Built on Better Decisions

Build-to-suit distribution center development took center stage when Buffalo Rock Company, the 125-year-old Pepsi and Dr Pepper bottler based in Birmingham, Alabama, set out to consolidate its Gulf Coast operations into a single scaled hub. Host Andrew Taylor of Taylor & Mathis is joined by Matthew Dent, President & CEO of Buffalo Rock Company; Jeremiah Owen, Executive Director of Strategic Infrastructure Support at Buffalo Rock Company; Edwin Moss, Executive Vice President & Partner at J.H. Berry Commercial Real Estate; and Taylor & Mathis's Hamilton Reynolds and Taylor Harren. Together they walk through the 350,000-square-foot Gulf Coast distribution center Taylor & Mathis developed for Buffalo Rock on a 50-acre site.

Buffalo Rock's industrial real estate strategy is built on a long view. Matthew Dent explains how the company rebuilt its entire infrastructure over six years, consolidating product picking from fourteen locations into a handful of scaled, automated centers while keeping local teams rooted in every market they serve. A site just northeast of Pensacola, Florida became an unexpected opportunity. Design-build contractor Vardaman was ready to redesign it around Buffalo Rock's operations.

Value engineering and future-ready design carried the project through construction. Taylor Harren and Jeremiah Owen detail how weekly drawing reviews produced roughly $2.5 million in savings, about seven dollars per square foot, while the team built in infrastructure for a future automation system, including thickened slabs, sanitary and fire protection lines, power conduit, and generator capacity, along with room to expand the building by about 150,000 square feet. The facility features 40,000 square feet of Class A office space designed around the employee experience and a 17,000-square-foot freestanding fleet maintenance facility. 

Key Takeaways

• Consolidating operations into scaled, automated hubs while keeping local teams in local markets can transform how a distributor serves its customers.
• Inheriting a site with completed due diligence and an engaged design-build contractor can greatly simplify a build-to-suit RFP.
• Creative deal structures, like tiered profit sharing and a conditional purchase option, can align developer and tenant goals across a 20-year lease.
• Early, collaborative value engineering uncovered about $2.5 million in savings without compromising the facility program.
• Investing now in infrastructure for future automation and expansion protects both the operation and the employee experience for decades.

Connect:
- Matthew Dent — President & CEO, Buffalo Rock Company  https://www.buffalorock.com/company/

- Jeremiah Owen — Executive Director of Strategic Infrastructure Support, Buffalo Rock Company

- Edwin Moss — Executive Vice President & Partner, J.H. Berry Commercial Real Estate, https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinmoss/

- Hamilton Reynolds — Partner at Taylor & Mathis, leads the industrial division https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamilton-reynolds-15013514/

- Taylor Harren — Vice President of Development, Taylor & Mathis, https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-harren-34359891/

Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis
https://www.taylormathis.com/

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Auburn Bank had been piecing together property in downtown Auburn for more than 50 years. When its aging facilities could no longer support the bank's needs, that five-acre site at North Gay Street and East Magnolia Avenue created an opportunity to think much bigger.

Host Andrew Taylor sits down with Bob Dumas and David Hedges of Auburn Bank, Jeffrey Brewer of GMC Network, and Mike Irby of Taylor & Mathis to look back at the planning and development of Auburn Bank's new downtown headquarters. Located just one block from Toomer's Corner, the project brought together a four-story, 90,000-square-foot office building, street-level retail, a roughly 500-space parking deck, and eventually a 129-room boutique hotel. The new headquarters also allowed Auburn Bank to bring its corporate offices, lending and administrative teams, operations center, and downtown branch together under one roof.

One of the biggest decisions came early. The bank only needed about half of the new office building for its own operations, but its leadership chose to build for the future rather than risk outgrowing another facility. With very few Class A office comparables in the Auburn market at the time, there was no guarantee the additional space would lease. The team believed the location, Auburn's continued growth, and proximity to the university would create demand. That decision has since paid off as the building attracted professional tenants looking for the type of office environment that previously did not exist in the market.

The parking deck became another important piece of the overall development strategy. Office, hotel, public, and event parking all had different demand patterns, allowing the team to share approximately 500 spaces across the development instead of building separate parking facilities for each use. The deck was also designed around the realities of Auburn, including larger vehicles and game-day traffic, with wider drive aisles, larger spaces, and sloped parking floors that eliminated the need for traditional speed ramps.

