Office Space Trends in Fayette County

April 29, 2008

According to a recently released Regional Snapshot report by the Atlanta Regional Commission, Fayette County had an office vacancy rate of 15.9% for the fourth quarter of 2007, placing it slightly higher than the 10 county core metro Atlanta area, which had an office vacancy rate of 14.1%, and slightly higher than the 10 metro Atlanta ring counties, which had an office vacancy rate of 14.0%. The 10 core counties are Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale. The 10 ring counties are Barrow, Bartow, Carroll, Coweta, Forsyth, Hall, Newton, Paulding, Spalding and Walton.

Between 2000 and 2007, Fayette’s usable office space has grown from 2,151,761 sf to 2,975,284 sf, an increase of 823,523 sf, or 38.3%. That places Fayette 7th out of 20 counties on the amount of existing office space behind Fulton (243,404,797 sf), DeKalb (135,391,739 sf), Cobb (32,990,282 sf), Gwinnett (25,845,760 sf), Forsyth (3,877,638 sf) and Clayton (3,641,568 sf).

What is also interesting to note in this study is the average size of the office buildings. In 2007, Fayette’s average amount of usable space per building was 10,476 sf, with an average vacant amount of 1,666 sf per building. This ranks Fayette as 9th in the 20 county region for average size of building, well below the regional average of 27,499 sf. This also ranks us 10th for the average size of the available space, also well below the regional average of 3,864 sf. There were also 284 office buildings in Fayette in 2007.

Over the last year, the FCDA worked a number of office projects. One of the issues we identified was a lack of large available office space, often a space that was over 50,000 sf. In many cases, these projects weren’t interested in build-to-suit space and so Fayette didn’t make it past a cursory glance from these high wage producing employment centers.

The data in this study seems to confirm this by identifying a very low average available space size of 1,666 sf, but one problem is that we can’t see the breakdown in the available space. Were there 2 buildings with space available over 50,000 sf and the rest were so small it brought the average down? Or were all the buildings with space available in the 1,000 to 3,000 sf range? Looking at the spaces listed on our website clearly shows that the latter is the more correct assumption.

Based on the demographics of our county, where over 70% of our population is employed in a “white-collar” job, yet over half commute to jobs outside of Fayette County, if we’re going to meet one of our goals of trying to create more jobs within the county that meet the needs of county citizens, we’re going to need an increase in office jobs. That’s going to require more office space. Growth in the office sector also helps offset increases to the residential tax base.

Other counties are growing this sector. In 2000 Forsyth county had 1,922,770 sf of usable office space (at the time, below Fayette), yet by 2007 they had grown their space by 153% to 3,877,638 sf. Henry county is still below us in total usable office square feet at 2,466,511 sf, but they grew by 1,320% between 2000 and 2007 to reach this number.

Based on the report, it appears that, much like logistics and distribution based businesses, transportation is the key. Outside of downtown Atlanta, all of the major growth areas for office have historically been on major transportation arteries like I-75 and Ga 400.

Our challenge, knowing that we want to grow this sector, is to figure out unique was to do that. One of the biggest upcoming needs in office space is the need for a new office park. The current large office space facilities in Fayette County are Westpark, in Peachtree City, and Kedron Office Park, also in Peachtree City.

Westpark has a 50,000 sf building- currently under construction. Kedron recently completed its first office building of 32,000 sf- and has three more building pad sites available-. Additionally there are still a few sites in the Peachtree City Industrial Park that would be great for corporate office sites, but, again, many of these are build to suit.

In Fayetteville, a number of buildings were completed last year near the Piedmont Fayette Hospital. In the Brandywine Office Park there is one building with 18,000 sf of space available- and an adjacent pad ready site. In the Prestige Park development, there is one building with 22,000 sf available-, also with an adjacent pad for a 40,000 sf building.

To keep up with our goals, we will need more corporate office space in the future and we’re working now to see that happen.