We're 10M SF away from seeing real industrial spec development in Atlanta. (And 20M away from us selling our house to live in an refrigerated warehouse, just to be in a cool, new property.)
That first number is the estimate of Seefried Properties'
Greg Herren during
this morning's 4th Annual
Bisnow Atlanta Industrial Summit at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead. Greg told the audience of more than 250 that Atlanta tallies nearly a
12% vacancy. Traditionally, spec gets going when Atlanta
hits 10% to 10.5%.
Consider the fact that Atlanta has ranked
No. 3 of the top national industrial markets with absorption, and "on our current pace of leasing,
we need another 10M SF of absorption, and then we should be in position" for spec development.
Our first panel: First Industrial's
Corey Richardson, Prologis'
Kent Mason, JLL's
Rodney Davidson, IDI's
Lisa Ward, and Gwinnett CID's
Chuck Warbington (who moderated). All say
activity has picked up tremendously in Atlanta. But the submarkets that benefit are uneven. Lisa says the activity in the northeast corridor is the best, where IDI is tallying an
8% vacancy. And she confirmed that IDI will develop an
800k SF build-to-suit for "Project Carrier" in Jackson County (we
reported this deal
here and ID'd the tenant as TJX Corp).
Kent says even previous industrial
"dead zones" are showing activity, such as I-20 West, Fulton Industrial, and Savannah. (Is anybody else concerned, or have we just been watching too much
The Walking Dead.) Corey (above) says we're still slow on the small tenant sphere—those who use anywhere from 20k to 50k SF. That's because those tend to be mom and pop companies, and are
often tied into the housing industry, which is still slowly coming back from the depths of the recession. "We believe the economy is coming [back], but we're tied to the housing industry to an extent."
With Prologis just
completing a 1.1M SF build-to-suit for The Home Depot at Prologis Park I-75, Kent tells our audience that there are quite a few big box deals floating in the market that could be a
"needle mover" on occupancy here. Without naming names (as much as we tried), Kent says he's seeing
a dozen build-to-suit deals in metro Atlanta encompassing
more than 1M SF of space each.
During our breakfast schmooze, we chatted up JLL's
Chris Tomasulo, who tells us he just helped ink a deal for Menlo for
nearly 400k SF at IDI's Westfork project in Lithia Springs. Here, Chris (second from right), is hanging out with Burke Holdings'
Bill Hare, Bock & Clark Corp's
Peggy Henderson, and Everclear Enterprises'
Jody Saka (celebrating a birthday this week).
