CarterBlog

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton’s Renovated Atlanta Office

ATLANTA (Oct. 14, 2011) -The Carter Interiors Project Team recently completed a restack consolidation for Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, LLP at 1100 Peachtree. The restack involved the 227,000 square feet the law firm now occupies on 11 floors at 1100 Peachtree.

Cooper Carry designed the space. The design firm did an excellent job of maintaining the fine finishes that had been put in place 20 years ago while still updating the space with a flexible core configuration using DIRTT demountable system walls and more contemporary, simplified finishes. 

Check out new photography of the space below!

The Carter Interiors Project Team

The Carter Interiors Project Team actively manages every aspect of clients’ interior projects, including build-outs and renovations. Delivering one million square feet each year, the team has a broad range of experience in a large variety of product types and client situations. With several LEED- and Green Globe-certified interiors projects, the team members are experts in creating sustainable interior environments. By maintaining a laser focus on their clients’ goals and objectives, they allow clients to spend their time on their core business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carter’s PFM Team Announces Two Promotions

By Holly Hughes, executive vice president and chief administrative officer, Carter

ATLANTA (June 8, 2011) - Carter’s property and facility management team is pleased to announce the promotions of John Borowski and Caty Clements.

John has been promoted to general manager of UPS Supply Chain Solutions, Chatham Centre and Plantation Pipeline in Atlanta, Ga. John has been with Carter for seven years and continues to demonstrate his managerial and customer service skills. John worked on Carter’s AT&T account and transferred to Atlantic Station in 2008. Since his move, John has been working as an assistant building manager. John has played an instrumental role in receiving high ratings on property and overall customer satisfaction.

Caty has been promoted to property manager. In this new role she will oversee the 171 17^th St. and 201 17^th St. building in Atlantic Station, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America Headquarters at 1275 Peachtree St. and a King & Spalding facility at 1230 West Peachtree St. Before joining Carter, Caty worked with real estate law firms in both Atlanta and Savannah while completing her degree at University of Georgia. Caty joined Carter on the 1100 Peachtree account in 2008 and then moved to Atlantic Station. Caty’s success can be attributed to her ability to develop and maintain relationships with landlords, tenants and vendors.

Carter would like to congratulate both John and Caty on their well-deserved promotions!

 

Long-Awaited Job Growth Fuels Nation's Burgeoning Office Market Recovery

By Elizabeth Jinks, director of research, Carter

ATLANTA (Jan. 25, 2011) - Atlanta’s office market may finally be showing the first signs of recovery, following in the footsteps of national trends, according to year-end 2010 data just released from CoStar Group. 

Nationally, CoStar has reported three quarters in a row of positive net absorption, while the Atlanta market posted positive net absorption in 4Q for the first time since 2008. Carter represented landlord Manulife in one of 2010's largest lease transactions - law firm Kilpatrick Stockton''s renewal at 1100 Peachtree in Midtown, shown at left. Atlanta's strong performance allowed the market to finish the year with slightly positive absorption (120,280 square feet) after three negative quarters, far better than the negative 2.5 million square feet of net absorption at year-end 2009.  

In what may be an aggressive prediction from Moody’s Analytics, its economy.com website is projecting the creation of 3.2 million new jobs nationwide in 2011, and more than 6 million combined over the next two years. If on target, the corresponding increase in demand for office space generated by this job growth would be a game-changer for the commercial real estate industry across the country.  

Atlanta-based, nationally-recognized economist Rajeev Dhawan of Georgia State University recently projected positive job growth of 44,800 jobs for metro Atlanta in 2011. These gains will followed by 55,500 news jobs in 2012, he projected at GSU's Economic Forecasting Conference in November 2010. Dhawan also predicted the unemployment rate in Metro Atlanta to decrease from 10.1 percent at year-end 2010 to 9.2 percent over the next two years. While the news for the future is positive, the current unemployment rate of more than 10 percent continues to degrade consumer confidence across the board.

While job growth should drive demand for office space, challenges for commercial real estate still exist. The trend for average square foot of office space per employee is down from 250 to 200 square feet as corporations emerge from this latest downturn with increased efficiencies. Many office tenants are also upgrading from Class B to Class A space to take advantage of the current commercial real estate market conditions and trade up to higher-quality space for the same price. With continued downward pressure on rental rates, many tenants can afford higher-quality space.

