Atlanta Enjoys for Now : Olympic bid: But the celebrating will fade into years of hard work--and an expenditure of about $1 billion.

Olympic fever, which was building in Georgia for months, burst into full flame Tuesday, catching the city up in a celebration that might last for years.

Fireworks, balloons, hugs, kisses, shouts, toasts, laughter and tears of joy lit up the early morning, as thousands of citizens gathered at a downtown plaza in the entertainment complex called Underground Atlanta to watch the announcement beamed to the city by satellite television from Tokyo.

“We want the Games! We want the Games!” the crowd at Underground chanted before the decision was announced.

“We won the Games! We won the Games!” it shouted after.

Men in pin-striped suits and women in power dresses mingled with college students in shorts and T-shirts--all united in the thrill of victory. Drivers honked horns, pedestrians waved and flashed victory signs throughout the day and vowed to party into the night.

“This is the culmination of a lifetime,” said Anne Hebert, tears welling in her eyes. “I was born and raised here. I’ve never seen Atlanta like this before in my life.”

In joining Los Angeles and St. Louis as the only U.S. cities to be awarded the Summer Olympics, Atlanta astounded nonbelievers and made the odds-makers look odd.

The city wrestled the Games away from the sentimental favorite--Athens, Greece--and now is counting on a bonanza of jobs and money. Officials are predicting that the Games will pump up the state’s economy with more than 80,000 jobs and $3.5 billion over a six-year period. The construction industry is expected to benefit immensely from a building boom, and foreign investment is expected to pick up sharply.

Of course, an immense investment awaits as well. Sports facilities and housing must be built for for the expected 16,500 athletes who will compete in the 16-day Games. Officials of the Atlanta Organizing Committee said new facilities will include those for tennis, cycling, shooting, equestrian events, archery, canoeing and rowing.

The total building cost is expected to be $418.4 million, including a $145.2 million Olympic Stadium to be built next to the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Operating expenses for the Games are projected at $587 million, bringing the total cost of the Games to more than $1 billion. Thus, cynics around town describe the Games as “the billion-dollar gamble.”

As the celebration wound down Tuesday, a policeman near Underground Atlanta grumbled to a reporter, “I can’t understand how people could be so happy when they just incurred a billion-dollar debt.”

Olympic boosters see the situation differently.

“Atlanta now goes into another orbit, and that orbit is global,” Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson said from Tokyo. “It’s international, it’s irreversible. We’re on a different map, now.”

President Bush, who was attending a political luncheon in Denver, said, “Today, there’s another city that’s feeling a mile high, and that’s Atlanta.” He congratulated the city, and said it was “going to host a terrific Olympics. And I’m proud the Olympic Games will be back in the United States,” after the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain.

Meanwhile, Atlantans celebrated.

“I knew we’d get it!” shouted Pearletta Graves, a recruiter for Blue Chip Services, a temporary employment agency, as she waved a green balloon. “I knew we’d get it! I hurt my throat screaming. This is so exciting.”

Bruce Bennett, director of administration at a law firm, listened to the decision on radio as he drove in to work. At a stoplight, he reported, “Everybody’s hands went up” in exultation, “and horns started honking.”

Others reported that drivers jumped out of cars to deliver high fives and do victory dances.

Minutes after the decision was announced, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution hit the streets with a special edition, a banner headline, proclaiming: “It’s Atlanta!”

Nevertheless, there were times during its almost four-year quest that even the faithful wondered whether Atlanta could do it.

As Michael Lomax, chairman of the Fulton County Commission, put it: “Everybody was sleeping on the floor so they wouldn’t fall out of bed on this one.”

Across the state, in Savannah, where yachting events will be held, supporters of the effort popped champagne corks in victory, reported John Hicks, vice president for business development at the chamber of commerce.

Hicks likened the wait for the announcement to the agonizing moment when a diver “stands on the high-dive board and curls his toes around it, realizing how high he is.” The news, he said, brought “a tremendous sigh of relief.”

At the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, Juliet Blackburn-Beamon, a marketing manager, called the Olympics “a shot in the arm” for the agency because it will gain passengers as curious visitors pour into Atlanta.

Jeffrey Rosensweig, international finance professor at Emory University’s business school, agreed, predicting that Atlanta “is going to seem like a beacon, a place of opportunity.”

Many analysts believe the Olympics are coming just in time to keep Atlanta vital, economically. Calling the state’s economy “dead in the water,” Rosensweig said, “We needed some engine of growth, and I didn’t see any others on the horizon.”

Hopeful Georgians from every economic level are counting on the spending.

In a park where the down and out hang out, Marion Thomas, 61, unemployed, agreed, saying, “When it gets here, there’s going to be plenty of money. I figure on getting me some peanuts to sell.”

Already, there has been an outpouring of money. Khalil Johnson, manager of the Georgia Dome, a 70,500-seat facility scheduled to open in 1992, two years before Atlanta holds the 1994 Super Bowl, said that the announcement spurred interest in the luxury box suites that cost up to $120,000 a year.

“One guy called and said he wanted a suite,” Johnson said. “We said, ‘You’d better get over here quick. He was here in 20 minutes with an $80,000 check.”

Researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story in Atlanta, and staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed from Denver.