Topics Discussed:

• Why Auburn Bank chose to build more office space than it initially needed and plan decades into the future
• How office and hotel uses allowed the team to make better use of a shared parking deck
• The challenges of keeping the bank, drive-through, utilities, and site access operational throughout construction
• How the team managed construction during the pandemic while working around Auburn football weekends and other major downtown events
• Why the redevelopment became more than a new bank headquarters and helped support continued investment in downtown Auburn

Connect:
- Robert W. (Bob) Dumas (Chairman of the Board -- AuburnBank)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-dumas-8683b344/

- David A. Hedges (President & CEO -- AuburnBank)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-hedges-646ab315/

- Jeffrey Brewer (CEO – Goodwyn Mills Cawood)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-brewer-aia-a8100a18/

- Mike Irby (Partner and Senior VP of Development – Taylor & Mathis)

Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis

https://www.taylormathis.com/

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Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis
https://www.taylormathis.com/

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Atlanta's industrial market, Southeast industrial real estate demand, and the forces shaping the next wave of development take center stage in this podcast. Douglas Biggs, Vice Chair of Colliers, Price Weaver, Principal of BroadPoint Partners, and Taylor & Mathis partners Walker Wellford and Hamilton Reynolds join host Andrew Taylor to reveal what's really happening on the ground across the Southeast's industrial submarkets right now.

The group walks through current vacancy and absorption trends compared to the pandemic era, the sustained demand drivers behind Atlanta's rise as a top-five U.S. industrial market, and how e-commerce growth continues to fuel warehouse expansion across the Southeast. They also dig into what tenants want from buildings today, including power capacity for automation, employee amenities, trailer parking, and office finish levels that would have been unheard of a decade ago.

They take a candid look at development economics: rising land costs, tightening entitlements, escalating construction and tenant improvement costs, and the resurgence of small-bay industrial as institutional investors warm back up to multi-tenant product. 

Topics Discussed:

• Atlanta industrial vacancy, absorption, and deal volume trends
• Southeast infrastructure, ports, and inland port drayage savings
• E-commerce growth and its impact on warehouse demand
• Building design trends: power capacity, automation, and employee amenities
• Clear height standards and institutional investor expectations
• EV fleet charging and rising industrial power demand
• Big box versus small bay industrial development
• Land, entitlement, and construction cost challenges
• Data center competition for industrial land

Connect with Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis:

https://www.taylormathis.com/

Connect:
- Douglas Biggs (Vice Chair, Principal, Colliers):

Douglas Biggs is vice chair and principal at Colliers, where he advises corporate real estate clients on office and industrial decisions across the United States. He leads a corporate services team in Atlanta and provides market insight across leasing, sales and landlord/tenant transactions. For this conversation on shaping the next cycle, Douglas brings a national occupier and advisory perspective on how companies are reading the market and making real estate decisions under changing conditions.

  - Price Weaver (Co-Founder and Principal, BroadPoint Partners):

Price Weaver is co-founder and principal of BroadPoint Partners, bringing more than 25 years of experience and more than 25 million square feet of transaction expertise in industrial real estate. His background gives him a clear view into tenant representation, landlord strategy, site selection, and deal execution. In this episode, Price adds a transaction-focused perspective on how industrial users, owners, and investors are approaching the next cycle.

- Hamilton Reynolds (Partner and President, Industrial Division, Taylor and Mathis):
Hamilton Reynolds is Partner and President of the Industrial Division at Taylor & Mathis. Since rejoining the firm in 1996, he has overseen the development of more than 10 million square feet of industrial projects across the Southeast and helped grow Taylor & Mathis into one of the region’s leading industrial development firms.    

- Walker Wellford (Partner and Senior Vice President, Leasing, Taylor & Mathis):
Walker Wellford is partner and senior vice president of leasing at Taylor & Mathis, where he oversees project leasing for T&M-owned properties and properties owned by third-party institutional owners. His work includes tenant prospecting, broker and tenant relationships, lease negotiations, market analysis and coordination with tenant construction teams. For this episode, Walker brings the day-to-day leasing perspective: what tenants are asking for, how demand is moving and how better leasing decisions affect long-term asset performance.

