While New York Life settles into its facility in the middle of high-end business parks and million-dollar homes in posh Alpharetta, other space users are finding industrial sites ready for business throughout Georgia.
      In Kennesaw, in high-income Cobb County northwest of Atlanta, Federal Express purchased a 75-acre (30-hectare) United Parcel Service site and announced Nov. 8, 2004, that it would open a customized distribution center there.
      About 15,000 packages an hour will pass through the 247,000-sq.-ft. (22,946-sq.-m.) facility near McCollum Airport. FedEx Ground estimates that about 475 people will work on the site that cost the firm about $12 million. The company will spend another $50 million to build a state-of-the-art processing center, which upon completion will be triple the size of FedEx's existing facility in Marietta.
      The site, about 10 miles (16 km.) north of downtown Atlanta, could be expanded to 322,000 sq. ft. (29,914 sq. m.) by 2010. The new plant is part of FedEx's $1.8-billion network expansion that includes the construction of nine new hubs, expansion of 30 existing hubs and relocation of 290 pickup and delivery terminals. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said, "Our integrated transportation system and our state's pro-business attitude provide the foundation on which companies like FedEx Ground can succeed."
      While the governor lauds Georgia's business climate (the Peach State ranked No. 4 in Site Selection's annual Business Climate Survey, November 2004), site selection experts say that the state's available properties and land are driving a lot of the success stories like New York Life and FedEx Ground.
      James Renzas, president and CEO of Location Management Services LLC in Mission Viejo, Calif., should know. His consulting firm assisted FedEx in the Cobb County deal.
      "Georgia's many available buildings statewide" are the No. 1 reason why industrial space users are choosing to locate operations in the state, says Renzas. "The Atlanta region has over 441 million square feet [41 million sq. m.] of distribution space within the metro area, with a vacancy rate of 18 percent or 79 million square feet [7.3 million sq. m.]. The amount of vacant distribution space is larger than the total inventory of industrial space in many second-tier Southeastern markets and approximately four times larger than the Memphis market."
      Renzas adds that other factors — rising population (the region is expected to grow to 6 million people by 2030), strong growth at the ports of Savannah and Brunswick, the scale of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (busiest in passenger traffic, 10th busiest in cargo traffic), and the location of Atlanta at the nexus of interstates 75, 85 and 20 — all make North Georgia attractive to expanding plants.
      Manufacturers, Renzas said, are keen on Georgia because of "an excellent QuickStart customized training program, state tax credits for manufacturing job creation, moderate tax structure, orientation to high-growth Southeastern markets, reasonable power costs, non-union operating environment and pro-development business climate."