Atlantic Station--Too much office space?

[Chachi]

I have been a huge fan of Atlantic Station, but seeing that a number of commercial office buildings are going up there without any foreseeable tenants, I'm beginning to worry that AS may flood Midtown/Downtown with cheap office space when the vacancy rate is already in the mid 20s. What's your opinion?

[Spartan]

I think that over time, Atlanta will muster up the tenants for it. They are buiding several new office towers, which will also create more empty space. How much space is there in the AS?

[Chachi]

I'm not sure off hand, but when I went there about two months ago to take a look around I saw a few buildings under construction that had signs on the fence offering office space for lease. One I remember was for 350,000 square feet. I read yesterday that metro Atlanta only absorbed 2 million square feet of office space last year and that was supposed to be a big improvement over previous years.

[Chachi]

I drove by Atlantic Station two days ago and noticed that there are signs put up by Carter (a developer) for three proposed buildings with a total of 1 million square feet of office space. That's about as much office space as there is in the Bank of America tower. I was glad to see that the buildings are only proposed, and not under construction as I thought earlier.

[Spartan]

While you don't want to oversaturate the market with office space, you also have to consider that when somone decides to build a skyscraper, its not just for the fun of it. They do alot of reseach and deasability studies to see if the idea would be successful. Maybe not in all cases, but I would think that a building as tall as BofA would have been well planned.

[paulblackgsx]

I think AS will at a little glut to office space. But like most developments, I wouldn't expect to see any more large scale buildings come out of the ground without a tenant to anchor them at least 33% (usually 50% if considered ideal). Though you can't blame them with the success of the SouthTrust/Wachovia building, there is certainly a lot of interest in buildings in AS/Midtown.