care, because we don’t. That’s what we ran away from. White flight lives. Keep the hole in the doughnut because it makes me feel better about my racism. Sorry, but sometimes I just get disgusted with people.
Nope, try again. Atlanta has no clue how to be city and it’s not about race, You look at demo’s you’ll see so called “white folks” have and are high tailed out of these far flung areas. You’d need to use like Asheville for that one to make sense.
Now back to the regular programming; Even if they move the shelters that’s not the solution, and to where are they headed? South Dekalb? East Cobb?
Even after that kind of move, people in Commerce aren’t coming to downtown. This is interesting too because it isn’t so much civic people trying to make the change, it’s private capital. AKA No one gives a rat about Atlanta including the people who “run it”.
And so Atlanta is overbuilt, focused on sports and competing with NYC and has not been able to offer what people/corporations want. Go look at an 80’s video of downtown. Talk to someone who worked down there.
The data is all there in plain view along with what you see on the ground and racism has nothing to do with it.
Racism has everything to do with it, you mean.
Swedish company GLG Holdings under tycoon Lars Gullerstedt knew the development potential of Midtown Atlanta when he assembled the chunks of real estate the Blueprint Midtown process then transformed into the amazingly redeveloped Midtown Atlanta.
And when Newport RE, the Frankfurt Germany based development company, started a similarly transformational acquisition and development process in South Downtown, it seemed like the bold plan our City Center desperately needed was coming until changing real estate markets and global financial headwinds then also took that European model out of play.
But I remember reading how the head of Newport RE summed up the original vision by being “astonished that from one corner of his acquired property he could see the remaining human-scaled historic core of Atlanta, the central transit hub Five Points MARTA station, and the Mercedes Benz stadium and the exciting sport and entertainment venues clustering around.
South Downtown’s newest entrepreneurial saviors are definitely on the right track. Sidestep the naysayers; bring in collaborators; share the vision of making the streets safe, clean and engaging; provide what workaday and resident downtowners need; entice the creatives, all kinds of family and friend groups, and urban adventurers to experience South Downtown. People are craving authentic experiences. Visiting South Downtown and being part of its renaissance are contributions we can all make.
Move the bus station out and you will solve 75% of the problem. it’s an easy fix. should have been done before they built the new one. Its nothing but a trouble magnet.
If David Cummings wants to see the place cleaned up he should run for Mayor. He certainly has the credentials. I would vote for him OR Birdsong in a minute. Either one of them would be a breathe of fresh air in the city.