Also, space users are moving toward shorter-term leases for increased flexibility to match their evolving, and in some cases, uncertain business plans. In fact, according to CoStar, average lease terms over the past 15 years nationwide have decreased from 11 years to just five years. However, these shorter lease terms will result in elevated leasing activity totals in the brokerage industry, due to the increase in the sheer volume of transactions.

CoStar reported that 2010 posted the lowest level of new construction deliveries nationwide ever and projects numbers to stay low for the next few years due to the long lead times to build office new product. Unbelievably, only 1 million square feet of office space broke ground in the entire United State, based on an inventory of 10 billion square feet.

New construction in Atlanta is down 97% from its historical average, with just 155,000 square feet of office space under construction across the entire metro area. This is down from 1.9 million square feet at this time last year, and there were no new speculative construction starts at all in the fourth quarter 2010.

The massive decrease in office building construction will help lower vacancy rates at a faster pace. The year-end 2010 overall vacancy rate for the metro Atlanta office market for Class A, B & C space was 19.9 percent, up from 19.2 percent one year ago. Atlanta ranks in the middle nationally. Metro areas such as San Francisco and Boston with established technology corridors, and markets such as New York and Chicago with historically lower vacancy rates, are experiencing improvements in vacancy rates at a faster pace than Atlanta is.

Nationally, rents have stabilized in markets where vacancy rates have already started to improve, and have even risen in some cities across the U.S. In Atlanta, rental rates right now are at historical lows.  The average quoted rental rates for all classes of office space at year-end 2010 was $19.67, down from $19.77 last year.

Historically, rental rates lag vacancy upticks. So with projected job growth, very little new office space under construction, and improving real estate market conditions, tenants seeking new space or long-term renewals will want to consider locking in rates now.

 

Now that Atlanta Office Market "Has Hit Bottom," Where Will It Head?

By Tony Wilbert, Wilbert News Strategies

ATLANTA (Aug. 9, 2010) - It's official: Atlanta's office market has "hit bottom," according to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In the article, the AJC cited reports from CoStar, Grubb & Ellis and Jone Lang LaSalle saying Atlanta's office vacancy rate peaked (at 17 percent to 22 percent, depending on the source).

So what's next? Will the market begin an upward climb or bounce along the bottom for a while? We have seen some good signs such as the large leases signed recently in Buckhead. In Midtown, Carter represented landlord Manulife in Kilpatrick Stockton's renewal of more than 200,000 square feet at 1100 Peachtree.

News of several of the six-figure office leases including Greenberg Traurig at Terminus 200 (left) and GE Energy at Parkwood Point in Cobb County has buoyed the spirits of owners and brokers, especially landlord and tenant reps involved in the deals. However, last week's unemployment report shows the job growth needed to create true net absorption probably won't materialize this year.

We should get some insight this week when local business columnist Maria Saporta interviews Cousins Properties CEO Larry Gellerstedt at the Databank Symposium on Thursday. In June, Gellerstedt said Atlanta's recovery remains "fragile and muted." It'll be interesting to hear what he thinks two months later. (2010 generally has been a pretty good year for REITs.)

It also will be interesting to hear from Georgia State University economist Rajeev Dhawan has to say at the Databank Symposium. In early 2009, Dhawan procrastinated that the national recession would not end until this year. The Databank crowd, of course, will want Dhawan to tell them when the commercial real estate market will turn.

Carter's Glenn Kolker Represents Manulife in 200,000 SF Kilpatrick Stockton Renewal; Firm Honors Him with Deal of the Month Award

By Elizabeth Jinks, Director of Marketing & Research, Carter

Carter is pleased to award its Deal of Month honors for June to Senior Vice President Glenn Kolker and his marketing assistant, Jennifer Leal, for the pivotal role Glenn played in representing landlord Manulife Financial in Kilpatrick Stockton’s renewal at 1100 Peachtree. 

The law firm signed a 15-year lease for just over 200,000 square feet for the top 10 floors in the signature Midtown office building. The deal represents the largest law firm lease to date in Atlanta for 2010. Kilpatrick Stockton’s lease was set to expire in 2012, but the tenant and landlord were able to negotiate an early renewal.

 

1100 Peachtree is a 581,833-square-foot Class A office tower, and was developed by Carter in 1990 with Bell South as the anchor tenant. Kilpatrick has been a tenant in the building since 1992, and is the fourth-largest law firm in Atlanta with 248 attorneys in the city. 

Carter sold 1100 Peachtree to Manulife in 2007 and has been retained by the new owner to continue to provide leasing services.