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Spencer Levy
I'm Spencer Levy, and this is The Weekly Take. Few cities offer more to talk about than the subject of this program. This metropolitan area has hosted an Olympic Games, been a centerpiece of the civil rights movement and is home to baseball's newly crowned World Series champions. It's an entertainment center, second only to Hollywood, perhaps, and an ever growing hub for corporate America. On this episode, we visit a place with a nickname that's never been more appropriate: Hotlanta
Ellen Stern
Atlanta is on fire.
Spencer Levy
That's Ellen Stern, a senior vice president with CBRE’s Atlanta Advisory and Transactions Occupier Group. Ellen works exclusively with tenants on office leasing, real estate strategies and workplace solutions, and has been involved in more than 1000 lease transactions during her 16 years as a broker.
John Shlesinger
I think that one Atlanta has consistently done well from a leasing market. It's never done that well from an investment market. And in the last five years, all of a sudden the investment market has taken off.
Spencer Levy
And that's John Shlesinger, a CBRE vice chairman whose family ties to Atlanta spann six generations. Recognized as one of the top brokers in the nation, John works with occupiers from Fortune 500 companies to start ups. And as the leader of CBRE Atlanta Consulting Group, he also provides strategy and investment services to a range of other clients as well.
Spencer Levy
And to provide an owner's perspective, we are also joined by one of the region's most prominent investors.
Colin Connolly
We are invested in other fast-growing markets like Austin, Texas, Charlotte, North Carolina. All have a lot going for them. But Atlanta really is unique today.
Spencer Levy
That's Colin Connolly, president and CEO of Cousins Properties and Atlanta based RYT that was founded in 1958. Cousins is the largest class-A office owner in the Sunbelt with a portfolio that covers the Southeast and includes some of the fastest growing markets around.
Spencer Levy
We'll take a tour of this sprawling, growing, evolving market with stopovers in its array of its submarkets and sectors. We'll focus on the diversity of talent that can be found here -- on the baseball field and other industries, of course -- with an eye on lifestyle, infrastructure, ESG issues and more. Coming up, we've got Georgia on our mind in the capital city of Atlanta. That's right now on The Weekly Take.
Spencer Levy
Welcome to The Weekly Take and this week we're talking about Atlanta. And Atlanta very well may be the number one most popular market in America today for investors, for new occupiers, and I might add new World Series champions. Well, Ellen, Atlanta very well might be the hottest market in America today. You work in it every day. What do you think?
Ellen Stern
Yes, I think Atlanta is on fire. I think that right now we are incredibly busy. I think we are poised to come out of the pandemic very well. We have a lot of things going for us here in Atlanta. Not only the Braves recent win, but we have a great quality of life here. We have a deep talent pool here and we get a lot of looks from prospective companies looking to relocate. We are home to 32 of the Fortune 1000 companies, 17 of which are in the Fortune 500. We have 66 colleges and universities here. So we are a great source of talent for companies. We also have a relatively low cost of living. We are, I think, the second lowest among the top 10 metro areas in the US. We also have amazing outdoor spaces. And we also have the Atlanta Beltline, which, when completed, will be a twenty two mile loop around the city, connecting 45 entire neighborhoods. And when you look at the great amenities that Atlanta has -- the good weather, access to deep talent and the world's busiest airport -- it's no wonder why Atlanta gets a lot of looks from prospective companies and is home to so many of the Fortune 1000 companies.
John Shlesinger
Ellen went to Miami, so she did leave off the fact that the Georgia Bulldogs are ranked first in the country, which is also a very large draw.
Spencer Levy
Absolutely. I forgot about the Georgia Bulldogs, but I did not forget about the Beltline, which I have visited now. Colin, as CEO of Cousins Properties. You obviously have a very heavy concentration in Atlanta, but you can buy in a lot of other cities in the southeast. Why don't you just walk us through what makes Atlanta an attractive place and maybe compare and contrast to some of the other markets?
