Our 2026 wishlist for a better Atlanta. What's yours?

Yes, it’s hard out there right now. Financing can feel like an uphill battle for everything from ATL-filmed indie movies to condo sky-rises and skinny townhomes. An existential AI cloud looms. Inflation, it seems, keeps inflating. 

But there’s a new year afoot. And metro Atlanta’s inherent, sunbelt optimism is strong. As always. 

For us urbanist dreamers and armchair quarterbacks, a CRE wishlist for improving growing cities like Atlanta could be miles long. But 2026 is poised to be truly remarkable in several ways. Here's our 2 cents for seeing it through.   

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1. Let 2026 FIFA World Cup momentum bring lasting improvement.  

Our fair city will be a global focal point for a full month—including during one of the tourney’s top three matches, the July 15 semifinal. Predictions call for more than 300,000 visitors flocking to Atlanta in that timeframe, lugging in an estimated economic impact of $1 billion. Here’s hoping they’re impressed. And that they’ll come back. And that those dollars trickle into places that truly uplift ATL. Especially downtown. 

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2. Dew the right thing.

It’s been roughly six years since controversial Atlanta developer Dewberry Capital began gutting the 1980s Campanile office high-rise in the middle of Midtown—at one of the busiest intersections for pedestrian activity in the Southeast. 

All these years later, the project is still a skeletal, vertical nothingburger, to the chagrin of so many Atlantans. Company head John Dewberry has famously been coined the “Emperor of Empty Lots.” With his glacial “The Midtowne” endeavor in Midtown and another opened-up civic turd in Charlottesville, it could seem Dewberry is gunning for another dubious title: “Titan of Towering Eyesores.” 

Let’s hope 2026 sees the Atlanta job roar toward the finish line (hold your breath) or the big-talking owner back away and sell. 

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3. More Decaturs, please. 

Sure, it won’t happen in a year. Or five. But let’s not sleep on Decatur as a template for getting planning right. It counts rail transit as its beating heart, enviable walkability, bike infrastructure improving by the day, and some of the most charmingly preserved retail storefronts this side of Savannah. A flawless urban utopia Decatur is not. But its downtown (actively upgrading right now) is the antithesis of an OTP shopping center or humdrum, mixed-use chunk of genericness.   

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4. Get the ball rolling on more downtown-Beltline connectivity.

Almost three years ago now, the City of Atlanta came out a big winner with a $30-million federal grant that calls for transforming two streets—Pryor Street and Central Avenue—to act as safer connections between downtown and the Beltline’s Southside Trail corridor. That money’s still in the bank, as Atlanta Department of Transportation officials recently confirmed to us. But the design phase isn’t expected to wrap until September this year, followed by construction… at some point later. 

That connectivity can’t come soon enough, as we’ll all see when the full Southside Trail opens (Gods of Construction Delays willing) in the first half of this year. 

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5. S.O.S. 

For the love of inimitable 1920s architecture, can someone find the guts and means to finally rescue Peachtree Street’s Medical Arts Building in 2026? Wishful thinking, perhaps. But it’s still very much for sale, for conversion into a hotel, apartments, student housing, or other. She’s languished long enough. 

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6. Let Buckhead’s condo trend spread outward. 

Not everyone needs or wants a standalone house or townhome. (Cleaning gutters—blah!) And shoveling out those monthly rent payments gets old. For-sale condos can be a great, attainable means of building equity—and staking real claims in neighborhoods. 

As projects like The Leon on Ponce and upscale Downing Park have shown, the ATL condo species isn’t fully extinct. But only Buckhead, in recent years, has delivered condo stacks of considerable scale, with two more towers in the pipeline right now. Time to change that? We say yes.  

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7. Atlanta Medical Center activity (beyond demo). 

They say it’s all in the name of redevelopment progress, but a hospital that generations of Atlantans relied on looks pretty nuclear at the moment. Here’s hoping these 22 acres don’t fester for long as a cleared but abandoned palette for… whatever’s coming. The TBD project is dubbed “BLVDNEXT.” Included in the mix, per property owner Wellstar, will be “health and well-being resources.” What’s that mean? Again, TBD.   

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8. Atlanta Civic Center progress (beyond senior housing). 

After more than a decade of talk, dashed hopes, inaction, and planning, the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center’s redevelopment officially kicked off last month—with a relatively meager apartment building reserved for seniors. That’s a crucial intown addition, no doubt. But this long-idle site has too much going for it—and Atlanta’s affordable housing crunch is still too real—for that to be the extent of construction activity for long.  

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9. More widespread Beltline housing. 

Don’t look now, but several blocks near the junction of today’s Westside Trail and Southside Trail are starting to look like construction-heavy Eastside Trail sections over the past decade and 1/2. That’s thanks to projects like the multifaceted 840 Woodrow and Culdesac pocket neighborhoods taking shape in Oakland City, with Murphy Crossing’s rebirth hopefully not far behind. Times are tricky, but it’d be refreshing to see more of the same along other western and southern Beltline stretches—minus the Eastside Trail prices.

Unlike the Eastside Trail (sorry), those parts of the Beltline loop could use an injection of people.   

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Etc. 

What’d we forget? Please feel free to chime in below. You never know who might be listening.

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