Let the Games--and the Griping--Begin : Winners: Atlantans celebrate, and some residents hope the city will try to bolster its image by moving against crime and homelessness.

The city best known as the home of “Gone With the Wind,” Coca-Cola and the civil rights crusade erupted in joyous celebration today at being selected to host the 1996 Summer Olympics.

An emotional crowd of 3,000 who packed the downtown “Underground Atlanta” shopping complex before dawn burst into ringing cheers and embraced one another while fireworks boomed to celebrate the news announced by television from Tokyo.

“IT’S ATLANTA!” screamed the headline on the Atlanta Journal, which was being sold on the city’s famed Peachtree Street within minutes of the announcement.

A four-story-tall banner with multicolored Olympic rings reading “Atlanta 1996” was unfurled from the top of a building in the Financial District. The Peachtree Center complex of skyscrapers was quickly festooned with Olympic signs as recorded martial music blared over loudspeakers.

“Nobody thought really on a first bid that we could be successful. It’s been an incredible effort,” said Michael Lomax, chairman of the local Fulton County government and one of the city’s few high-ranking political leaders not in Tokyo for the meeting of the International Olympic Committee.

“We ought to celebrate and strut for a while because we’ve worked on this for 3 1/2 years. But then we’ve got to go to work to build a new stadium and Olympic Village. We’ve got to prepare the citizens to act as hosts,” he added.

Andrew Young, the former mayor and the United Nations ambassador under Jimmy Carter, was a major factor because of his international contacts, Lomax noted.

From Tokyo, Young downplayed his role. “It’s not my victory, it’s a victory for Atlanta,” he said. “We have to thank God and pray that we are worthy and that all of the things that we have said, we can make come true.”

Within seconds after the announcement, crowds in Atlanta were six deep at an Atlanta Organizing Committee cart selling T-shirts and hats with the city’s Olympic logo.

In the minutes before the announcement, the crowd alternated between nervous silence and good-natured jeers as IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch fumbled with the card holding the name of the host city.

“I wanted this so bad,” said Janice Stockard of suburban Decatur. “I wanted it because Atlanta’s great. This means a lot. We got the Super Bowl (for 1994) and now we got the Olympics.”

Local television and radio stations beamed the news live from Tokyo to Atlantans as they drank their morning coffee and prepared for work or school.

One television commentator answered the telephone while on the air and told his audience: “They’re asking for Olympic tickets already.”

Some revelers said concern for the city’s image may also prompt local politicians to take more aggressive action against crime and to find housing for an estimated 15,000 homeless people in Atlanta, most of whom are black.

“I think it’ll lower the crime rate because they’ll have to put on more police and it should help the economy. I hope it isn’t a temporary thing,” said Thomas Williams, a painter and lifelong resident.

“But I knew my property taxes were going up the minute I heard the announcement,” he added.

Unemployed typist Deborah Dillard, waiting to catch a bus as the morning celebration eased, said she was “thrilled to death it’s going to be here because maybe I can get a job now. Maybe this will help. I’d like to see it help everybody here and not just a selected few.”