Category: Commercial Development

Lee + White has become a hip entertainment and nightlife hub in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta, offering breweries, restaurants, food manufacturers and unique retailers.

In purchasing the property with MDH Partners, Ackerman & Co. plans to expand the project’s appeal by diversifying development to include a food hall, loft offices and additional retail.

Initially constructed as industrial buildings in the 1950s and 1960s, the property was recently redeveloped by prior owner Stream Realty Partners. “We’ll be investing significant capital to continue the development of this site,” noted Ackerman & Co. Brokerage President Keene Miller.

Tenants are united by their strong attachment to the West End community and their pride in being a part of a pioneering intown Atlanta development.

Ackerman & Co. is equally committed to becoming a part of the community and plans to hold public hearings to get input on its development plans.

While Lee + White has some similarities to other notable adaptive reuse projects in Atlanta, Ackerman Retail President Leo Wiener pointed out some key differences in an interview with Bisnow.

“This is not Ponce City [Market]. We’re not going after corporate,” he said. “We just think it’s a little more edgy and gritty with the feel. We want to stay true to the neighborhood.” Like Ponce City Market, Lee + White benefits from its location steps away from the Atlanta BeltLine.

Current tenants include Monday Night Brewing, Wild Heaven Beer, Best End Brewing Co., ASW Whiskey Exchange, Hop City Craft Beer & Wine, Plywood People, Honeysuckle Gelato, Cultured South Fermentation Co., Doux South Pickles, Boxcar restaurant, Overlook Boulder + Fitness, MacStadium, and United Way of Greater Atlanta.

“Lee + White is an exciting investment for us,” said Ackerman President Kris Miller. “Stream showed vision in transforming these properties into a popular entertainment and food and beverage destination. There’s an excellent value-add opportunity for us to diversify with additional development.”

Leo Wiener and Retail Senior Vice President Kelly Wilson will lead the restaurant and retail leasing efforts at the property. Porter Henritze and Sonia Winfield, directors at Cushman & Wakefield, will represent ownership in office leasing.

We’ll be providing updates on the development plans, so be sure to visit our blog and the Lee + White Instagram page for the latest!

Slutty Vegan has come a long way in a short time.

Owner Pinky Cole started selling her plant-based burgers from a food truck in August 2018.

Since then, she has opened her first brick & mortar location in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta and signed leases for her second and third Atlanta restaurants.

Bryan Davis, senior vice president of retail services for Ackerman Retail, represented Pinky Cole in the long-term lease for the third Slutty Vegan restaurant, which will be located at 482 Edgewood Avenue just east of downtown Atlanta in the rapidly developing Edgewood Avenue retail district. Bryan will continue representing Pinky Cole in her restaurant expansion.

Her business has been a huge success, as demonstrated by the long lines of customers that regularly form outside the restaurant and food truck. The City of Atlanta even recently issued a proclamation commemorating Slutty Vegan’s success.

Generating buzz on social media has been key to the growth of the Slutty Vegan brand. Cole’s Instagram page, which now boasts more than 250,000 followers, showcases videos of celebrities such as Tyler Perry, Snoop Dog, Usher and Jermaine Dupri enjoying burgers with names like One Night Stand, Fussy Hussy (shown above) and Dancehall Queen.

Slutty Vegan also actively promotes the vegan lifestyle. The food truck is covered with a variety of pro-vegan slogans: “Vegan and Proud,” Save the World, Save the Animals,” “Vegan for the Culture” and more.

Want to read more about the Slutty Vegan success story? Check out these articles in national news outlets The New York Times, Forbes and CNN and local coverage in Atlanta Magazine.

This year’s Deloitte’s Commercial Real Estate Outlook Report focuses on how technology and changing tenant and investor expectations are ramping up competition and creating shifts in how products are sold or leased.

With these shifts, what can CRE Companies do to stay competitive and ensure they capture the rapidly growing demand?

