The center, 1380 Jesse Cronic Road, encompasses 589,680 square feet and is Building K in the Park 85 at Braselton business park in the Interstate 85 Northeast Atlanta submarket. It's located less than two miles from I-85 at the Highway 53 interchange and 58 miles from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Comptree is an e-commerce company based in Los Angeles suburb City of Industry, Calif. It sells home furnishings and other products through its own website and other large platforms. It already has a pair of distribution centers in Lithia Springs, said Billy Snowden, executive vice president/principal in Lee & Associates' Atlanta office, who represented the tenant along with Executive Vice President/Principal Rick Tumlin and Executive Vice President/Principal Mike Sutter.

The landlord, CBRE Global Investors, was represented by Bob Currie, senior managing director; Executive Vice President Brad Pope; and Managing Director Reed Davis with JLL Atlanta.

Snowden declined in an interview Feb. 19 to disclose the lease term and rate, citing a confidentiality agreement. He said the rate was below the $4 per square foot triple-net submarket average for distribution centers delivered in 2020 or currently under construction quoted by Sara Barnes, research manager, Avison Young - Atlanta LLC.

Lease rates for new construction distribution centers in the submarket vary by size, with larger than 500,000-square-foot facilities leasing between $3.35 and $3.75 per square foot NNN, according to Marianne Skorupski, Newmark's research director for the Southeast region.

Snowden said the submarket rates ranged from the "low 3's to the mid-4's and as high as 5," adding "every case is different."

Comptree's growth is driven by the effects of the global pandemic, Snowden said. More people are ordering furniture and items like treadmills and massage tables online due to office and business closures, and importers like Comptree can bring products in through the ports in Savannah, transport them via intermodal or truck to distribution centers, and then on to customers.

Comptree needs a lot of distribution space because of the larger size of the items it imports, Snowden said.

"Atlanta's logistics offerings continue to drive demand in the industrial sector," Snowden said in the lease announcement. "Coupled with the continued growth of the Savannah port, competition for available space continues to intensify." The I-85 Northeast Atlanta submarket has seen a lot of leasing activity in the past six months, he said in the interview. Comptree went to the submarket because 1380 Jesse Cronic Road was one of the largest facilities in northeast Atlanta that was "move-in ready," he said.

He expected vacancy to continue to decline in the submarket, noting there was already little space in closer-in locations like Braselton. Barnes noted the following transactions in the I-85 Northeast Atlanta submarket in recent months:

• Williams-Sonoma leased 462,000 square feet at 11665 Lewis Braselton Blvd. in Braselton in November 2020;
• Homegoods leased 259,000 square feet at 350 Raco Parkway in Pendergrass in September 2020;
• and Factory Direct Wholesale leased 458,000 square feet at 200 Thomas Parkway in Jefferson in August 2020

The Snowden, Tumlin and Sutter team also represented Comptree in the August 2020 lease of 262,530 square feet at 965 Douglas Hill Road at Factory Shoals Distribution Center II in Lithia Springs, a recently delivered project in the I-20 West submarket. Lincoln Property Co. Southeast Senior Vice President Denton Shamburger and Leasing Associate Turner Fortin represented the landlord, a joint venture between LPC and a private real estate fund advised by Crow Holdings Capital.

"As one of the first post-Covid-19 leases to close, it illustrates that space users in the online retail sector continue to anticipate demand increases," Snowden said in a press release about the Lithia Springs lease. The facility and a neighboring 200,000-square-foot facility, will serve as Comptree's main distribution points for the Southeast, he said.

The center at 1380 Jesse Cronic Road is 520 feet deep with 36-foot clear height, 54-foot by 50-foot column spacing and 60-foot speed bays, 136 dock doors, four drive-in doors, two 190-foot truck courts, 169 trailer parking spaces, and 213 car parking spaces. Park 85 is a master-planned industrial campus along I-85, 50 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta. The facility was part of a two-property, 1.4-million-square-foot industrial portfolio that CBRE Global Investors purchased from Duke Realty in November 2020, according to Commercial Property Executive.

Braselton, population 11,652, spans four counties: Barrow, Gwinnett, Hall and Jackson.