ATLANTA-Locally based developers Cousins Properties will begin construction in July on a 459,134-sf cross-dock industrial building at Jefferson Mill Business Park.

The building, a Cousins/Weeks venture, will be situated on 26.7 acres and will be referred to as Building A. It will be the first of 12 industrial buildings ranging in size from 20,000 to 784,000 sf and totaling more than 3.2 million sf planned for the site. Building A is expected to be completed in March 2007.

"Jackson County has seen tremendous growth in larger users over the past five years and this building should hit the mid-range between the average-sized deal in this area and the near one-million-sf users that other developers are targeting," says Forrest Robinson, president of Cousins' industrial division, in a prepared statement.

Jefferson Mill Business Park is a 304-acre project as the northeast corner of Interstate 85 and Georgia Highway 129 in Jackson County northeast of Atlanta. Matt Gove, Cousins' director of corporate communications, tells GlobeSt.com that Jefferson Mill Business Park is the company's first project in the northeast industrial submarket. "The northeast submarket is, by far, the largest and most active submarket in Atlanta. It has the most suitable land for development near the Interstate. The location allows users to serve the eastern seaboard," Gove says.

In addition to industrial development, there will be retail development at Jefferson Mill Business Park. Cousins has sold one acre along Highway 129 at the business park to Harden Oil Co. as a gas station/convenience store site. More than 44 acres at Jefferson Mill are zoned for retail use, which are being marketed for sale. Gove adds that another deal is in the works to sell more than half of the remaining land to another developer for retail use.

Jefferson Mill is the second industrial development for Cousins/Weeks. The first is King Mill Industrial Park, a planned 2.9-million-sf project in Henry County. Cousins recently announced the first lease at the development, a five-year, 287,000-sf deal with Snapper Products.