AT&T Moves Workers Around Alpharetta

UPDATED 4/29/11: Alpharetta's James Drinkard, assistant city administrator, said not knowing how many jobs are being relocated by AT&T from Alpharetta to other cities makes it difficult to estimate what the impacts to the local employment base may be.

"We also are aware that several local companies are currently in hiring mode, so it is possible that the overall effect may not be net job loss in Alpharetta," he said.

The Alpharetta market has a little more than 13.4 million square feet of Class A office space, Drinkard said. Vacancy rates have been falling steadily since the third quarter of last year. The vacancy rate in Alpharetta is slightly less than 15 percent, or approximately 1.9 million square feet. The Windward Parkway buildings AT&T is leaving may bring the vacancy rate up to 17 percent.

"By way of comparison, Class A vacancy rates peaked at 22 percent in Alpharetta back in 2003 following the telecom bust," Drinkard said. "We are a long way from that, and there is a good bit of positive movement in the market right now.

The move by AT&T will have little impact on the city's image, he said.

"What we are seeing is a decision by the company that is driven solely by the financial wisdom of consolidating operations into buildings that the company owns rather than continuing to lease space," Drinkard said. "Up until now what they have been doing is the equivalent of owning a house in Atlanta and leasing an apartment in Alpharetta; both locations have merit, but it does not make a lot of sense to do both.

Growth by several existing companies and some location announcements that have been made since the first of the year speak to Alpharetta’s health and popularity among technology companies, he said, which draws attention from other companies to consider the city.

4/28/11: AT&T got out the moving vans and has 3,500 employees leaving leased offices in Alpharetta and Atlanta to other offices in Alpharetta and Atlanta.

"This real estate consolidation does not impact jobs," said Dawn Benton, spokesperson for AT&T.

Benton said 1,000 of the jobs are remaining in Alpharetta, just going to different offices.

The moves, first reported in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, are expected to be completed by the end of the year.

AT&T is moving about 3,500 employees from leased offices in Alpharetta's Windward Parkway complex buildings three and four and 2800 Century Center in Atlanta. The move is to owned office space in Alpharetta as well as other long-term leased office space that includes 675 Peachtree, and the Lindbergh and Lenox campuses.

"We are continuing some real estate consolidations that began after the
acquisition of Cingular and BellSouth to optimize AT&T's real estate
portfolio," Benton said.

"This effort is to fully utilize existing office space in which we have
long term leasing arrangements," Benton said.

Al Nash, the head of Progress Partners, said AT&T is examining its real estate needs.

"They are like a lot of corporations. They are going through a re-organization after the acquisition of Bell South, sorting out what they need. They owned a lot of real estate and Bell South owned a lot of real estate," Nash said.

AT&T and its predecessors leave behind a lot of infrastructure important to North Fulton and are still using it as well, he said.

"They spent a lot of money building the infrastructure to serve North Fulton with all this fiber optics, all this stuff encased in concrete," he said.

It's a great asset and eventually AT&T will either backfill the space, or it will provide the community with a great opportunity to bring other companies in to fill that void, Nash said.

"There's activity out there because we are the mission critical facility of the southeast," he said.

He took preliminary calls on Wednesday and Thursday from companies looking for sites and said some others have Alpharetta and North Fulton on their radar.

"So I think it is going to give us some advantages to have some more product out there," Nash said.