Call the Government

Many months ago, a residential realtor I know well sent me a random message about a large master-planned community with excess land for sale in Cartersville.

Cartersville is one of those places that’s like an hour north of Atlanta, might be described as rural by some, but has absolutely popped over the years with new market-rate apartments, new subdivisions, high industrial rents, etc.

And I had actually looked hard for a site in Cartersville a few years before because I’d previously noticed high storage rents and a couple underserved parts of town. But after cold-calling up and down a certain corridor I never quite found the perfect site - partly because the topography there is crazy - so I had given up and moved on long before this email came through.

When it did, I took another look at the market, and sure enough saw $20+ rents at the Prime Storage location there. It’s go time.

I told that same realtor, your idea is appreciated, but that particular spot is ridiculous. He obviously set aside all the acreage near the road for apartments/BTR/etc and wanted to pawn off some of the remaining shit in the back to a storage developer. No fucking thanks.

So I asked her, wanna help me tie up a site in this general area that is not buried 1500 ft back from the road, instead? It’s clearly a “happening” corridor, big box retail, and no storage.

This sent me on a lengthy exploration of this stretch of Hwy 20. Calling every for-sale sign along the road. Looking up every owner on the map. Talking to a local zoning lawyer, a local engineer, attacking the “perfect” off-market site (a couple different sites that fit that description) fronting Hwy 20 in close proximity to all this new housing, etc.

This went on for months. Started talking to multiple potential partners. Finally one of those possible partners asked me to check into new supply beyond just relying on the usual “databases” we lean on. We all already knew that Stortrack.com showed no new supply in the pipeline along this corridor and neither did Radius+. And it’s so much more fun to chase sites and see what you can shake loose than it is to start with this boring question whose answer can only make the picture uglier, not prettier.

When I got someone on the phone at the county, they said to send an email to XYZ person. They emailed back:

Not sure why this didn’t show on those databases, but they can’t catch everything and this was extremely close to the spot I was targeting and was clearly not a small project. There was nothing I could build that would do better, because it was obviously a single-story layout (very hard to compete with if i built multistory there) and he obviously, from the building sizes, was building a mix of drive-up/non-climate and climate-controlled.

It is, admittedly, pathetic that it took someone forcing me to do this after all those months - it’s something I would have done eventually, but I was putting it off.

Side note - I have now/more recently been trying to track down that developer the the staffer mentioned to either buy his raw site or buy his facility upon completion. I think it’s a Cartersville local, which means he should be able to build cheaper than I, which means he might sell me a finished product at a price that works for both of us. Long shot, but I’ll ask.

My takeaway: Nobody wants to pick up the phone and call in hoping to find a helpful government employee - usually a planning department staffer does the trick - but it’s one of the first things I should do if I don’t want to waste a bunch of my time.