Transcript

I'm Micah Shapiro with Shapiro Properties.  I do commercial real estate in the Valdosta market as well as having an office in Atlanta.  Lately the Valdosta market has been backed up a little bit. We’ve had a lot of down time, as most people know.  The Valdosta market’s been somewhat slow.  There has been some decent activity down through the downturn.  There are a few tenants and clients coming through. 

More so lately you’ve seen a lot of growth on some smaller and activity people, tenants, more national tenants.  Some smaller regional and local tenants have been coming up and trying to get their position right in the market.  The larger tenants like The Olive Garden, Drury Hotel, Gander Mountain, Sports Authority have all been looking, or building, or have built in the market.  Hospitals have been growing, so Valdosta as a whole had done pretty well through the downturn. 

We’ve been successful in our venture we did with Ashley Center, North Ashley Professional Center.  We developed 65,000 square feet of office and retail space.  It has some good activity.  The office space is full with just a lot of the local people.  So it, in turn, shows we sold office condos, which they’re ready to invest in their own business themselves to help weigh out the downturn of paying rent.  The retail’s been also a good success with Quiznos and Verizon as tenants, and some other national tenants.  And we’ve got some other national and regional tenants we’re talking to or negotiating with.  And some doctors that are like the frontage. You see a lot of good activity picking up in the market with the large gamut of tenants and owners in the industry. 

If you or somebody you know is getting into commercial real estate in Valdosta or the Atlanta market, come up to Shapiro Properties, 229-242-1014 or you can get some more contact information at www.ShapiroProperties.com.