Letter to Editor: Days from World Cup, downtown still an 'embarrassment'

Editor's note: Four years ago, FIFA announced Atlanta as one of 16 host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and downtown especially kicked into redevelopment overdrive. 

Since that June 2022 announcement, Centennial Yards has entered the national conversation as an urban development success story. Underground Atlanta continues to rebound as a destination, especially for nightlife. Georgia’s governor and Atlanta’s mayor helped cut the ribbon on a new South Downtown park just last week—one that will soon be surrounded by new dining and drinking options. Rapid-housing initiatives have cropped up. CNN Center is reborn. Decades-old eyesores are showing promise of new life.  

Yes, issues still plague downtown. But all of the above certainly sounds like momentum, albeit still spotty. 

Downtown resident Gerald Gentemann has a different, more passionate take. He feels we’re making big splashes downtown but largely ignoring the basics. 

Gentemann, an advertising and marketing consultant, has lived all over the world with his partner, Joanne. They’ve called downtown Atlanta home for about four years. With Atlanta’s first World Cup match just 20 days away, Gentemann offers the following street-level, unflinching assessment from a concerned local as a Letter to the Editor he titled, “Atlanta Downtown Embarrassment.” 

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Dear Editor:

I live in downtown Atlanta. I walk these streets every day. I hear the late‑night sirens, dodge the broken sidewalks, step around the trash that sits too long, and watch people in crisis with nowhere to go. And with the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaching, I’m done pretending this is normal or acceptable.

Downtown Atlanta is an embarrassment—and the World Cup is about to expose it.

The stadium is magnificent. It’s everything a global event could ask for. But walk three blocks away and the illusion collapses. Empty storefronts. Deserted sidewalks. Filth that no one seems responsible for. Transit that feels unreliable and unsafe. Buildings that have been abandoned so long they’ve become part of the landscape. A city core that feels like it’s been left behind by its own ambition.

What infuriates me most is the dismissiveness. Say any of this out loud and suddenly you “don’t understand cities.” Express concern and you’re told, “Every city has problems.” Point out the obvious and someone shrugs, “Who cares about the World Cup?”

I care because I live here. 

I care because I’m embarrassed. 

I care because Atlanta deserves better than this.

This isn’t about comparing Atlanta to New York or Chicago or anywhere else. It’s about whether Atlanta is living up to its own promise—the promise we sell to the world, the promise we tell ourselves, the promise we owe the people who actually live here.

Right now, downtown is not living up to anything.

We’ve had years to fix this. Years to reinvest. Years to reimagine. Instead, we’ve watched the city’s core hollow out while other neighborhoods thrive. We’ve watched transit stagnate. We’ve watched homelessness rise without a coordinated response. We’ve watched vacant buildings sit untouched while leadership insists everything is “moving in the right direction.”

It’s not. And the World Cup won’t let us hide it.

Millions of visitors will walk the same blocks I walk. They will see the same dysfunction I see. They will feel the same unease I feel. And they will wonder how a city with this much talent, wealth, culture, and pride allowed its downtown to decay into a shell.

The World Cup is not a distraction. It is a deadline. A mirror. A global accountability moment.

I want Atlanta to shine. I want visitors to fall in love with this place. I want our city to rise to the occasion. But that requires honesty—not denial, not defensiveness, not excuses.

If we want a downtown worthy of our ambition, we need urgency, investment, leadership, and a refusal to accept mediocrity as destiny.

I’m not writing this because I’ve given up on Atlanta. I’m writing this because I refuse to.

— Gerald Gentemann 

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