Colin Connolly
Yes, sure. Spencer. What really differentiates Atlanta today is companies continue to leverage their office real estate to recruit and retain top talent. Atlanta has an exceptionally deep tech talent pool. We're the home of Georgia Tech, over 40,000 students at Georgia Tech. But we also have an incredibly deep pool of diverse talent. Georgia State is one of the most diverse schools in the country. Approximately 54,000 students there. And Atlanta is also home of Morehouse College. Spelman. Emory University and the University of Georgia just down the road. So it's that intersection of deep tech and diverse talent that continues to attract some of the largest and fastest growing companies in the world. As a company here at Cousins, as I mentioned, headquartered in Atlanta, it's our largest market. And at the same time, we are invested in other fast-growing markets like Austin, Texas, Charlotte, North Carolina. All have a lot going for them. But Atlanta really is unique today with its combination of a deep pool for tech and diverse talent.
Spencer Levy
John, you've been one of the top real estate professionals in Atlanta for decades. What's your take on why today Atlanta is doing so well versus 10, 20 years ago?
John Shlesinger
Well, I think that, one, Atlanta has consistently done well from a leasing market, it’s never done that well from an investment market. And in the last five years, all of a sudden the investment market has taken off. Rental rates have finally moved. It used to be land prices didn't move for 20 years. It was 20 dollars an FAR foot. That's what it was. And with the advent of construction costs, land prices and the emphasis on software development talent, I think it's moved forward. I can go back to an old story of IBM, when I first got in the business in 1982 had a problem where they kept putting more employees into Atlanta because they couldn't get them to relocate out. And they were losing so many, which in turn created a nucleus of people, starting businesses, growing businesses. And that IBM Alumni Network really formed the basis of the growth of the city. Of late we're a Great East Coast headquarters for companies looking to expand out of the Bay Area and willing to not stop in Dallas on the way east. You have mentioned Midtown earlier. You know, Midtown really got solidified with the announcement of NCR moving their headquarters into Midtown, which is a project Cousins developed and owns, as well as Norfolk Southern, moving their headquarters from Norfolk, Virginia and in Midtown. And that ribbon cutting is on Wednesday -- 730,000 foot tower -- and then Invesco is building a 600,000 foot building in which they’ll take 300,000 feet in. So you have that, plus the emergence of new markets like the old Fourth Ward and West Midtown that have expanded the Midtown area and really created available space for companies wanting to make instantaneous moves.
Spencer Levy
When I look at Midtown Atlanta, it makes me think about the Fulton Market in Chicago. Makes me think about the Wynwood section in Miami. Makes me think about the Arts District in L.A. And they all look the same in terms of the combination of talent, of infrastructure, of the combination of adaptive reuse and new build. But walk us through some of the other submarkets in Atlanta, in the city and I also note the suburbs, the Braves just moved out there. So tell us about that as well.
Ellen Stern
We here in Atlanta have roughly 140 million square feet of office space. And you could say that if you counted all the submarkets up, it's roughly about 15 different areas. But there are really six areas that stand out that drive the bulk of the leasing activity. You spoke a little bit about Midtown, Spencer. It's the hottest sub market in Atlanta right now. And then we also now have West Midtown, which is a fairly new sub market where we just had three buildings deliver recently. That's an exciting new area I think there's a lot of opportunity there. We have some very high profile types of tenants in Midtown. Invesco was mentioned Norfolk Southern, of course, Microsoft, Google, Anthem, Facebook, 70 percent of the law firms in Atlanta are located in Midtown. Midtown is absolutely the most active, most popular sub market right now, with rates at the highest level Atlanta has ever seen. Comparatively, you look at Downtown and Buckhead -- the two other submarkets in the CBD of Atlanta -- and Downtown really is home to more government agencies. Georgia State is also there. Nonprofits are located there as well. They tend to congregate in that area. Buckhead is known as sort of Atlanta's financial district, where there's a lot of wealth management companies, real estate companies and banks. There's a very affluent residential area in Buckhead as well. And then, of course, Cumberland Galleria, where the Braves are. It's sort of the suburban in-town market, if you will. Home to Home Depot, Comcast, HD Supply. And then Central Perimeters is our largest sub market. Hence, the name has a very central location. It's roughly 23 million square feet Marta, our public transportation system, runs through Central Perimeter, runs through the CBD as well. So it's very popular and it's home to companies like State Farm and Cox and UPS Carvana Insight. Global large corporations are there. And then lastly, to the north, we've got our Alpharetta submarket, which we call North Fulton here is a much more suburban type market with surface lots lower rates generally. And our public transportation system does not go that far north, but those are really the six submarkets that drive the bulk of the leasing activity here in Atlanta.
