The tents are down and the scorecards are in. Mayor Andre Dickens and city leaders gathered at City Hall to mark the end of six weeks of World Cup festivities, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
Hundreds of thousands of fans poured into Downtown between June 11 and July 19 for matches at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and 16 nights of fan festival. City officials pointed to the smooth logistics as proof the region can pull off an event of that scale.
"We made a conscious decision that this event was going to happen with Atlanta and not to Atlanta," Dickens said, adding that "Atlanta is a group project" that no single person or agency could have carried alone.
With the World Cup behind it, the city now turns to the harder question of what to keep: the transit habits, the downtown foot traffic, and the momentum that six weeks in the global spotlight can leave behind.
