Coming soon to a neighborhood near you: a large fulfillment center where trucks come and go at all hours.
Warehouses produce new jobs and tax revenue for local governments. But they also generate lots of traffic and noise. And they are moving closer, from the country to the suburbs and intown communities.
Teresa Stendahl sees one coming to her northwest Cobb County neighborhood.
Amazon is developing a warehouse along a steep section of 3rd Army Road on the border of Cobb and Bartow counties. It’s primarily a residential area featuring views of Red Top Mountain and Allatoona Lake and a mix of housing that ranges from small cottages along Old Highway 41 to million-dollar estates at Governors Towne Club.
The 141,000 square-foot facility, located five miles northwest of Acworth, will receive about 20 trucks a day and have 260 parking spaces, according to the builder. It is expected to open by the end of 2021.
“Some people call this progress, but it doesn’t look like progress to me,” said Stendahl, who worries the area’s quiet lifestyle will be spoiled.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
For metro Atlanta, the rise of fulfillment centers economy is a logical next step in the area’s economic history. Founded as a railroad town, Atlanta has long excelled at the business of moving people and goods, whether at the world’s busiest airport or on its well-developed network of interstate highways and train tracks.
State-owned assets like the Port of Savannah and inland ports near Bainbridge and Chatsworth further feed the Atlanta distribution economy and attract related projects like the state’s largest warehouse, a 2 million square-foot Target facility in Savannah.
Online commerce, fanned by the pandemic, has added fuel to the fire. Worldwide online sales rose 215% to $4.2 trillion from 2014 to 2020, according to investment bank Capstone Partners. To keep pace, Amazon and Wal-Mart earlier this month said they will hire thousands of new workers nationally, many for warehouses.
Consumers expect to receive online orders on their doorsteps faster than ever and technology for drone delivery is not yet ready, so “last-mile” fulfillment centers are being built nearer to where people live.
“Every developer wants to be as close to Atlanta as possible,” said Wesley Budd, a senior vice president at brokerage NAI Brannen Goddard. Prices to purchase land and completed buildings for warehouse developments “is at the highest levels we’ve ever seen.”
Metro Atlanta had 22 million square feet of warehouse and distribution facilities under construction as of March 31, trailing only Dallas and Chicago, according to brokerage Colliers International. Over the past four years, the region’s warehouse space grew 16%, behind only Dallas and Phoenix.
The warehouses aren’t sitting empty. The total vacancy rate on metro Atlanta industrial properties fell to a record-low 3.4% at the end of June, according to brokerage Avison Young.
As a result, warehouses are squeezed into any nook and cranny that developers can find. Suburban fulfillment centers are typically 1 million square feet or larger, but the 3rd Army Road facility bordering Bartow and Cobb counties will be about one-seventh as big. Before construction, the site was undeveloped and covered with trees.
“You’re trying to be creative about where to locate these things,” said Blaine Kelley, head of the global supply chain practice in the Atlanta office of CBRE. “We’re seeing developers tear down movie theaters, because of their location and parking, to build fulfillment centers.”
Strategic Real Estate Partners and JLL are building a 124,000 square-foot distribution center in the DeKalb County community of Panthersville. It’s wedged behind a Chevron gas station and across the road from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation headquarters and a Georgia State University campus.
Brokerage JLL has not yet signed a tenant, said executive managing director Stephen Bridges.
The Atlanta Community Food Bank opened a 344,000 square-foot warehouse in East Point in March 2020. It’s on a lot sandwiched between I-285 to the west and the Grant Estates residential subdivision to the east.
At an East Point industrial park, Home Depot, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Clorox operate active warehouses and Amazon is building one. All can be seen clearly from nearby residential streets in the Savannah Walk and Heritage Park neighborhoods.
Warehouses that serve the last mile also require more parking, such as a Westside fulfillment center that real estate sources say is planned for Amazon on the former CSX Tilford Yard railroad site. It will include about 1,000 parking spaces, according to a city of Atlanta permit.
To a certain extent, this is all old news in Henry County, which has experienced some of the most explosive warehouse growth in the metro area. The distribution sector generated more than half of Henry’s new jobs in 2020, according to the county’s development authority.
Henry’s growth has continued this year. Mattress maker Purple Innovation this summer announced plans to expand its warehouse, pushing its total workforce in Henry to about 800 jobs. Salad dressing maker Ken’s Foods is also expanding in Henry.
Residents have grown sick of the traffic and noise, however, and they’ve started to push back. Earlier this year the county considered a one-year moratorium on zoning applications for warehouses, though the county commission dismissed the measure this summer.
Vikki Consiglio, former chair of the county’s zoning board, described herself as “pro-business” but said she understands why residents are complaining.
“It’s a Catch-22: Nobody wants a gas station in their community, but when it’s there, everybody uses it,” she said.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
In Cobb County, where the Amazon fulfillment center is being built northwest of Acworth, Stendahl says traffic is already dangerous along narrow, two-lane 3rd Army Road and on nearby Cobb Parkway. The resident worries that the intersection where the roads meet will become “virtually non-functional.”
A Cobb County spokesman said there are no plans to improve the intersection of Cobb Parkway and 3rd Army Road.
Amazon works with community leaders and follows all requirements and guidelines “to ensure our Amazon sites do not disrupt the community, such as staggering breaks to avoid rush hour,” spokeswoman Nikki Forman said in an emailed statement.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Kennesaw resident Tullan Avard said she was surprised when Cobb County last month approved a rezoning application from developer Scannell Properties. Separate from the Amazon warehouse near Acworth, Scannell wants to build a 141,000-square-foot warehouse, also for Amazon, at the corner of Big Shanty Road and Chastain Meadows Parkway, an area of primarily one-story office buildings and undeveloped woodlands.
It’s an inappropriate location for a warehouse that will operate around the clock, Avard said. At least 500 single-family homes and duplexes are located within a mile radius of the site.
“We do not want 600 delivery vans headed to our subdivisions seven days a week. We don’t deserve that,” she said during a recent Cobb County zoning meeting.
Avard has asked other nearby homeowners to help pay legal fees to appeal the county’s decision.
A Scannell spokeswoman declined to comment.
The state needs to keep attracting more warehousing and distribution companies because of the jobs and tax revenue they provide, said Cobb County commissioner Keli Gambrill. But developers shouldn’t be allowed to locate warehouses anywhere they choose.
“Whether it’s Amazon or whoever, they need to be more sensitive to the areas they’re coming into,” she said.
Expect more clashes between developers and residents in metro Atlanta in the coming months and years, said Consiglio, the former Henry County zoning official. Homeowners want to protect their property values, but the consumer economy isn’t going anywhere.
“You’ve got to have warehouses,” she said. “People want stuff and you’ve got to store it somewhere.”
--Staff writers Matt Bruce and Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this article.
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