A New York investment banking giant is in talks to develop a new large office building near Alpharetta, another out-of-town company looking to expand into the Atlanta metro area .
Morgan Stanley headquarters in Times Square. The finance company is looking to build an office campus in suburban Atlanta.
Morgan Stanley is in talks with developers for a bespoke SF 150,000 development in the North Fulton County submarket, people familiar with the research say. Bisnow. The investment bank, which already has a large footprint in the region, has considered eventually occupying an office campus of more than 500,000 square feet, the sources said.
Pope & Land Enterprises and KDC – the best-known developer in Atlanta for building the new State Farm campus in Dunwoody – are in talks with Morgan Stanley, which is evaluating Pope & Land’s Northwinds Summit mixed-use project at Georgia 400 and Haynes Bridge Road and KDC Windward Park Mixed Use Project in Alpharetta.
A Morgan Stanley spokesperson declined to comment on the story. Pope & Land and KDC officials did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Morgan Stanley recently leased over 57,000 square feet at WeWork in Halcyon, RocaPoint Partners’ 400-offshore mixed-use development in Forsyth County, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported in August. But sources said Bisnow this space is seen as a stopgap for the larger bespoke construction contract.
Morgan Stanley leases 216,000 square feet in the Atlanta metro area, according to CoStar data provided by Colliers, including a 119,000 square foot office at Terminal 100 in Buckhead and nearly 26,000 square feet at the Concourse Corporate Center Five in the central perimeter.
The bank’s research comes a year later bought consumer stock trade E * Trade platform as part of an all stock transaction. E * Trade has been leasing 108K SF 3 Edison Drive office building in North Fulton since 2018.
Morgan Stanley is just another in a long line of companies that have decided to increase their workforce in Atlanta, a dynamic that has made it one of the most active office markets in the country.
Rental activity in Metro Atlanta topped CHF 2 million in the third quarter, double what was signed in the second quarter, according to a recent Savills report.
“A lot of these big companies [relocations] will start to drive much of that demand, ”said Peter McGuone, senior vice president of CBRE, adding that CBRE is tracking 90 pending office transactions in the metro area. “The activity is robust and there are a lot of tenants. You have bands like Morgan Stanley looking to build-to-suit Alpharetta. “
Atlanta’s active leasing recovers 99% of the two-year average before the pandemic, second to Los Angeles, according to an August CBRE report. It was behind only Boston and Dallas among the cities where the largest number of tenants were still looking for office space.
Some of the major deals that recently closed in the Atlanta metro area this year include the 550,000 SF sublet of Carvana from State Farm’s Park Center Building 1, which Bisnow first reported, Global Payments’ 207K SF lease at 5995 Windward Parkway in Alpharetta, Visa’s 123K SF contract at 1200 Peachtree in Midtown and FanDuel’s 68K SF lease at Ponce City Market in Midtown, according to Colliers.
Morgan Stanley Joins Cisco as Deals Close to Close; Governor Brian Kemp hosted a press conference on Wednesday morning, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Reports, to announce a lease for Cisco. Bisnow reported last month that the IT vendor was in talks for about 80,000 square feet at Portman Holdings’ Coda Tower.
Coda at Tech Square, the high performance computing tower developed by Portman and co-owned by Georgia Tech.
Atlanta law firm Arnall Golden Gregory and financial services firm Atlanticus Holdings Corp. Both got major renewals in the last quarter as well: nearly 100,000 SF at 171 17th St. for AGG and 73,000 SF for Atlanticus at Concourse Corporate Center Five, according to data from Colliers. .
The increase in activity is proof that businesses are finally making longer-term office decisions despite the ongoing debate over working from home, experts at the office have said.
“There are quite a few large companies with a lot of important requirements. I just think there was pent-up demand when people were working from home, ”said Jeff Bellamy, CEO of JLL. “Now that companies are back to work, they are starting to make decisions again and rent office space again. “
“I think there is a desire for people to go back to the office,” said T. Dallas Smith & Co. manager Cedric Matheny, highlighting the increase in vaccination rates and companies start to hire more workers back to the office. “I think once that happens it’s just a wrap.”
With workplace changes fueled by a pandemic still pending, Atlanta should benefit from workers with more freedom to move away from the higher-cost cities of New York and San Francisco. T. Dallas Smith is representing Airbnb in its search for a new tech hub in Atlanta, and Matheny said he heard from workers looking to relocate to Georgia’s capital.
“It’s pretty consistent, not just with Airbnb, but with other tech companies. It’s a resounding ‘yes’, ‘If we open an office in Atlanta, would you be ready to come,’ ”he said. “Atlanta just has something for everyone when it comes to Atlanta culture, the school system. It’s just attractive.
There was not enough activity to pull every office district in the Atlanta metro area out of pandemic dislocation, Newmark executive general manager Tom Miller said.
Miller is helping RocaPoint Partners find a prime tenant to begin work on a potential 150,000 square foot new office building at its Halcyon project in Forsyth County, just north of North Fulton, and he said Midtown and Alpharetta have seen the bulk of rental activity. .
Miller said the industry swings between glee and concern over tenant activity, especially as some tenants are shrinking their office footprints. State Farm, for example, decided it didn’t need a 600,000 square foot building it had just developed to specification when it sublet it to Carvana.
“It’s a bit of a weird market right now,” Miller said. “It kind of depends on the day of the week. Some days… it sounds upbeat, and other days it’s, “We better do what we can do. “
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