On Our Radar: Warehouses, industrial uses lead Savannah's highest-valued developments

Evan Lasseter, Savannah Morning News
·4 min read
The warehouses at the Rockingham Farm Logistics Park can be seen through a thin tree line behind the home of a Buckhalter Road resident. Site prep is underway for another structure, which will be just yards away from their back porch.
The warehouses at the Rockingham Farm Logistics Park can be seen through a thin tree line behind the home of a Buckhalter Road resident. Site prep is underway for another structure, which will be just yards away from their back porch.

This week's installment of On Our Radar crunches the numbers behind a new interactive City of Savannah map that tracks its top 20 private developments in 2023 based on their dollar valuations. The top projects have warehouse and industrial uses, while the next largest type of development is for apartments.

This edition also features the results of a neighborhood survey from those part of the proposed Hotel Development Overlay Expansion; this recent survey gauges support for "boutique hotels," which the survey defined as ones with 40 or fewer rooms.

If you have neighborhood updates, organization events or news tips you think could be of service to Savannahians, send them to elasseter@savannahnow.com. Also reach out if there are stories here you would like to know more about. Deadline for the On Our Radar series will be the end of day each Friday.

Warehouses rule, with considerable apartment additions just behind

A screengrab of the Invest in Beautiful Savannah map created by the City of Savannah, which shows locations of the city's top-20 private developments. Eight of the top 20 highest-valued projects have industrial uses.
A screengrab of the Invest in Beautiful Savannah map created by the City of Savannah, which shows locations of the city's top-20 private developments. Eight of the top 20 highest-valued projects have industrial uses.

The City of Savannah released its "Invest in Beautiful Savannah" map this week, providing residents an interactive tool to track and see details of top private developments in the city

Eight of the 20 highest valued developments in Savannah are warehouses or manufacturing facilities with industrial uses. The total value of these industrial developments comes in at $341 million.

In Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties, a combined 124 new warehouse facilities totaling nearly 52 million square feet have been added over the last five years alone, according to previous reporting by the Savannah Morning News.

More than 4 million square feet of space was added in the third quarter of 2023 in Bryan, Chatham, Effingham and Liberty counties in Georgia, and South Carolina’s Jasper County, according to the market research firm CBRE.

The top two projects in Savannah are located off Veterans Parkway and led by Capital Development Partners, which is the developer of Rockingham Farms Industrial Park. The two Capital Development Partners sites on the list were Central Port Logistics Building One and Rockingham Farms Building 11.

Three of the projects ― sites for Seoyon E-HWA, PHA Manufacturing and Assembly, and Daechang Seat Manufacturing ― are suppliers of Hyundai. The combined value of these projects is $100.8 million.

Apartment projects were the second highest valued development type in the city. Across six different projects these developments are set to bring just over 800 units to Savannah. Those units will contribute to addressing the county's 10,000-unit housing shortage.

The total valuation for the six apartment projects is $121.7 million.

Three of these top apartment projects are slated for the Thomas Square neighborhood. The future apartments are the 1700 Drayton Street Apartments, Starland Village and Starland South.

Rounding out the top development types were hotels, which featured four projects on the top-20 list. The total valuation of those future hotels is $36.4 million and are set to bring 493 rooms to Savannah.

South of downtown neighborhood opposes boutique hotels

Image with current overlay plus proposed expansion to Victorian and Thomas Square neighborhoods
Image with current overlay plus proposed expansion to Victorian and Thomas Square neighborhoods

The Hotel Development Overlay Expansion is an initiative aimed at preventing further hotel development in the Victorian, Thomas Square and Cuyler-Brownville neighborhood. The neighborhood associations in these areas have spearheaded the initiative, which was tabled by the Metropolitan Planning Commission in July 2023 to gather more stakeholder input.

Since then, neighborhood and business leaders have been meeting as part of working groups, which refined the definition of "boutique hotel" and formed the new survey.

The neighborhoods have released the results, which show widespread opposition to "boutique" hotels in their neighborhoods. The survey weighed support based on neighborhood and street corridor, exploring opinions on hotels along Bull Street, Henry and Anderson streets, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Montgomery Street corridors.

Cuyler-Brownville reflected the most opposition, where 91% of residents were generally opposed to 40-room hotel development. Cuyler-Brownville was followed by the Victorian Neighborhood with 72% opposition and Thomas Square with 64%.

The MLK-Montgomery Street corridor received less opposition than the Victorian and Thomas Square neighborhoods, with opposition coming in at 55% and 52%, respectively. However, Cuyler-Brownville residents expressed 93% opposition to hotel development along the corridors. Cuyler-Brownville sits west of MLK Jr. Boulevard between Anderson Street and Victory Drive.

The next stakeholder meeting, which will involve discussion around the survey's results, has not be set. City staff expects it will occur in early July, according to City of Savannah spokesperson Josh Peacock.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah News Update: Industry leads Savannah's highest-valued developments