Thirty years after hosting the Olympic Games, Atlanta will again welcome one of the world’s signature sporting events. In preparation for the 2026 World Cup next June—which Atlanta is cohosting with 15 other North American locales—city and state leadership, alongside local developers, are focusing their efforts on fast-track redevelopment for the long-blighted downtown Atlanta.
The list of major redevelopments downtown is dizzying. Directly adjacent to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where Atlanta’s eight World Cup matches will be played, Centennial Yards is underway. The 50-acre project—which will transform a century-old rail yard that’s currently a sunken parking lot known as “the Gulch”—will include multiuse residential and commercial offerings and an eight-acre “minicity” that will anchor game-day activities at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena next door.
Centennial Yards sits next to South Downtown, a cluster of more than 50 historic buildings south of Five Points MARTA Station, whose redevelopment may prove to be the most important Atlanta real-estate project of this decade. Five Points is undergoing its own $230 million renovation, which will involve several additional real-estate projects, from a city-led office-to-residential conversion of 2 Peachtree Street to the ongoing restoration of Underground Atlanta. Georgia State University, meanwhile, is preparing its own overhaul of the downtown campus.
The State of Georgia has also invested in downtown’s redevelopment. The state-backed Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA), which owns Mercedes-Benz Stadium, is working to turn the former Georgia Dome site, currently the Home Depot Backyard, into a “vibrant entertainment experience.” Already built on GWCCA-owned land is the Signia by Hilton, a 40-story, 976-room hotel. Ultimately, the GWCCA has pledged $1 billion to the creation of a 20-acre convention district, much of it repurposed from the parking lots that currently blanket the area.
Downtown Atlanta has not received this much private investment in decades. Once the beating commercial heart of the city, downtown declined steadily throughout the 1960s and 1970s due to White flight and misguided urban renewal projects; for the past 50 years, it has been mostly abandoned and drained of residents. These new projects attempt to fast-track half a century of stalled development, attracting not only visiting tourists but also longer-term residents ready to live, work, and play.
For those in the know, the real question is: Will any of this be ready by June 11, 2026, when the World Cup kicks off? As of right now, it seems that many of these projects will be in phase one versus fully completed—partly due to the lingering effects of pandemic-induced shock to the local real-estate system.
It may have taken decades to get here, but downtown Atlanta, thanks to another city-transforming international event, may finally be ready for the big time.
This article appears in our May 2025 issue.
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