Cushman & Wakefield has been named the exclusive listing agent for the Industrious flex space at Tower 49, located at 12 E. 49th St. in Midtown Manhattan. The firm’s John Picco, Justin Halpern and Alex Lachmund will work with Industrious to lease the space, which totals approximately 265,000 square feet across 16 floors. 

“This is truly a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” said Picco. “What sets this space apart is its remarkable versatility—whether you’re a start-up looking for short-term flexibility or a large enterprise needing scalable long-term solutions, this space solves for it all.”

Tower 49 will offer programmatic upgrades throughout its floors, which span roughly 16,000 rentable square feet each. Ownership will install a high-end conference center to be designed and managed by the Industrious Tenant Experience Management Team. It will accommodate meetings from six to 110 people. In addition, other amenities may be incorporated in due course.

Franklin Street’s Retail Services team has been selected to lead leasing for The Promenade at Town Center, a 230,000-square-foot mixed-use development in Palm Coast, Florida. The development includes 204 residential units and 57,000 square feet of commercial space, targeting a mix of retail, restaurant, and professional office users. Persimmon Capital Partners is the owner and developer of The Promenade. The project broke ground this past July and is scheduled to be delivered in early 2026.

The Promenade, located in the 2,050-acre Palm Coast Town Center neighborhood, will feature a mix of retailers, coffee shops, restaurants, service providers and working spaces on its ground floor. The project’s upper floors will offer studio, one and two-bedroom apartment residences with balconies.

Palm Coast is the largest city in Flagler County, the third fastest-growing county in Florida, which is the fastest-growing state in the country.

Led by Ropes & Gray’s 429,342-square-foot commitment at 1285 Ave. of the Americas, Manhattan office leasing activity totaled 1.82 million square feet in November, 10% ahead of the five-year monthly average of 1.65 million square feet, CBRE reported. This marks the eighth consecutive month of leasing volume surpassing the five-year average. 

Year-to-date leasing activity through Nov. 30 totaled 20.75 million square feet, up 29% from the prior year. Renewals totaled 755,000 square feet in November, bringing the YTD total to 8.31 million square feet.

The availability rate was unchanged from last month at 18.9% but was down 120 basis points year-over-year, according to CBRE. Net absorption was positive 199,000 square feet in November, bringing the YTD total to positive 5.16 million square feet.

At $77.97 per square foot, the average asking rent was essentially flat month-over-month, but gained 1% Y-O-Y. The sublease availability rate declined 10 bps from last month to 4.2%, with the average asking rent remaining flat from one year ago at $57.89 per square foot.

Golub & Company has been selected to oversee the management and leasing firm for Two West Delaware, a luxury high-rise residential development in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.

Originally built as condominiums in 2010, the 31-story, 185-unit tower was recently renovated to elevate its living spaces further. The building offers a variety of floor plans, from 1-bedroom to 5-bedroom apartments, each featuring floor-to-ceiling windows with panoramic views, 9-foot ceilings, custom cabinetry, stone countertops, and hardwood plank flooring.

The apartments at Two West Delaware are complemented by a suite of luxury community amenities designed to be an extension of residents’ homes. Golub’s Chicago area portfolio includes properties such as One East Delaware, Chestnut Place, and 21 East Chestnut.

Divaris Real Estate, in partnership with Silverline Equities, has been selected to provide office leasing services for The Offices at the Village at Shirlington, an office destination within Federal Realty’s Village at Shirlington.

Located in the heart of Arlington’s arts and entertainment district at 2700 S. Quincy Street, The Offices at the Village at Shirlington sits at the intersection of Campbell Avenue and South Quincy Street, offering easy access to I-395 and public transportation. The Village at Shirlington is lined with a variety of amenities, including cafes, restaurants, and shops, nearby parks and green spaces, AMC Cinemas, as well as the Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre.

“We are thrilled to partner with Federal Realty Investment Trust,” said Erik Ulsaker, Executive Vice President at Divaris Real Estate. “The Offices at the Village at Shirlington present a unique opportunity for businesses seeking high-quality boutique office space in one of Arlington’s most desirable locations.”

