This large warehouse campus south of Atlanta won’t sit empty much longer

“I would anticipate these landlords and owners had thought it would take a little bit less time,” said Ben Parker, an industrial leasing executive with real estate services firm Avison Young. “… If you’re sitting on product, that starts to weigh on you.”

A prime example is the Stonemont Park 75 South industrial park in Locust Grove, roughly an hour southeast of Atlanta. It was one of the largest warehouse projects to start construction in 2024, but its three warehouses epitomized this trend by opening last summer without any occupants.

The project’s developer, Atlanta-based private real estate investment firm Stonemont, can now breathe a sigh of relief, announcing last week a large tenant signing for the project. It said a company will lease nearly 311,000 square feet in the industrial park, more than a third of its available space.

Stonemont didn’t disclose the tenant’s name, but global food packing giant Sabert confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it is the tenant. It is Sabert’s first project in the Atlanta area, signaling new-to-market activity is starting to stir.

Credit: Courtesy of Stonemont

Credit: Courtesy of Stonemont

It’s a lease signing that is music to the ears of real estate brokers who have been waiting for industrial users to return to making large commitments.

“I love when I read about somebody new coming to town,” said David Rubenstein, a Savills vice chairman who oversees the real estate services firm’s Atlanta operations.

Empty space

Empty warehouse space was hard to come by in the aftermath of the pandemic, but the building spree quickly filled that gap.

The Atlanta market ended 2021 with less than 4% of its industrial space vacant, according to data from Savills. In comparison, the beleaguered office market has mostly been north of 25% vacant since the pandemic popularized hybrid work schedules.

While almost no new office buildings were built post-COVID, warehouse construction went into overdrive. Tens of millions of square feet of new space were built, which industry experts said takes time for the market to absorb. Changes to tariffs, interest rates and consumer confidence also helped tap the brakes.

By mid-2025, more than 10% of the Atlanta market’s industrial space was vacant, but it has begun to reverse course again. It ended March at 9.6% vacant, according to Savills.

“The spigot never turned off completely on industrial, but it slowed,” Rubenstein said. “Now we’re seeing that rents have risen, vacancies are down and so you’re starting to see more new construction because the market can absorb it.”

The increase in vacancy has coincided with rent price growth starting to slow. The average monthly rent per square foot ended March at $7.19, which is only a 2.3% increase from the same time a year ago. Between 2021 and 2024, rent prices sometimes increased by more than 20% in a year.

“Rents are still going up, but not at the velocity that they were,” said Ally Juratovac, senior research analyst for Savills.

Staying patient

Property inside the Perimeter has become hard to find for industrial developers, who have looked farther along Atlanta’s interstate corridors in search of project sites.

Stonemont’s latest industrial park joined a wave of warehouse and data center projects along a bustling I-75 corridor in Henry County. While the area has emerged as a premier industrial district, that’s come to the chagrin of some neighbors and elected officials who have implemented moratoriums to pause that rapid growth.

David Kaplan, vice president of asset management at Stonemont, said the warehouse park landing a tenant is a milestone for the project, adding that the large lease is a vindication of his company’s investment.

“As one of the largest and most well-located developments in the area, we are confident that we will maintain this leasing momentum and see more commitments from high-growth users,” he said in a news release.

Credit: Courtesy of Stonemont

Credit: Courtesy of Stonemont

Sabert, which is based in New Jersey, specializes in designing, manufacturing and distributing food packaging materials. The company declined to say how many employees will work at the future distribution center in Locust Grove, which is set to open in September.

Sabert joins the handful of tenants that have signed industrial leases larger than 300,000 square feet so far this year. Some examples include a 590,000-square-foot lease by logistics firm GigaCloud in Gwinnett County and a 504,000-square-foot lease by CJ Logistics in Henry County.

Large leases help with absorption, an industry metric that measures whether a sector is growing or shrinking. When the number is positive, that means more space is being leased or absorbed than is being emptied. Aside from one quarter last year, Atlanta’s industrial market has remained positive.

Real estate experts added that global headwinds, including tariffs, overseas conflicts and spiking oil prices, have yet to derail the steady recovery of Atlanta’s industrial market.

“At least as of right now, Georgia and some of the Sunbelt markets seem to be absorbing these shocks to the system pretty well,” Rubenstein said. “Whether that will continue, it’s so hard to say because who knows what kind of shock we’re going to see tomorrow.”