Out-of-the-Box Properties and Business Plans – The report states that this year investors plan to increase their focus on mixed-use properties, nontraditional products and retail developments. Flexible leases and business spaces are also going to be an attractive investment.

Adaptability – Investors will be looking for the companies that can quickly respond to the rapidly changing waters of the CRE business world, whether it be with new business models or by adopting “a variety of technologies to make buildings future-ready.”

Tech-savvy presence – To attract potential investors, companies need to be able to stay shoulder to shoulder with technology and present technological agility in the way they market their properties and in their business plans.

Catering to investor and tenant needs should move CRE companies to have a different perspective on the way they do business. By increasing mixed-use, nontraditional and retail products in their portfolios, becoming more adaptable to the changes in the industry and using technological advancements in their favor, CRE companies can change with the industry and be ready for the future to come.

Two Class A industrial buildings – totaling 135,000 SF and 185,000 SF – are ready for occupancy at Rockdale Technology Center, Ackerman & Co.’s newest state-of-the-art industrial development.

Located east of Atlanta in Conyers, Ga., the state-of-the-art industrial park will ultimately offer 1 million square feet of the highest-quality distribution space available in Atlanta’s I-20 East submarket.

Ackerman is targeting e-commerce operations, technology companies, medical companies and logistic providers, among other users. The multi-phase development will house space users that will bring hundreds of jobs to the city of Conyers, Ga.

Brett Buckner, who is leading leasing efforts at the development, recently met up with Rockdale County Board of Commissioners Chairman Oz Nesbitt to discuss the development that has Rockdale County residents talking.

A video of the interview and a written recap are below:

Oz Nesbitt: I’m here at Rockdale Technology Center, 2430 Dogwood Drive, at the long-anticipated opening of this facility. People all over our county have been asking, “Mr. Chairman, what’s happening with Rockdale Technology Center?”

Brett, tell us about the decision to come to Rockdale County.

Brett Buckner: We bought a property down the road about a year ago. And when we got into the market we figured out there’s a niche here for shallow-bay type properties. So we purchased, about a year ago, 92 acres here to build shallow-bay buildings, meaning buildings that are short in depth. This lets us offer as little as 10,000 square feet and up to 135,000 square feet for this building and up to 185,000 square feet in the other building.

Oz Nesbitt: Tell us about the technology piece and how and why you landed on that particular name.

Brett Buckner: It was really a decision with several different people within the company and we thought the name technology, added with the great county we’re in, Rockdale, would attract not only manufacturers that are already out here but also people in the technology business. But we’re not just focused on those two industries. We also have warehouse properties that can accommodate some logistics and also medical-type companies as well.

Oz Nesbitt: You have a prime location. Tell us about I-20 and accessibility, being right here on a frontage road in Rockdale County on Dogwood Drive.

Brett Buckner: When we purchased the property, one of the things that attracted us to the site was the visibility, right here in front of this building. We hope to attract some tenants that can take advantage of that. We can accommodate somebody that needs the visibility or somebody that needs to have just pure warehouse/distribution as well.

Oz Nesbitt: So, Brett, we focused on the four “E’s” here in Rockdale County – Economic development, efficiency, execution and education. Tell me about the interaction with local county government and how they helped you get from point A to point Z. How was that experience for you and your company?

Brett Buckner: When we first started, we met with Marty Jones (executive director at Conyers Rockdale Economic Development Council) and Gina Hartsell (Film Rockdale project manager). They’ve been terrific to work with since the beginning, which was over a year ago. They’ve introduced us to tenants in the area as well as state-run projects. From a development standpoint, they’ve been absolutely terrific. We’re so pleased to be here.

As summer arrives, so does a new group of interns at Ackerman!

We recently sat down with our interns to discuss how they plan on applying their newly gained experience in the future.

“I’m very excited to be here,” said Emma Lonergan, who is working in the Marketing & Communications department. She is an incoming junior at Georgia College and State University. “I’m learning so much I can apply to my college classes and later in my career.”