The Bulfinch Companies, Inc. has hired Newmark for retail leasing at 95 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, MA. The Newmark team includes Matt Curtin, Greg Covey, and Alden Bush, working with Bulfinch’s managing director of Leasing Mike Wilcox. 

Located in Harvard Square, the three-story, 13,308-square-foot building offers leasing options ranging from 2,000 to 8,308 square feet, with 5,000 square feet of retail space available.  

“With its prime location and exceptional amenities, 95 Mount Auburn Street holds great promise for retailers seeking to establish a presence in one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in Cambridge,” says Matt Curtin, executive managing director at Newmark. 

Westbridge and FCP partnered to redevelop a 70-year-old one-time paper plant into 226,000 square feet of offices. Commercial Edge reports the developers of Westside Paper have signed a lease with Construction Resources, which will open a design center there in early 2025. The company, which caters to residential builders and contractors, has agreed to occupy 45,000 square feet.

The partners have also recently announced a long-term lease by Proof of the Pudding, Atlanta’s largest caterer, for an event venue at Westside Paper.

In addition to the adaptive reuse, the 15-acre site includes 65,000 square feet of new construction.

Completed in late 2022, Westside Paper is along the Atlanta BeltLine Northwest Spur, under construction as part of the multi-use trail and light rail transit system built largely on former railroad rights-of-way around central Atlanta. Westbridge says it brings relevance to functionally obsolete properties with vast potential.

Multifamily investment management and development firm Cityview has completed Portico, a 378-unit multifamily project in Oakland’s Brooklyn Basin master-planned community. Located at 37 8th Ave. in an Opportunity Zone on the Oakland Estuary, the property has launched leasing, with rents starting at $2,097 per month for a studio apartment.

“Portico provides 378 units of waterfront housing in one of the fastest growing and most vibrant areas of Oakland,” said Sean Burton, CEO of Cityview. “Cityview was able to leverage our extensive experience developing both in the Bay Area and in opportunity zones to deliver highly amenitized, ideally located housing for the community.”

Portico residents will have access to Brooklyn Basin’s extensive waterfront recreational and retail amenities, which will include a network of waterfront parks, a promenade, restored wetlands, a pedestrian and bicycle trail system, event space for concerts and art exhibits and 200,000 square feet of retail, dining and shopping space. They will also have access to Brooklyn Basin’s private transit shuttle service.

2023 was a challenging year in commercial real estate, yet the industry’s leading dealmakers got it done. Do you know a leasing or investment sales broker or team who made a big impact in 2023 amid the year’s hurdles? Here’s an opportunity to acknowledge them. For the seventh year in a row, Connect Commercial Real Estate will be spotlighting the industry’s top dealmakers, and we’re inviting you to help us make our selections.  

Based on your nominations, we’ll recognize 110 leading brokers or teams of brokers for our 2024 Top Broker Awards, including both brokers who specialize in property sales and brokers who specialize in leasing. That includes:  

• Ten California winners  

• Ten Seattle/Pacific Northwest winners  

• Ten Phoenix/Southwest winners  

• Ten Texas winners  

• Ten Chicago/Midwest winners  

• Ten Boston/New England winners  

• Ten New York/Tri-State winners  

• Ten Washington, DC winners  

• Ten Atlanta/Southeast winners  

• Ten Florida/Gulf Coast winners  

• Ten National winners  

We’ll consider the deals completed by the brokers in 2023, based on the total dollar volume of deals for investment sales brokers, and the total square footage of deals for leasing brokers. The deadline for nominations is Feb. 9. Click here to submit your nominations.

Every year, Atlanta’s industrial real estate seems to break new records in terms of activity and rents, evidence of the never-ending demand for warehouse space in the Southeast’s primary logistics hub.

But even by those high standards, 2021 blew previous years out of the water. 

Surging demand has some developers struggling to keep up new warehouse supply in Atlanta.

