Dewberry couldn't be reached by GlobeSt.com's publication deadline. However, subcontractors who have worked with the developer on previous projects confirm the $60-million hard cost for GlobeSt.com. Two Peachtree Pointe will sit behind Dewberry's One Peachtree Pointe, a seven-story, 165,000-sf office building also built for about $200 per sf or a total $32 million in 1999, sources in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com.

Those same sources tell GlobeSt.com Dewberry's decision to break ground on Two Peachtree Pointe at this time came as prices for construction materials were expected to rise sharply for the third time in the last two years due to the heavy demand by commercial and residential reconstructors in the hurricane-hit areas of Louisiana, Texas and Florida.

In erecting a spec-built, class A office structure at this time, Dewberry also faces an overall 16.7% vacancy rate in Midtown where 9.21 million sf of rentable class A space is on the market, according to the most recent research by locally based Colliers Cauble & Co. Colliers Cauble monitored 24 class A buildings which showed an overall vacancy amount of 1.54 million sf in the first half of this year.

Although Dewberry has no anchor tenant lined up for his newest venture, area brokers intimate with Dewberry Capital's assets, tell GlobeSt.com the developer could place his newest acquired company, Hilex Poly Co., into Two Peachtree Pointe if he had to. Dewberry and an investor consortium paid $119 million to buy the $200-million plastic grocery sack division of Sonoco Products Inc. of Hartstville, SC in 2004, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.