Spencer Levy
You mentioned earlier about the Braves and congratulations. Twenty two years in the making which sounds like gold when you’re from Baltimore and it’s been almost 40... New World Series champions. But there's a real estate story here, too. They moved recently from downtown to a suburb. Tell us about that move and why they might have been attracted to the suburb.
Ellen Stern
It was a big surprise to all of us when it was announced everyone was sort of scratching their heads. Why would they move to Cobb County? There's no access to mass transit. It's going to clog up the artery, you know, all the streets over there. What will the impact be to the office buildings? Many tenants were nervous about the impact to the Braves and the building of Truist Park and The Battery. And how would that impact commute times, which is a subject that we talk often about here in Atlanta. Now, I think that some years have passed, it's actually been a huge amenity to the area. I think it's safe to say that the commute has not been affected. It's really been a non-issue. We're not seeing companies move to the Cumberland Galleria submarket because of the Braves. But when they're there, they want to be as close to Truist Park as possible to be able to access those amenities. The area itself has great accessibility: highway access, just not connected to Marta. Free parking. And it's also near affluent residential areas as well, with great amenities. So it was a solid submarket prior to the Braves moving. I think the Braves moving to Cumberland Galleria only really elevated the area.
Spencer Levy
What's really interesting about your answer, Ellen, is I've been to cities all over the world, and this phenomena of using the ballpark as a real estate driver is everywhere. I could point to ballparks in Moscow and Vancouver. You can look at the Washington Nationals Park and D.C., all of them being not just a great amenity, but a driver of additional real estate. Would you agree with that?
Ellen Stern
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Especially when the park comes with all of the amenities that The Battery affords the area in terms of hotels and restaurants.
Colin Connolly
Spencer, I just add that as you mentioned, the ballpark is a terrific anchor to what really is a terrific, mixed use, highly magnetized project. I had the opportunity to attend some of the games here in the post-season. It was a spectacular atmosphere. Last year, the Braves also made a deep run into the playoffs and that was hosted at a neutral third party bubble site in Dallas. And just kind of living through that last year and this year, the city was so much more connected. The enthusiasm across in the city was off the charts, and it was really something that brung the city together. And I think a large part of that was the city was able to come together, congregate, kind of enjoy the culture and the collaboration of The Battery and a Truist Park. And I think that will speak to, you know, that people want to be together. And I think there's some takeaways as we think about the Office of the Future.
Spencer Levy
I travel a lot, as all of you know, I just got back from Seattle where I was last week. I'm going to Europe next week and I've been rethinking infrastructure. I used to have infrastructure or is one of my five factors of awesome. I still think it's awesome, but. I think live work, play matters more. I think that's where we're seeing the hottest submarkets. Carl, what do you think about the walkability, live work play versus the infrastructure and how does it impact your investment decisions?
Colin Connolly
Both of those matter. And you know, Spencer, I think first to really understand where Atlanta is today, you need to understand what's structurally changed really over the last decade. And I'd say what has changed is the rapid urbanization in submarkets like Midtown and Buckhead. And I think that really has changed the equation for large growing companies and how they look at Atlanta. You know, Atlanta now offers a really dynamic urban experience in addition to the attractive climate and the low cost of living and doing business. It's really the best of both worlds. And we're seeing that show up in the data: the number of relocations into Atlanta, into the net absorption, and I think importantly, in sustained rental rate growth, which historically Atlanta hasn't, but it certainly has over the last 10 years. And so when we're talking to our customers and we're trying to position our portfolio with where our customer wants to be, it is in those environments that are unique and interesting, experiential, that have amenities right outside the front door, but also access to a lot of the infrastructure like mass transit, like proximity to Georgia Tech and a lot of the great universities that are here in the city.