Projects she’s working on with Fara Wilson and the marketing team include updating the organization of the promotional items inventory, which she will track and monitor throughout the summer. She’s also working on editorial assignments, including blog writing.

Also joining Ackerman’s Marketing team for the summer is Ellis Snell, who will be assisting in the department’s day-to-day activities and select projects. Ellis is headed to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as a freshman this fall.

Harrison Bernhardt, an intern with the Brokerage team, tells us he looks forward to applying everything he learns this summer to his future dream job in commercial real estate. An incoming senior at the University of Georgia, he’s learning a lot from the brokers he’s working with, including how to knock on doors to canvas potential clients.

“I realized that real estate was a better fit for me than finance, my original major in college, because I enjoy working in the field and meeting people face-to-face,” he said.

Also spending the summer interning for the Brokerage group are Bart Kauffman (an incoming senior at Furman University) and Connor Barry (an incoming sophomore at the University of Southern California).

All three Brokerage interns are gaining valuable experience learning commercial real estate research programs as they help our brokers in their ongoing lease and sales efforts. That includes using CoStar, LandVision and other research tools to summarize market trends, prepare lease comparables and access various details on individual properties and owners.

Bart, Connor and Harrison are also getting a first-hand look at the types of projects Ackerman develops. They recently attended a BBQ event and tour at Rockdale Technology Center, the firm’s newest Class A industrial park. Connor and Harrison were responsible for transporting our brokerage guests across the park, and they assisted the Marketing team in setting up and closing down the event.

Alex Barnes (not pictured), an incoming junior at Georgia College and State University, is one of the interns supporting the HR department this summer.

He recently attended the company’s open enrollment benefits session, where he learned about the different healthcare and benefit options available to employees.

“This was incredibly eye-opening,” Alex said. “I was unaware of all the complexities involved in selecting healthcare coverage and the wide-ranging costs.” He’ll be able to call on this knowledge when he enters the workforce and goes through the process of selecting his own insurance.

It’s great to have these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed interns on board with us this summer. We have every confidence they’ll succeed in their future careers!

The combination of job growth and the surge in GDP during the long-running economic recovery has been a boon to the commercial real estate sector.

In Atlanta and across the country, there has been continued strong demand and absorption for virtually all product types, and capital has been readily available for investment.

But will the good times continue? What next?

That was the focus of Ackerman & Co.’s recently held 12^th Annual Investor Conference, attended by some 150 guests, including owners, operators, investors and brokers.

Host Kris Miller and keynote speaker David Haddow weighed in with their perspective on current economic trends and their outlook for the commercial real estate sector. Joining them with in-depth discussions of investment opportunities for specific product types were F. Keene Miller (Brokerage), Leo Wiener (Retail), Brett Buckner (Industrial) and Evan Ziegler (Investments).

“After the last two years of success, growth and prosperity, the numbers would suggest that the future of commercial real estate has never been brighter. Yet each of us feels less certain than we did two years ago. Why? Is that how we should feel?” asked Kris Miller.

There are causes for concern, said David Haddow. Current economic soft spots, he said, include the rising national debt (now at $21.6 trillion, an increase of $10 trillion since 2008), government gridlock, fast-rising home prices and diminishing consumer confidence. Combined with those issues, the length of the current cycle (nearly 10 years) makes an economic correction more likely in the next 24 months, Kris added.

How should investors respond? Here are the three biggest takeaways provided by Kris and his Ackerman & Co. colleagues:

• Stay on the field.

• Focus on the specific strengths and weaknesses of each deal – rather than macro conditions across property types or markets.

• Adopt a bias toward selling.

The annual conference also provided guests an opportunity to learn about Ackerman & Co.’s 2018 business highlights as well as its goals for the coming year.

