Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice
The business that is the City of Atlanta has grown by leaps and bounds since the last time the world’s stage took place on its red clay and concrete streets. 30 years ago this summer, the 1996 Summer Olympic Games took place in the heart of the city, and business in Atlanta has never been the same. This summer, a portion of the 2026 FIFA World Cup will take place just blocks away from where the late great Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic torch. You can no longer talk big business in Atlanta without including Atlanta in that conversation.
On Wednesday night, inside a sold-out Atlanta Symphony Hall, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens delivered the 2026 State of the City Business Address. This year’s address should ring familiar to those who heard the 2024 or 2025 addresses: the state of business in Atlanta is strong and only getting stronger.
“For the past four years, we have proven what we can do. We have invested in our people and our neighborhoods,” said Dickens, who took time to mention that the overall crime rate was down in the city, and the public school graduation rate was up. “The state of our city is strong, and the source of that strength is the Atlanta group project.”
Dickens said other city leaders ask him how the City of Atlanta has improved in so many areas, and his answer has been the same: the Atlanta group project.
The topic of affordable housing and the Dickens administration will forever be linked, and on Wednesday night, the mayor, who recently endorsed Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock’s provision to ban corporations from mass purchases of single-family homes in Atlanta, spoke about housing and the need to continue building.
Thousands of rapid housing units and affordable housing units have been delivered during the Dickens administration. The Mayor often calls affordable housing his “love language.”
“I know you all have heard about all of these successes before, but I can’t help but brag in this city,” Dickens said. “We are the economic capital of the South.”
During his speech, the Mayor discussed the lack of Level-1 hospitals in the city south of I-20 and the need to make sure investments don’t just go to districts of the city where the family median income is above the poverty level.
“We wouldn’t be this far without all of us coming together and moving in the same direction,” Dickens said of the progress.
The address included an invocation from Reverend Anthony A.W. Motley of Lindsay Street Baptist Church, a welcome by Woodruff Arts Center President and CEO Hala Moddelmog, and a presentation of the flags and the Pledge of Allegiance by the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department.
Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
“Each year this gathering brings together the visionaries that shape Atlanta’s future,” Moddelmog said before congratulating Dickens on his re-election and recognizing his cabinet and political contemporaries.
UPS CEO and former Atlanta Committee for Progress President Carol Tome gave remarks on the city’s business acumen.
“Atlanta has always been a place where business and the community thrive together,” said Tome, who came on stage to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” “This is what collaboration looks like. Progress is something we build together.”
John Murphy, President and Chief Financial Officer of The Coca-Cola Company, introduced Dickens. “Together we are building a stronger, more connected Atlanta,” Murphy said.