Spencer Levy
Well, John, I don't think this is hyperbole, but you are one of the truly great tenant rep brokers, not just in the United States, but in the world. And you're speaking to the biggest, most sophisticated tenants every day and advising them during the pandemic and then post-pandemic. So my question for you, John, is how has your advice to them changed during and maybe post-pandemic? and what are they telling you about the pandemic and how it might change their offshoots?
John Shlesinger
That's a great question. Pre-pandemic, the first topic on everybody's mind was parking. How dense can we make the space? And how much parking can we find to make the space work? Right now, the first thing that I'm seeing is ESG. And there's a certain flight to quality because of ESG reporting, because pension funds are asking, What are you doing in relation to ESG? And a lot of the buildings can't accommodate the upgrades that are needed to get the points. And boy, I'm tired of points. It's really fascinating what's going on in that change. The other thing that I think is a little bit of a misnomer is the prediction of what will office space look like after the pandemic. I really don't think anybody knows. And I think it's going to vary industry to industry. One of the greatest ideas I've seen as a company in Houston, which has gone to a five day workweek, but Fridays is work from home. They shut down the corporate headquarters on Friday. They meet every ESG point they ever wanted to do it by shutting down the corporate headquarters. And they did a study and only thirty five percent of the employees on a great day were coming on Fridays anyway, and that figure dropped after 12 o'clock. So everybody's approaching a little bit differently. Software companies -- which you would assume would be easy to work from home -- most of them have to start a project together, and they have to end the project together. The in-between work can be done anywhere, but they're redesigning their space to big project rooms so these groups can come in, work together and eliminating permanent space for the workers themselves. At the same time, that's an equal shift. They're not saving space. They're just using it differently, and they're creating a lot more collaboration space that did not exist before.
Spencer Levy
You talked about ESG, but you also talked about wellness. The W we had on the show a book about healthy buildings and a focus on how wellness within your building for things like water or air quality can improve the productivity of your employees. But there was a very interesting point in that book that goes right to the point you were just talking about John, which is that if you shut your building down while you save energy, it actually brings up wellness issues once you restart it. Colin, you're nodding your head. And so my question is, are we seeing any tension between wellness and ESG in your opinion column?
Colin Connolly
I was nodding my head because we've had to work through some of those issues over the last 20 months, where perhaps a particular building that we shut down for various reasons as we were working to save energy while there was little utilization. But that obviously came with some challenges as we began to reopen going forward. You know, ESG and well and healthy buildings are going to continue to be very important issues that. We're seeing from our investors, we're hearing it from our customers and, you know, we hear it from our own team. People want to have a lot of pride and do have a lot of pride in doing the right thing. And so that's something that we're prioritizing here at Cousins. We're actually working towards achieving well certification for 25 percent of our buildings next year, and we'll continue on down that path. And again, we're trying to as an owner, trying to meet our customers where they want to be. And they want to know, first and foremost that the building is healthy and it's safe. Once you satisfy that requirement --which will become a requirement -- then it's all about creating the unique, interesting experience. Large growing companies know that their employees will wake up each and every morning and be excited to leave the house and go to work.
Spencer Levy
Ellen, Colin mentioned well-certification, but John mentioned that the means of being ESG compliant might be changing, and I'm seeing exactly the same thing, particularly from European investors who were saying LEED and Energy Star and great, but you know what's better? Measuring your use of wastewater. Measuring your use of air and other things. And so there's an evolution that's going on right now. What are you seeing, Ellen?
