Cousins Plans Estimated $100M, 500,000-SF Office Building

Cousins plans a 20-story, 500,000-sf class A office building at Peachtree and Piedmont roads, near the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Tower Place office and retail project being developed by Regent Partners. The estimated $91.83 per-sf-price and the $4-million-per-acre price would be the highest in city real estate annals for Downtown area land, brokers tell GlobeSt.com. Pope & Land bought the 10-acre corner in January for $18 million or $1.8 million per acre ($41.32 per sf).

Brokers tell GlobeSt.com they based their estimate on the Cousins deal from the $7-million price locally based Novare Group and Wood Partners Inc. paid Pope & Land in March for two prime acres in the same Buckhead vicinity. That price equates to $3.5 million per acre or $80.35 per sf. Novare-Wood plans a $500-million, 29-story tower that would consist of 406 condominium units, 16,000 sf of office and 13,000 sf of retail, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

Cousins' newest development plans follow its Aug. 1 $200-million sale of two Buckhead office buildings to New York-based TIAA-CREF. On one of the buildings, the 21-story, 423,000-sf Pinnacle, Cousins received $145 million, or a record $343-per-sf price, the highest per-sf price recorded locally for a comparable class A office asset, according to city real estate records, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

Although the newest Cousins' planned project in Buckhead is not expected to break ground until late 2005, area brokers following the company's activities tell GlobeSt.com the REIT already has lined up tenants to take an estimated 50% of the planned 500,000-sf building.

Cousins itself will be one of the tenants, moving its corporate staff from its Wildwood Office Park in Cobb County when it sells the eight-building, 2.5-million-sf, 285-acre office park by year end, brokers tell GlobeSt.com. The Atlanta office of New York-based Turner Construction and the local office of Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis Inc. are also expected to lease space in the Cousins office building.