Companies absorbed 42.2M SF of Metro Atlanta industrial space last year, smashing the previous record for positive absorption of 25.9M SF set in 2017, according to new Colliers data provided to Bisnow. The region’s industrial vacancy hit an all-time low of 3.4% to close out 2021, compared to 6.2% at the end of 2020.

“I believe we’ve likely reached the lowest vacancy level we will have in 2021 … maybe ever. I expect we will see levels increase this year, however not to the point where we have a supply problem,” Colliers Director of Research Scott Amoson said in an email. “I feel like the market is just responding to demand and trying to get back in balance.”

Six industrial deals larger than 1M SF were signed last year. Cereal maker Kellogg’s secured the largest industrial deal of the year with a nearly 1.4M SF build-to-suit developed by Prologis at 139 Orchard Business Parkway in Newnan, according to Colliers. 

Industrial tenants signed more than 80M SF of leases overall in 2021, according to King Industrial. 

“I do not see the momentum slowing down anytime soon,” King Industrial President Sim Doughtie told Bisnow in an email.

The demand has pushed rents up to record levels in Metro Atlanta. Rents have steadily increased over the past decade, from $3.40 per SF in 2012 to more than $5.30 per SF at the end of 2021, according to Marcus & Millichap.

Amazon secured the second- and fourth-largest leases of the year with its 1.15M SF deal at Majestic Airport Center V in Union City, 7.5 miles from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and the 1.1M SF deal with IDI Logistics at Northwest 75 Logistics Center in Cartersville, according to King Industrial.

The third-biggest deal came when Ace Hardware agreed to lease a 1.12M SF build-to-suit distribution center from Trammell Crow in Jackson County, more than 60 miles north of Atlanta, according to Colliers.

Other million-foot deals included XPO Logistics leasing 1.04M SF for aircraft giant Boeing at 2145 Anvil Block Road in Forest Park and CJ Logistics USA taking a 1M SF lease at CRG’s Locust Grove Distribution Center 100 in Henry County.

For the past seven years, developers have unleashed 170M SF of new warehouse and distribution space in Metro Atlanta, according to King Industrial, larger than Charlotte’s entire industrial market.

Developers are trying to meet the market. The pandemic accelerated online shopping adoption, leading e-commerce companies and retailers to devour additional distribution space in the region. Many companies have also pursued warehouse space as a way to beef up their own stockpiles of goods as the supply chain crisis caused havoc on timely deliveries.

In 2021, 21.5M SF of new construction delivered in the region, up from 2020 but flat from 2019, showing that the pipeline hasn’t been able to keep up with demand.

“That’s a lot of new construction, and you might ask the question, are we building too much? … But the answer would be no,” Doughtie said. “We are absorbing what we are building.”

Roughly 43M SF of new industrial properties are under construction in the region, according to Colliers, and if all of those projects deliver in 2022, it would double the space delivered last year. 

Those developers are hoping to capture the pent-up demand, and so far, 30% of that space has been pre-leased.

“I would characterize it as kind of controlled chaos,” Transwestern Development Co. partner Greg Boler told Bisnow in an email. “We can’t build them fast enough.” 

While there is so much product under construction, developers are still struggling to deliver in a timely manner as they wrestle with shortages in labor and construction supplies, said Boler, whose firm developed 5M SF of warehouse space across the East Coast last year and has another 5M SF planned in 2022.  

Last year, developers faced shortages in roofing materials, concrete, screws and electrical switches, he said.

“We’re still technically in this pandemic,” Boler said. “Again, a lot of that is out of our control.”

Municipalities are beginning to push back against proposed industrial projects, prompted by a growing wave of NIMBYism against warehouses near residential neighborhoods, panelists said at a Dec. 15 Bisnow industrial event.

During the event, GCP President Gardner Lee said one of the biggest obstacles to new warehouse growth is the lack of land with industrial zoning.  

“Availability of land and at reasonable prices from a developer standpoint is definitely the biggest hindrance to us right now,” Lee said. “We’re starting to see some pushback from municipalities who don’t want to see any more industrial.”