Ellen Stern
I am seeing companies ask the question a lot about, you know, what are the different certifications that each landlord has? What are the landlords doing as it relates to the pandemic? And what are their cleaning protocols? Do they have MERV 13 filters? This sort of specific questions. But right now that's all they are. There are questions. We get them answered. I don't know that really decisions are being made based off of those answers. It's more of a check the box at this point. And I think those questions will continue to evolve as companies focus more and more on the attributes of what that means to be in a well-certified building.
Spencer Levy
I would go one step further. I'm not quite so sure that for some investors, it's check the box. I think for some European investors, it's a black and white situation. And we are seeing what we're now calling the brown discount for buildings that don't comply. And I can give you horror stories about buildings that didn't trade, in part because of that issue. So, John, back to you. How has Atlanta versus, say, Charlotte or Dallas or other markets handling these ESG issues? And let me go to an area in ESG that is not just environmental, but also we're dealing with social issues. We're dealing with governance issues. Anything you want to say about that, John?
John Shlesinger
From a governance standpoint, it's hard for a real estate broker to be involved in that aspect of this issue. I do sit on a client's social committee. They're moving to Atlanta. They want to know what groups they should be involved with, who they need to network with, where they need to give. It’s completely different. Some of the issues that arise through this -- and I'm sure Dallas and other cities are facing the exact same thing -- I sat through a meeting last week on incinerating waste to energy. And the closest place to Atlanta is in Huntsville, Alabama that has a facility to do that. It got nixed because of the carbon footprint of the trucks that would take the waste to Huntsville. Three years ago, I'm not sure I knew what ESG meant. I remember sitting in a meeting with the CEO of a client, heavy European base, and he said, I want you to fly to Europe next week and see the Swiss headquarters building in Geneva because it is the most advanced ESG building. And I have a real estate director kicking me under the table, going, What is ESG? So I think everything is coming out of Europe ahead of the United States. I think Europeans have always built for a hundred years, whereas maybe American development companies have built the flip and looking for the most cost effective ways where Europeans may not be. It's a completely different mindset. But from the social and the governance, I think the governance has been handled first. I think a lot of companies don't want to see themselves in the Wall Street Journal, and they are addressing it aggressively. Social’s easy as well. I think in your existing space, ESG and well issues are harder, which is so-called this flight to quality. There may be a reduction in space, an increase in rental rate, but an equivalent payment. And we're seeing a lot of that. In fact, Ellen and I were talking. In the last 12 months, we've only had one client renew in place as is, without changes. I don't know if everybody else is seeing that trend, but we certainly are.
Spencer Levy
So most clients moving to a building that might either be ESG more-compliant, or otherwise.
John Shlesinger
We don't see clients trading down.
Spencer Levy
Got it. Flight to quality, and part of that quality is the ESG thing. Colin, let me turn to you for a moment because there’s something John mentioned a moment ago that I thought gets right to where we're evolving to, which is looking at the building holistically. Not just the four walls and the ceiling, but also the materials that are in the building, the trucking that's required to build it and to take away waste. So Colin, why don’t you talk to me about what some of you are doing in your buildings in terms of building materials, in terms of looking at it more holistically from an ESG type of perspective.
Colin Connolly
The focus on ESG continues to grow. At Cousins we're a publicly traded company each and every year we put out an annual report. But for the last several years, we've also put out an annual ESG report. And I would venture to guess that more people read the ESG report than they do our annual report. And in that we highlight a lot of the great work that our team is doing across all fronts. And certainly as we focus on the environmental space -- whether we're building a new project from the ground up or reinvesting in our existing portfolio --, we're leveraging some of the latest and greatest technology to do things like water reclamation projects, capturing rainfall, solar panels to power garages, state of the art LED lighting that certainly reduces the amount of energy consumption. We are looking at it holistically and again taking advantage of opportunities where we can invest capital that, one, is doing the right thing for the environment, but also over time reduces cost for our customers.
Spencer Levy
Throughout this conversation, we've been talking about why Atlanta is attractive generally speaking. Tech came up a lot. But there's a lot of other industries that are really thriving in Atlanta and growing -- one of them being the entertainment industry. So Ellen, could you comment on entertainment in any other industries you're seeing in Atlanta in addition to tech that are growing?