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Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis
https://www.taylormathis.com/

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Rising construction costs, industrial development feasibility, and the real numbers behind warehouse and logistics pricing anchor a candid conversation between Andrew Taylor and the people pricing, building, and underwriting these projects every day. Joe Matthews of ARCO Design Build, Brad Kinzey and Todd Evans of Kinzey Construction, and Taylor & Mathis partners Hamilton Reynolds and Mike Irby walk through a decade of real project data to show how light industrial development has changed and why those changes matter for anyone evaluating a deal today.

The group traces shell construction costs that have climbed from the mid-twenty-dollar range per square foot to the forty and fifty-dollar range, tenant improvement and demising wall costs up roughly thirty percent, and finish levels that now rival Class A office space inside industrial warehouses. They connect those increases to a chain of overlapping pressures, including the post-pandemic e-commerce boom, the Texas bomb cyclone, supply chain shocks that never fully reset, and a wave of data center construction now pulling skilled labor and steel away from the industrial market.

From there, the discussion turns to the developer side of the table, where higher construction costs collide with higher interest rates, higher cap rates, and moderating rent growth. Hamilton Reynolds and Mike Irby explain how Taylor & Mathis works site plans, specifications, and contractor pricing through repeated iterations to find the point where a project still makes financial sense, and why front-end site development remains the biggest wild card and the biggest opportunity to create value. It is a grounded look at how decisions made early shape whether a project ultimately performs.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• A ten-year look at real shell construction costs and how dramatically they have risen
• The supply and demand forces behind tenant improvement, demising wall, and finish cost increases
• How the e-commerce surge, the Texas bomb cyclone, and supply chain shocks compounded pricing
• The rise of spec office finish and why it became standard for multi-tenant warehouse space
• How data center development is pressuring steel, MEP trades, and skilled labor
• The way higher cap rates, interest rates, and rent growth shifts are reshaping underwriting
• Why does front-end site development carry the most risk and the most opportunity in a deal

Connect with Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis:

https://www.taylormathis.com/

Connect:
- Joe Matthews (CEO, ARCO Design Build):
Joe Matthews is Co-CEO of ARCO Design/Build and has spent more than two decades with the company, joining  ARCO as a Project Manager and building his career through every role in the organization – Business Development, Regional Manager, Vice President, Divisional President – before being named Co-CEO in January 2026. With nearly three decades in the construction industry and more than two decades at ARCO, Joe has directly managed or overseen more than 100 million square feet of industrial construction. He built the vertically integrated capabilities that allow ARCO to deliver single-source accountability across an expanding range of project types. 

 - Brad Kinzey (CEO, Kinzey Construction Company):
Brad Kinzey is the founder and CEO of Kinzey Construction Company, an Atlanta-based commercial interior and industrial construction firm established in 1985. Under his leadership, the company has completed more than 10 million square feet of commercial office and industrial space, serving corporate, industrial, healthcare, and education clients throughout the region.  

- Hamilton Reynolds (Partner and President, Industrial Division, Taylor and Mathis):
Hamilton Reynolds is Partner and President of the Industrial Division at Taylor & Mathis. Since rejoining the firm in 1996, he has overseen the development of more than 10 million square feet of industrial projects across the Southeast and helped grow Taylor & Mathis into one of the region’s leading industrial development firms.    

- Mike Irby (Partner and Senior VP, Development, Taylor and Mathis:
Mike Irby is Partner and Senior Vice President of Development at Taylor & Mathis, where he focuses on development strategy and project execution across the firm’s portfolio. He is part of the company’s senior leadership team and works closely with clients, partners, and project teams on industrial and mixed-use development initiatives throughout the Southeast. 

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Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis
https://www.taylormathis.com/

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The Built on Better Decisions Podcast explores how the most important decisions in the built environment are made—from early strategy through leasing, operations, and longterm asset performance.

Hosted by Andrew Taylor, President of Taylor & Mathis, the podcast features candid conversations with institutional owners, developers, brokers, and partners who are shaping outcomes across the asset lifecycle.

Each episode unpacks how decisions around risk, capital, positioning, leasing, and operations ultimately determine whether a project performs or underperforms.
Because in this business, outcomes aren’t driven by execution alone.

They’re built—over time—on better decisions.

Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathis
https://www.taylormathis.com/

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts:

We hope you’re finding value in Built on Better Decisions.  Your feedback is important to us, and we’d love to hear from you. 

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And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.