ATLANTA—At RealShare Industrial in November, there was plenty of focus on Atlanta. Atlanta is attracting distribution and logistics companies at a rapid clip. At the same time, there's limited new industrial construction in the market and vacancy is tightening as demand for space rises.

GlobeSt.com caught up with Brian Leary, president of Crescent Communities' commercial and mixed-use group, to get his thoughts on why Atlanta is seeing so much interest from industrial developers and how he sees the mixed-use trend panning out there in part two of this exclusive interview series. You can still read part one: Is Now the Time to Develop in Atlanta?

GlobeSt.com: Why is Atlanta seeing so much interest, in particular, from industrial developers?

Leary: Twenty years ago, industrial development was really more about business-to-business logistics. With the explosion of high-speed Internet service in homes and the likes of Amazon, Zappos and eBay talking about same-day delivery, a good part of Atlanta's current industrial interest relates to the businesses associated with serving consumers.

With close to 6 million people in the region, that's a lot of customers to serve if you're trying to go from a mouse click to a package on a front stoop in 24 hours. Upwards of 30% of industrial demand is coming from the need to provide service to consumers today.

GlobeSt.com: How would you describe the mixed-use trend as it relates to Atlanta's development needs?

Leary: Most of the core plus development completed in the past six years and contemplated in the coming years have a mixed-use component to some degree. It simply delivers the amenity base employees and residents want and allows for additional product participation with regard to site costs and increasing land values.