Ellen Stern
I would say the film industry is really hot. Health care is strong. We're home to several large law firms. We're seeing growth really across all industry types in Atlanta. John and I are fortunate enough to work with tenants who span a multitude of industries. And all of them are fairly active right now, even if it's just simply discussions and planning for the what's next, even if they're not making decisions and waiting until the pandemic is behind us.
John Shlesinger
Law firms, you know, there's major shrinkage. I have a client that has five or six years left on the lease. They're rebuilding a floor to a hybrid model just to see how it works. They can't get out of lease. They've never thought they needed as much as they have, but they always renew the same amount, but they're going to try the hybrid approach. The entertainment industry is really limited by the amount of studio space we have. If we had more studio space, we have more entertainment. It's really fascinating. There's a project south of the city that I never thought would take off, and all of a sudden, Marvel films every show and movie there, and they've got 200 spec houses even bought mostly by entertainment professionals. So that is really strong. One of the other issues Ellen mentioned was health care. Out of the top 20 markets in the country, we probably have the most fragmented health care system of any city. I want to say we have five or six major health care systems. Most markets have two or three. And all six are trying to grow very quickly to establish dominance, whereas I don't think any one of them has more than 10 percent market share. So we are seeing a ton of health care activity. And it's almost all over the city. Last but not least, we haven't really talked about North Fulton as a technology market. North Fulton has becoming a technology market very quickly because millennials that are in midtown get married, have their first child and move to North Fulton and don't want to commute back. So you've got major companies looking, moving to and putting tech centers up in North Fulton as well. I would say that's our second biggest growth market right now. Even though there are some large subleases out there, at the same time, they're being backfilled pretty quickly.
Colin Connolly
Yeah, I know for sure. We developed a really interesting project at the North Fulton by the name of Avalon, and it's got all of the live work and play and highly differentiated up in the North Fulton. Market, and as John alluded to, we've got great customers like Microsoft and others in the tech space, and we're able to achieve Buckhead-like rents in North Fulton because we've got that mix of uses and a great combination of kind of lifestyle as well as a great work environment. So I do agree that over time, you see some of the technology companies looking to leverage both the younger demographic and then perhaps the older demographic that lives in the northern suburbs. So we've seen actually some spillover in technology here in Buckhead, which is where Cousins’ headquarters is. And you see some of that in the central perimeter as well. So companies trying to take advantage of the best of both worlds kind of being in the middle in between the tech hub of Midtown and then the suburbs to the north where some of the older tech talent lives.
Spencer Levy
What's interesting about that, I would say, when I speak to people in Boston and New York and Chicago, San Francisco, they all say, We want vibrant suburbs to match the city. And while there are some very good suburbs, most places the suburbs are not a comparable market to the city. But Atlanta may be an exception, and I think it's partially for what Colin is suggesting. But let's face it, like Los Angeles, there's a lot of traffic in Atlanta. And I'd say it's something that might impact that as well. So let me ask you a question about that, about commuting patterns, about traffic, how much is that impacting location decisions?
Ellen Stern
Everyone talks about commute and traffic here in Atlanta. It's a big part of the conversation and it is evaluated on every transaction that we do. You know, where do employees live? Where are they coming from? Where are we recruiting talent and where are those folks going to be coming from? So it is a main decision influencer, essentially. And I think traffic patterns around traffic have become very different since the pandemic, and now I'm noticing that traffic patterns are varied throughout the week. It's not every day that there's bad traffic. It's just a few days a week. So I think that speaks to the hybrid work style that companies are testing out. The majority of people are back to work here in Atlanta -- might not be every day, but people seem to be commuting now more than before and even during the pandemic. So really of late we're seeing more traffic. But it's not every day. It's unpredictable. And it's making it harder, I think, for our clients to really assess what's going to work or not in terms of locations. But each location is vetted with the idea of What are my employees commute times at this location versus another. Luckily, here at CBRE, we have got great technology that helps our clients evaluate the impact to commute times based on location A versus location B.
