(photo: from left to right) Dena Rodrigues, Vice President, Director of Operations; Scott Rees, Senior Vice President, Leasing; Thad Ellis, Managing Director; Steve Weltlich, Director of Leasing; Robert Peterson, Leasing Representative Conditions in the Atlanta, Georgia, market mirrored those throughout the country as the economy continued to slide throughout the year. “Vacancy increased dramatically in the Atlanta market with negative absorption in the first three quarters of the year. The market was flooded with sublease space and rents were dropping significantly,“ says Thad Ellis, Managing Director for Atlanta. ”We were confronted with an extremely competitive situation.” Despite that, the Atlanta team continued to retain current tenants and attract new ones. Their strategy: focus on early lease renewals, anticipate a prospective tenant’s needs and capitalize on strong relationships with brokers to aggressively build new business. The results: leasing activity for the year—including both new leases and renewals—totaled 450,000 square feet, which represents nearly 25% of the Atlanta portfolio. Those include major leases with such companies as Hanover Insurance, the HoneyBaked Ham Company and Ceridian. “ We’re able to give our customers confidence that when they make a commitment, we will also be able to accommodate their expansion needs in the future,” says Ellis. That was the case with the HoneyBaked Ham Company, headquartered at Spalding Ridge, a five-story building on a 12-acre wooded site in Atlanta’s Peachtree Corners submarket. In July, the company signed a 65,955-square-foot lease through 2011 with the opportunity to expand in the future. Ceridian is a leading provider of managed business solutions for human resources with 120,000 square feet of space at 300 Embassy Row in Atlanta. “We entered serious negotiations with Ceridian 18 months before the lease expiration, anticipating that the company would need more space,” says Ellis. “And we signed a new lease adding 17,335 square feet. In the process, we made a commitment enabling Ceridian to grow within that building for a long time.”