Last year’s highlights included Ackerman’s $70-million sale of Braselton Logistics Center to Uline Inc.; the $9.75-million acquisition of the four-building Warren Drive industrial portfolio in Atlanta; the completion of the 181-key Crowne Plaza Hotel in North Augusta; and the $15-million disposition of seven industrial buildings at Stone Mountain Industrial Park, to name a few.

Kris and the team thank everyone for attending despite the rare winter-weather advisory in Atlanta!

This weekend, Atlanta’s $1.6-billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium will host its biggest event to date – Super Bowl LIII.

The game will be viewed by 150-million-plus people worldwide and the full slate of events held across the city of Atlanta during Super Bowl week will pour an estimated $185 million into local hotels, restaurants, retailers and other businesses.

But the impact of this stadium – praised as “one of the most beautifully designed stadiums on the planet” by Architectural Digest – will extend far beyond the Super Bowl and other games, concerts and events held there.

Arthur Blank, owner the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United, has stated: “the city is on fire” economically, and his goal is for the stadium to help Westside communities around the stadium share in that success.

Here’s a rundown of some of the key developments and initiatives taking shape near the stadium:

John F. Kennedy Park just west of the stadium is undergoing a $2-million renovation as part of the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee’s Legacy 53 initiative to create a lasting impact beyond the game itself. The improvements will include an artificial turf playing field, a community walking path, new playground equipment and a basketball court.

The Home Depot Backyard, 11-acres of multi-use greenspace created on the site of the former Georgia Dome, serves as a large tailgating space on game days and a community park the rest of the year. The “backyard” offers a destination playground, a 3-tier pavilion, and a large central lawn for soccer games, movie nights, farmers markets and more.

A 1,000-room Signia Hilton, a new upscale hotel brand from Hilton Worldwide, will serve the adjacent Georgia World Congress Center and a growing entertainment district in the area that includes Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Rodney Cook Sr. Park, a new $45-million, 16-acre park under development in the Vine City neighborhood, will feature a great lawn, public performance space and 18 monuments to civil rights and community leaders.

Westside Works is a long-term initiative focused on creating employment opportunities for residents of Westside communities and provides access to skills training, job readiness programs and more.

Reverb by Hard Rock, an 11-floor boutique a few blocks south of the stadium, will feature 200 rooms and a rooftop bar. Expected to open in 2020, the hotel is a new spinoff of the Hard Rock Hotel brand.

The 104-key Clarion Inn & Suites, completed in spring 2018 and situated in walking distance to the stadium, marked the first hotel opening in years on Atlanta’s Westside.

“Supply and demand has never been in better balance,” Kris Miller told the more than 100 guests at Ackerman & Co. 11th Investor Conference, recently held in Atlanta.

He added that the ongoing strong demand for product – and lack of overbuilding in sectors such as office during this cycle – puts Atlanta in position to be a leading market for investors in 2018 and beyond.

The company’s annual Investor Conference is an opportunity for Ackerman & Co. to provide perspective on trends in commercial real estate and for guests to network with leading owners, operators, investors and capital sources.

Conference themes are sometimes broad in scope but this year the focus was squarely on the Atlanta market as Kris Miller addressed the question:  Atlanta – the Next Gateway Market?

Atlanta lacks the land constraints, barriers to entry or “24/7” attributes of established gateway cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston. Yet, Miller added, Atlanta’s diversified economy, success at attracting corporate relocations and growth as an entertainment hub are bringing it closer to the status of a gateway market.

Together with his partner F. Keene Miller (President, Brokerage) and Leo Wiener (President, Retail), Brett Buckner (SVP, Industrial), John Willig (Principal) and Evan Ziegler (SVP, Investment), the speakers offered insights into the investment climate in the office, industrial, retail and medical office sectors.

