One of the nation's largest accounting firms is adding its name to a cohort of tenants ditching space in downtown Atlanta and relocating their offices elsewhere in and around the city.
KPMG signed a lease to consolidate its regional footprint at the Proscenium building at 1170 Peachtree St. in Midtown. The roughly 105,000-square-foot agreement with landlord Cousins Properties means the professional and accounting firm will uproot its longtime hub at Truist Plaza in the city's central business district, where it occupies about 100,000 square feet, as well as its 22,000-square-foot office in Midtown's One Atlantic Center.
While the relocation will ultimately result in a slight downsizing for KPMG's Atlanta footprint, a spokesperson said the future office will be designed to accommodate more employees.
The firm currently has a regional workforce of about 1,925 people across Atlanta. The new Midtown hub will be able to house about 600 employees, the spokesperson said, a reasonable amount of space given that KPMG provides a hybrid work arrangement.
The deal is a hefty boost for Cousins Properties after it paid more than $83 million to acquire the Midtown building in 2024.
The Atlanta-based landlord said at the time that the purchase of the more than 523,070-square-foot property was part of a plan to take advantage of "compelling investment opportunities" as the national office market clawed its way out of the pandemic-induced trough.
Along with joint venture partner Town Lane, the real estate investment trust kicked off a capital improvement plan that has so far included interior and exterior renovations and amenity improvements — all aimed at capitalizing on the flight to quality among tenants looking to trade up their office spaces.
Companies nationwide are responding to pandemic-induced shifts in where and how they work by reevaluating their office portfolios, a trend that has led many to relocate to better-quality properties in more desirable locations. While that has sometimes meant downsizing their total footprint, it has underscored a willingness to pay top dollar for premium spaces, reaffirming tenants' commitment to maintaining a physical presence.
Deals inked across greater Atlanta show that demand among tenants is dictated by a property's address and access to top-shelf amenities, transit and nearby retail. Midtown has emerged as a hot spot, with companies such as KPMG, EY, and Deloitte, among others, inking large deals in the neighborhood, many of which have been attributed to the area's increasing popularity.
That popularity has come at a cost, with rents in the Midtown area averaging about $43 per square foot, according to CoStar data. That's far beyond the $30 per-square-foot average reported across the rest of the Atlanta market.
For the record
Cushman & Wakefield's Kirk Diamond, April Parrish and Erin Smith teamed up with Pat Murphy and Will Yeatman, both from JLL, to represent KPMG in the deal with Cousins Properties. Jeff Dils, Cousins' senior vice president of leasing, represented the landlord in-house.