FOREST PARK — The grand opening of Cummins’ Atlanta Regional Distribution Center at Gillem Logistics Center is good news for Forest Park — good news that has been a long time coming.
“It’s really humbling that a company of this magnitude would want to come to Forest Park and make this one of their bases,” said Mayor Angelyne Butler. “The amount of revenue that they generate, over $200 million, just this site.”
At Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, about 60 employees, along with project executives, city officials, Butler, City Councilman Allan Mears, City Manager Angela Redding, and Robinson Weeks Partners President David L. Welch, hailed the new custom-built, 188,500-square-foot building’s grand opening, most of which is occupied by Cummins, a $20 billion Fortune 150 company. The architecture firm was Randall-Paulson.
Welch, who handles Robinson Weeks’ acquisitions and developments, is in charge of the 1,168-acre Gillem Logistics Center’s development. Gillem can handle more than 800 million square feet of distribution and e-commerce.
Welch said the project started in 2005. As master developer, he said, “We’ve worked with the city, the Army, and the lenders to try to get this all to come together. We are developing the industrial sections of it.”
As the second building Robinson Weeks has put up at Gillem, “We really customized it to what Cummins wanted. For instance, they wanted thicker floors because they’ve got some heavier kinds of things that they would store, versus some other buildings. Cummins moved in 135,000 square feet, and they relocated their Atlanta regional distribution center, so this will serve the Southeast.”
The U.S. Army transferred the former Fort Gillem land to the city’s Development Authority in 2014, following the Base Realignment and Closure.
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