$55 million warehouse in the works for Bartow County
♦ Officials say Adairsville is in the “sweet spot” for logistics.
The growth in neighboring Adairsville is beginning to accelerate as fast as contractors can pour concrete walls.
Cartersville-bartow County Economic Development
Director Melinda Lemmon said community leaders “may need a seat belt” when it comes to industrial activity in the coming year.
Panattoni Development is planning a 1.1-million-square-foot warehousing project on 74 acres off Ga. 140 between U.S. 41 and I-75. The company filed a Development of Regional Impact statement through the Adairsville community development office.
Panattoni is no stranger to speculative projects in Bartow and currently has a 209,000-squarefoot spec building under construction in Adairsville’s Georgia North Industrial Park directly behind the Godfrey Hurst warehouse.
The project has been labeled as an International Parkway Phase II project. It’s located on the south side of Ga. 140, whereas the existing parkway is on the north side of the highway.
“Panattoni has been a pretty substantial player in Bartow County for several years now,” Lemmon said.
“The first example I can think of is with the Loloi project,” she added. “They were very proactive in getting a DRI on that property, thinking it may be a very proactive move for a speculative project ... there wound up being interest in the market and it turned into a build to suit.”
Loloi is a rug and home furnishings company. It occupies a 647,000-square-foot logistics center off Cass-white Road north of Cartersville.
The DRI statement for the new project estimates the mammoth warehouse will have a value at completion of approximately $55 million and generate close to $700,000 in new tax revenue annually.
Adairsville Community Development Director Richard Osborne said consultants for Panattoni have submitted traffic analysis studies to both the Georgia Department of Transportation and the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission with respect to the potential impact of the project on traffic is the community.
It is not clear at this point if Panattoni will seek a tax abatement as part of the development. There have been several other speculative projects constructed in Bartow County over the last decade. Two recent projects stand out. One of those is a mammoth, more than 700,000-square-foot building development by Ashley
Capital. It’s in the Georgia North Industrial park less than half a mile from the site of the new Panattoni DRI.
Ashley has also graded property adjacent to that building for what it says could be another million-squarefoot warehousing or logistics project.
The whole speed-to-market and just-in-time concept for delivery of materials is prompting the expansion of large distribution, or logistics, facilities.
“The supply chain wants to be closer to both manufacturers and consumers,” Lemmon said.
Northwest Georgia sits in the sweet spot for that type of facility, she said, and the I-75 corridor through Bartow County may be the heart of the sweet spot.
The significance of warehousing and logistics operations can be seen in a new degree program in logistics that is now offered at Georgia Highlands College.