Companies tied to the data center supply chain leased more than 9 million square feet of warehouse space across metro Atlanta between 2022 and 2025, according to figures from real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. The total is roughly equivalent to six Lenox Square malls.
The leasing covers contractors, equipment distributors, electrical and mechanical suppliers and other vendors that stage material for construction and then support operations once a campus is running. Lisa Pittman, managing director in Cushman & Wakefield's Atlanta office, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that suppliers follow the projects and keep space in the market after facilities are built.
The activity has helped absorb industrial space that came online after the pandemic-era construction wave. Developers started a large volume of warehouse projects when e-commerce demand surged in 2021 and 2022, and much of that supply reached the market as retail leasing cooled. Demand from data center vendors has taken up part of the resulting vacancy.
Jack Chapman of Transwestern, a commercial real estate firm in Atlanta, described a ripple effect in which warehouse requirements arrive alongside the campuses themselves. Georgia has become one of the country's fastest growing data center markets, and the counties around Atlanta hold much of that pipeline.
The buildout remains contested. Power demand, water use and land consumption have drawn opposition from residents and scrutiny from state and county officials. Supporters point to property tax revenue, construction employment and the operations jobs that follow, along with the training pipeline represented by facilities such as the Microsoft Data Center Academy at Atlanta Technical College.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution - https://www.ajc.com/business/2026/08/companies-tied-to-data-centers-lease-record-amount-of-atlanta-warehouse-space/