Some highlights from this year’s conference:

• Economic drivers including the 2017 tax plan and the easing of numerous regulations are likely to free up money for capital investment and boost demand for CRE space.
• The continued strong performance of the Atlanta industrial sector – which posted 19.9 million square feet of absorption in 2017 and is experiencing historically low vacancy levels – puts Atlanta’s growth potential ahead of the top 4 industrial markets (New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas).
• Fundamentals weakened slightly in the office sector in 2017, but there are still excellent investment opportunities for the right property in the right location across Atlanta’s office submarkets.
• Although the retail sector is out of favor amid store closings, “brick and mortar is not dead” and good retail product is available but at high cap rates.
• Strong demographics continue to fuel investment in medical office space, as does the heightened demand for “convenience” medical space located near retail.

Kris and the team enjoyed hosting the conference and look forward to seeing everyone again next year!

When you drive through the city along Interstate 75/85, Atlanta’s signature skyscrapers are prominently in view. Our skyline has grown over the years along with the city’s prominence as a business center.

Atlanta ranks #9 in the U.S. in the number of skyscrapers 150 meters or higher in height and there are 16 towers above 150 meters tall in the city. A new skyscraper will join that club if the Opus Place condominium tower is developed as planned in Midtown Atlanta.

So, how well do you know Atlanta’s skyscrapers? Here’s a fun test – see if you can “name that skyscraper” based on the clues provided below.

Let’s begin:

• The city’s first revolving lounge occupies the spaceship-shaped top of this tower.
• This tower houses the U.S. headquarters of a firm named after Atlanta’s most renowned architect.
• Featuring an obelisk-shaped spire, this skyscraper was the 9^th-tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1992.
• The exterior of this tower looks like a staircase.
• This building has a pair of identical rooftop crowns that total 7 stories in height.
• This cylindrical glass skyscraper was the tallest hotel in the world when it was completed in 1976.
• Also known as Symphony Tower, this was the first office building in Atlanta to achieve LEED Gold status.
• The green color of this tower’s distinctive crown is a result of copper oxidation.
• This tower’s wide lower portion is due to the spectacular atrium within the building’s walls.

Click here for the answers

Charles S. Ackerman, our founder and friend, passed away on Friday, September 22, at the age of 84. Charlie – as he was called by so many of his friends and colleagues – was a visionary who changed the skyline of Buckhead Atlanta and established the commercial real estate company that bears his name as one of the largest in the Southeast.

Beyond his business accomplishments, he was a philanthropist, and a friend and mentor to many.

On his passing, we share the thoughts of just a few of Charlie’s friends and colleagues.

“Charlie was a real estate legend. He was a great mentor, my partner, and my friend. He crammed 20 times more ‘life’ into his life than most of us will.” Kris Miller, President, Ackerman & Co.

“Charlie was a bold and future-focused real estate innovator. He was a wise and courageous entrepreneur, broker, investor and owner. His vision and leadership guided Ackerman & Co. to its highly respected position over many years.” Bob Mathews, President and CEO, Colliers International Atlanta

“A wonderful friend and inspirational mentor. I feel truly blessed to have worked with Charlie for the last 21 years.” Vivian Barnes, CFO and EVP, Ackerman & Co.

“Charlie was a broker’s broker: aggressive, creative and very smart,” Andy Ghertner, Co-Founder of Cushman & Wakefield Atlanta.

“Charlie was a truly inspiring leader. He not only grew Ackerman & Co. into a highly successful commercial real estate firm but later went on to found Ackerman Security Systems, which set the standard in home security. What an extraordinary life he led, and what a great experience it was to be his friend and learn from him over the years.” Keene Miller, President, Ackerman & Co. Brokerage Division

“He was the most competitive person I ever encountered. Whatever it took, he had to be No. 1. He had to win. He had to be out front. And he achieved it in every category.” Sam Massell, Buckhead Coalition President and former Atlanta Mayor

“While I recognized Charlie Ackerman was a fiercely competitive individual, I also thought of him as a gentle, passionate person – exuding a passion for the cultures and arts and history of mankind in all corners of the world. Charlie Ackerman was demanding, competitive, a perfectionist. But he also always was a true gentleman.” John Schaffner, founder of Buckhead View