Atlanta - business districts (Alpharetta, Buckhead: construction, centers, estimate)

[GF72]

I came across an interesting report which listed the amount of available office space in the various business districts of Atlanta (as of early 2007). I'd always been curious about these exact numbers since people are always saying things like "perimeter has the most jobs in atlanta" or "downtown has the most office space" or "cumberland has the most space" or whatever and people always seem to give conflicting information. I'm going to leave off the Northlake, South Atlanta, and West Atlanta business districts which are in the report but have pretty much no Class A office space nor tall office buildings... The Gwinnett/I-85 corridor doesn't really have a skyline either but it's viable enough to include. So here, for purely educational purposes, I will list the various business districts in Atlanta by office space (in square feet).

Overall
1. Cumberland - 28.8 million sf - 358 buildings - mostly Class A and B
2. Perimeter - 27.2 million sf - 258 buildings - mostly Class A, some B
3. Downtown - 22.1 million sf - 118 buildings - mostly Class A, some B
4. Alpharetta - 21.9 million sf - 290 buildings - mostly Class A, some B
5. Gwinnett - 18.1 million sf - 355 buildings - mostly Class B, some A
6. Midtown - 16.3 million sf - 115 buildings - mostly Class A, some B
7. Buckhead - 14.6 million sf - 93 buildings - mostly Class A, some B

The suburban areas are mostly ahead because of the large number of small, low-rise office buildings that sprawl all over the place. Here are the numbers when only talking about Class A space (note that this eliminates half of downtown's aging buildings which are considered class B or C), the final statistic being the average square feet per building, which gives a rough estimate of the average size of the class A buildings in that district:

Class A
1. Perimeter - 17.8 million sf - 68 buildings - 261,467 sf building avg
2. Cumberland - 14.2 million sf - 64 buildings - 221,109 sf building avg
3. Downtown - 13.1 million sf - 24 buildings - 547,212 sf building avg
4. Alpharetta - 12.6 million sf - 86 buildings - 146,676 sf building avg
5. Buckhead - 10.03 million sf - 38 buildings - 264,053 sf building avg
6. Midtown - 10.02 million sf - 26 buildings - 385,374 sf building avg
7. Gwinnett - 6.3 million sf - 63 buildings - 99,738 sf building avg

The ranking from highest to lowest in terms of average building size is, predictably: Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, Perimeter, Cumberland, Alpharetta, Gwinnett (of course, these last two don't really qualify as "skyline districts"). It's worth noting that Buckhead edged out Perimeter by a hair, and Cumberland is close to both, though with Buckhead's skyscraper boom I'm sure it'll keep pulling ahead. Note that this only includes office space, Buckhead has lots of mixed-use or residential high-rises.

One final list, amount of new Class A office space under construction:

Under Construction
1. Buckhead - 1.1 million sf
2. Midtown - 0.92 million sf
3. Downtown - 0.48 million sf
4. Perimeter - 0.39 million sf
5. Alpharetta - 0.30 million sf
6. Cumberland - 0.28 million sf
7. Gwinnett - 0.03 million sf

Again, Buckhead also has significant mixed-use and residential high rises under construction, as does Cumberland I believe.

Also, Downtown has the highest vacancy rate while Midtown has the lowest, with Buckhead close behind. The others hover in between.

Anyway, interesting stuff. What do you guys think? This information seems to line up with everything I know about Atlanta and for the most part what people say. The overall office space rankings (with Cumberland and Perimeter handily at the top) go far to explain the ridiculous traffic around those areas during rush hour, especially considering these are suburban edge cities.

oh yeah, the source (http://www.colliers.com/Content/Repositories/Base/Markets/Atlanta/English/Market_Report/PDFs/1Q07OfficeMarketReport.pdf - broken link)

[sweettea1]

my head just fell off.

[jxu66]

very good information. It supports that idea that Atlanta has multiple job centers.

[Georgia]

Originally Posted by jxu66

very good information. It supports that idea that Atlanta has multiple job centers.

And with all the vacancy signs you see it is also a sign of overdevelopment.
I would question Gwinnett, unless the 0.03 is all being built off Exit 107

[xxman777]

Originally Posted by Georgia

And with all the vacancy signs you see it is also a sign of overdevelopment.
I would question Gwinnett, unless the 0.03 is all being built off Exit 107

.03 of a million is only 30,000 sf, sounds like one, not very large building. I'm sure there is something that would classify.

[GF72]

yeah 30,000 sf, that's probably one or two small buildings going up.