Optimism Grows In Atlanta Industrial, Despite Global Uncertainty
The Atlanta industrial market is seeing a revival of deals as potential tenants reemerge with a renewed need for space.
Panelists at Bisnow's Atlanta Industrial Conference on March 26 said the sector is moving forward despite the fact that business leaders increasingly must navigate the certainty of uncertainty.
KMT Partners Managing Partner Greg Boler said he has been tasked with planning for the unthinkable in his business outlook and is trying his best despite storm clouds perpetually on the horizon.
“Nuclear war, I mean, that’s probably the biggest thing I’m looking at, and then also China and Taiwan,” Boler said during the March 26 event at Twelve Midtown. “As long as we can try to keep that mitigated as much as possible ... I think, ultimately, we’ll be able to get through this.”
Atlanta’s industrial market surged back in the first quarter of 2026, with tenants absorbing about 5.3M SF, the most in a single quarter since 2022, according to Partners Real Estate's preliminary first-quarter data.
It’s a massive rebound from the same period a year ago, when tenants absorbed just over 347K SF in the entire Metro Atlanta area, according to Partners. The absorption also builds on the momentum seen in the final quarter of 2025, when landlords reported that companies absorbed more than 3M SF.
The first quarter's strong leasing helped push vacancies down from 8.8% to 8.4%, according to Partners.
The industrial fundamentals are a fresh change from the turbulence that rocked the sector in recent quarters. Tariffs, overbuilding and slower tenant demand dampened the industrial market, with landlords seeing net absorption dropping 27% to 168M SF across the U.S.
It’s not that geopolitical turbulence has calmed down since then, but companies — especially industrial property users — are beginning to bake in the uncertainty, or at least not overreact to every potential crisis, said Chris Merriewether, the Atlanta market leader for EQT Exeter.
“I think the world’s gotten used to all these black swans, tariffs and wars. That’s kind of the new norm every couple of months,” Merriewether said. “I think tenants and developers alike got to the point where the new normal is volatility.”
While not all sizes of industrial tenants are seeing the same level of resurgence, the improvement in overall demand is encouraging developers to again consider building new facilities, Robinson Weeks Senior Vice President Tyler Jones said.
While new construction activity in Atlanta’s industrial market remains less than half the levels seen during the boom of 2022, developers are moving forward with potential projects, with 18.9M SF in the pipeline as of the first quarter, according to Partners.
“I'd say, just from an overarching tenant demand standpoint, the demand is better today than it has been at any point in the last 24 months,” Jones said. “I think you can see some more development projects going to come here shortly.”
Third-party logistics and light manufacturers are especially active, and cold storage tenants are searching for refrigerator storage space, Boler said.
And the number of tenants leasing 500K SF or more in the U.S. jumped 32% in 2025 from a year prior, Cushman & Wakefield previously reported. Some 64% of that leasing activity was geared toward the newest spaces with higher ceilings and better power supply to support automation and robotics.
Adding to the feeling of guarded optimism, Amazon is gearing up its logistics space leasing and acquisition spree, with plans to increase its footprint by 51M SF this year, Bisnow reported.
“Some areas that were dormant six months ago have four or five RFPs out for them,” Merriewether said.
