4 | Perimeter Business
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Perimeter Business A monthly section focusing on business in the Reporter Newspapers communities
Many proposed Perimeter Center towers may not happen, experts say Millions of square feet The following are the estimated square footage for some large office towers either proposed or underway. 1117 Perimeter Center West:
1.5 million
4004 Perimeter Summit Parkway:
350,000
Abernathy 400:
500,000
Dunwoody Crown Towers:
1.1 million High Street:
1 million NorthPlace:
370,000 State Farm:
2 million Sources: various project developers
BY JOHN RUCH johnruch@reporternewspapers.net
The sudden burst of skyscraper plans in Perimeter Center—10 new towers proposed in addition to several already in construction or approved in rezonings— has sparked questions for local residents and businesses: How will they impact traffic? Will they change the character of local cities? But some experts say that many of those towers won’t do anything because they will never exist anywhere except on paper. The actual demand for Perimeter Center office space is far lower than the 10 million square feet or more proposed in all the grand plans, they say. “Some of it’s not going to happen,” said Lee Sobel of the Washington, D.C.-based real estate consulting firm RCLCO, raising the issue at the Sandy Springs City Council’s annual retreat in January. Sobel’s firm is part of the team creating Sandy Springs’ new zoning code and land-use plan, a process triggered partly by the City Council’s concerns with the recent flood of megaprojects. Sobel projects the demand over the next 20 years for new office space in the Sandy Springs side of Perimeter Center at about 2.8 million square feet. But developers are already building or proposing around 10 million square feet, said Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul. It’s a similar
A rendering of the proposed Dunwoody Crown Towers project, slated for the old Gold Kist site off Ashford-Dunwoody Road.
story in Dunwoody, where city data shows 4.5 million square feet of Perimeter Center office space in the pipeline or zoning books—more than two-thirds the amount that exists today. “We’ve got a potential here for a tremendous bubble,” Paul told Sobel at the council retreat. “If we allowed 10 million [or] 5 million square feet to be constructed, you’re saying there’s not demand for that.” Sobel assured the mayor that the city can approve whatever it wants because the market will sort it out and kill many of the tower dreams. A two-decade pro-
TVSDESIGN
jection can change with the market and infrastructure improvements, Sobel acknowledged. But, he emphasized, there’s “absolutely” not enough demand to fill 10 million square feet in more than a dozen skyscrapers.
A history of paper towers
Bob Voyles, who’s building one of those new office towers on Perimeter Summit Parkway in Brookhaven, agrees with Sobel. “I think the Sandy Springs [consultant’s] projections are much more in line Continued on page 8
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