John Shlesinger
And also, Spencer, Atlanta is home to some of the worst drivers in America. And if we get an inch of ice, forget it. Nobody has a clue.
Ellen Stern
Luckily, that's rare.
Colin Connolly
Yeah, I've got a 15 year old who just got his learner's permit, so I'm adding another of his drivers into the equation. So look out.
Spencer Levy
All right, we're going to ask a wrap up question to each of you. So, Colin, crystal ball five years from now looking back, how will it land to evolve by itself or in comparison to some of the other cities in which you invest?
Colin Connolly
Atlanta is going to continue to do really well, and I think at the heart of it is what we call here in town, the Atlanta Way, which which really is a tight knit business community that that works hand in hand with city and state officials to find solutions to complicated problems. And I'm confident that the Atlanta Way will continue to find ways to evolve and capitalize on the opportunities that are in front of us. Over the last year, you've seen major announcements like Google and Microsoft and Norfolk Southern. There are more of those in the pipeline, and it's those large companies that are going to continue to come to Atlanta. It certainly has the infrastructure. It certainly has the attractive climate and a low cost of doing business. But it has rapidly urbanized and it is a hotbed for really strong tech and diverse talent that companies are going to continue to take advantage of. So I think the future is bright.
Ellen Stern
I agree with Colin wholeheartedly. I mean, for all the reasons I stated earlier about the fundamentals of Atlanta I think we're really poised to continue our strong job growth, population growth and we've got a great quality of life here. And when you combine all those factors with our proximity to the airport and all that that offers, we are poised to continue to do well for many years to come.
Spencer Levy
And John, you've been in this market for 40 years. How do you think it's going to change over the next five to 10 years?
John Shlesinger
Atlanta always has ups and downs. I think we are on a major up right now, I think at some point capital markets will be such that there will be some overbuilding. There will be some slowdown. And then we'll pick back up again like we always seem to. I'm not sure that I could have picked a better market to be from, work in and watch over the las -- oh, don't say, 40 yet it’s only 37 -- but, thirty seven years and I feel blessed that I've been able to do it.
Spencer Levy
Got it! Well, John, last point I got to ask an old-school question because I'm an old-school guy. I think it goes without saying that Hank Aaron is by far the greatest Brave of all time. But after Hank Aaron, Freddie Freeman or Greg Maddux,
John Shlesinger
Oh, Greg Maddux right now.
Colin Connolly
Chipper Jones might have something to add to that as well.
John Shlesinger
Yeah.
Spencer Levy
Now I knew we were starting something,
John Shlesinger
Yeah, that pitching staff was as good as any pitching staff in the history of the Major Leagues. We just needed some hitters.
Spencer Levy
There you go. Well, I can't believe we went through recording and not one peach reference to Atlanta. So I'm going to do it now. Atlanta, still known for all the great things we said today and peaches. And with that, I want to thank our friends here. Starting with Colin Connolly, president and CEO of Cousins Properties, for joining us on the show today. Colin, thanks for showing up.
Colin Connolly
Spencer, I really enjoyed spending the time with you and John and Ellen.
Spencer Levy
Great job, Colin. Thanks for coming. And then John Schlesinger Vice Chairman, CBRE. John, thanks for coming.
John Shlesinger
My pleasure.
Spencer Levy
And Ellen Stern, Senior Vice President, CBRE, also based in Atlanta. Ellen, thank you very much.
Ellen Stern
Thank you, Spencer.
Spencer Levy
With thanks once again to our guests for their southern hospitality, we'd also like to thank you for joining us. For more on Atlanta and our show, please visit our website at CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. We’ll also post some highlights for Thanksgiving Week, as we work to produce some in-depth coverage of the retail sector, a package of episodes that we’ll deliver in December. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your feedback. So please send us your comments. And if you like the show, please share a link as well as subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen. Thanks again for joining us. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.
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