Two cities in Georgia, Atlanta and Savannah, were among the largest big-box warehouse growth markets in North America in 2022, according to a new report from CBRE. Savannah ranked second at a 12.3% yearly growth while Atlanta ranked 10th with 5.5% growth.
Calculated as overall net absorption divided by existing inventory, only Phoenix’s growth rate ranked higher than Savannah’s at 14.3%. While Atlanta ranked third on last year’s report with a growth rate of 7.5%, Savannah did not appear in the top 10. Driven by container activity from the Port of Savannah, big-box lease transactions doubled in Savannah last year to a record 11.6 million sq. ft. This volume helped net absorption reach 8.9 million sq. ft.
“Savannah is still one of the country’s most rapidly growing industrial markets. The Port of Savannah, the nation’s fastest-growing and fourth-busiest port, has fueled a decade of regional growth,” said William Lattimore, Senior Vice President with CBRE in Savannah. “Savannah has the country’s largest single terminal, on-terminal efficiencies, surrounding infrastructure, easy major interstate access, and more affordable rents than the Northeast and West Coast. Record spec construction is underway while vacancy remains minimal.”
Savannah is no stranger to big-box warehouses, which are classified by CBRE as any warehouse above 200,000 sq. ft. With the city’s five-year deal size exceeding 400,000 sq. ft., six megawarehouse (or those 1 million sq. ft. or larger) leases were signed in 2022, bolstering the growing average size of warehouses in the region. Third-party logistics (3PL) providers accounted for 55.7% of all big-box leasing activity in Savannah last year.
In a market of just 72 million sq. ft. of warehouse space, an additional 25.6 million sq. ft. is currently under construction. Some 37% of that space is preleased, one of the highest prelease percentages of any big-box market in North America. New warehouse space should be…
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