Real estate is known for its cycles, so it’s natural to want to hunker down during difficult times and invest once it’s clear the tribulations are over.
But one of the largest players in Atlanta commercial real estate isn’t doing that. It’s gearing up to dominate a rebound that hasn’t happened yet.
Cushman & Wakefield has spent the past six months on a hiring spree, building one of Atlanta’s most experienced teams focused on the office market. It’s an effort led by Chris Ahrenkiel, who joined the firm as managing principal in September to prepare for what he argues is an inevitable office boom.
“The last three years, ‘office’ has been sort of a dirty word,” Ahrenkiel said, referencing the workplace turmoil brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. “But that’s when you want to invest. You don’t want to invest when everything is rosy because then you’re at the end of that cycle.”
One of the firm’s splashiest recent hires is Gregg Metcalf, a longtime broker for competitor JLL. He moved to Cushman & Wakefield in early February as an executive director.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Metcalf said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join the firm’s burgeoning team, which includes stalwart brokers Ken Ashley and Sam Hollis.
“It’s simple. It’s Ken, it’s Sam and it’s Chris,” Metcalf said. “That’s the primary driver — the team and the opportunity to build a team in a market that merits it.”
The trio of Metcalf, Ashley and Hollis has inked a laundry list of notable Atlanta office deals, including high-profile headquarters. Metcalf at JLL helped bring Mercedes-Benz’s North American headquarters to Sandy Springs, while Ashley and Hollis finalized the deal for Porsche’s campus near the Atlanta airport.
Credit: Phil Skinner
Credit: Phil Skinner
But the post-pandemic office market has been challenging as companies grapple with how much space to lease after hybrid and remote work schedules become commonplace.
The amount of unwanted and empty office space in the Atlanta area has set records the past few years. The market ended 2025 with about a quarter of all office square footage vacant, according to Cushman & Wakefield data, which is historically high but an improvement compared with the immediate post-COVID fallout.
Metcalf said a lot of companies have reversed course, especially as return-to-office mandates and expectations increase. Many tenants have expanded their office operations after previously shrinking their footprints.
“There’s lots of ‘oopsies’ being corrected,” he said. “Those contractions were overcorrections.”
As signs of a potential rebound increase, Cushman & Wakefield continues to hit the throttle. On March 9, it announced the hiring of John Neal Scott as a senior director to its office agency leasing group.
The momentum — and team being assembled — has Ashley prepared for an anticipated deluge of office deals.
“I think we need to dig our ditches for rain, because there’s going to a significant amount of transaction activity for the foreseeable future in Atlanta,” Ashley said.
THE WATER COOLER
This column has been adapted from the March edition of The Water Cooler, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s LinkedIn newsletter about the office market and the workplace. Keep up with the latest insider commercial real estate news by subscribing on the AJC’s LinkedIn page.
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