Atlanta Mayor Chastises County, State Officials For Lack of Hospital On City's Southside

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens called on Fulton County and the state of Georgia to do more to address the lack of a major medical facility on the city's southside and said the city is not responsible for fixing the problem.

Dickens, during a state of the city speech at the Kiwanis Club of Atlanta on Tuesday morning, said it ultimately falls on the county government to address why Grady Health System is the only major medical facility left on the city's southside.

This has been the case since Wellstar Health System shuttered the Atlanta Medical Center in 2022.

“The city’s responsibility is not healthcare. That’s not in our charter. We can give outreach, we can give advice, but we’re not responsible for healthcare,” Dickens said.

The mayor said the city has raised the issue with county and state officials.

“We keep pushing this rock uphill and saying, ‘Hey, county and state, can we get a hospital or at least some ambulatory services and some primary care physicians, and, you know, somewhere we can deliver babies … on the southside?’” Dickens said during the speech. “We got a bunch of places you can eat chicken wings, we've got to have a place that we can go get healthy, too.”

Dickens and Atlanta Chief of Staff Courtney English did not answer an email with follow-up questions as of press time. Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts also did not return a message seeking comment. 

The mayor did not speak about a mysterious proposal his office presented to city council members to partly address this health disparity.

According to an October report by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dickens’ Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative to extend the city’s tax allocation districts listed “Project Robin," a plan for an $800M hospital campus with community health clinics.

The project reportedly would have been funded partly through $115M from the BeltLine TAD, according to the AJC report.

The TADs earmark future increases in property tax revenue from designated areas for investment in local infrastructure, redevelopment and affordable housing.

In his speech, Dickens did not mention the actions he would like the county or state to take to address the situation, but he emphasized the inequalities residents face when it comes to access to healthcare.

“Somebody has to sound the alarm that people on Hamilton Road, on Cascade, on Sylvan Road, they got a longer ride to the hospital than somebody on Peachtree Street or in Buckhead or in Virginia-Highlands," he said.

Dickens may face a battle to extend some TAD districts beyond their original 2030 sunset. He previously has said he hopes TAD extensions can help raise some $5B to finance transit expansion, new trails and parks, infrastructure work and housing.

During Tuesday’s speech, he did say the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative would be a key tool in addressing disinvestment in some Atlanta neighborhoods.

“We can no longer afford to be a city where opportunity and prosperity are limited to only a few ZIP codes," he said. “With this initiative, we are bringing opportunity via jobs and business growth to underserved areas.”

There has been a groundswell of local opposition to his plan, which would give control of the TAD funds to the city’s economic development arm, Invest Atlanta. Some critics contend the TADs have been used to fund private developers and have led to gentrification of city neighborhoods.

On Dec. 2, Atlanta City Council members chose not to take up the extension proposal for the year and were met with applause, according to an Atlanta Community Press Collective report.

In the speech, Dickens also highlighted the housing successes of his first term, including the city's efforts to build or preserve 13,000 affordable housing units and open 500 housing units for homeless and extremely low-income households.