TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

Metropolitan Atlanta’s 5.5 million inhabitants make up the most populous urban area in Georgia, the third largest in the southeast – behind Washington, DC, and Miami – and the ninth largest in the US.

As with most major metropolitan areas, businesses tend to congregate based on industry sectors.

“Alpharetta is home to 1.5 million sqm of class-A office space that is predominantly occupied by tech sector employers. So it’s Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, ATT and Verizon, ”explains Toro. “Buckhead is dominated by financial service firms and law firms. Perimeter is home to larger corporate groups like UPS. And Midtown is becoming the tech sector concentration – not the large corporate tech businesses, but the smaller mid-life start-ups such as Square, Pandora, Nurun and Ogilvy.”

Significant areas of the city are becoming pedestrianised, Toro notes, reflecting a shift away from freeway-centric sprawl. “Because of the concentration of the creative class, people are congregating at walkable businesses, ”he says.“That is the bright line differentiation between Atlanta 10 years ago and Atlanta today – the ability to literally walk to work and your chosen place of entertainment, cultural facilities, parks and recreation and mass transit. For many years the knock has been that our transit system is lacking, and it truly is. But in the in-town communities, we’ve got a very strong backbone of transit availability. Perimeter, Buckhead and Midtown all have MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) access that is truly viable today, which is relatively new.”