Built on Better Decisions Trailer

What does it take to bring a build-to-suit development to life? In this week’s episode of Built on Better Decisions, host Andrew Taylor is joined by representatives from Buffalo Rock Company, J.H. Berry Commercial Real Estate, and Taylor & Mathis for a behind-the-scenes look at the site selection, financing, lease negotiations, and construction of Buffalo Rock's 350,000-square-foot Gulf Coast distribution center in Santa Rosa County, Florida. Taylor & Mathis developed and owns the property, which was designed around Buffalo Rock's operations and leased under a 20-year agreement. Buffalo Rock's plans to modernize its distribution network created the need for a larger Gulf Coast facility. The 125-year-old beverage distributor was consolidating product-picking operations from 14 locations into fewer regional centers. Buffalo Rock identified a 50-acre site northeast of Pensacola that became available after FedEx abandoned its planned development. With much of the site due diligence completed and design-build contractor Vardaman already involved, the plans were adapted to Buffalo Rock's needs. Edwin Moss and Hamilton Reynolds explain how Taylor & Mathis was selected through a competitive process and how the transaction was structured. They discuss the 20-year lease, tiered profit sharing, a purchase option if Taylor & Mathis decides to sell the property, and how the team secured financing after its initial lending arrangement fell through. Attention shifted to design and construction costs. Taylor Harren and Jeremiah Owen explain how Taylor & Mathis, Buffalo Rock, and Vardaman identified 35 to 40 cost-saving opportunities, resulting in approximately $2.5 million in savings, or $7 per square foot. As Buffalo Rock's operational needs evolved, the development team adjusted the design while planning for future growth. The facility includes 40,000 square feet of office space, a separate 17,000-square-foot fleet maintenance building, infrastructure for future automation, and room for a 150,000-square-foot expansion.  Key Takeaways Developer selection involves more than price.Taylor & Mathis stood out in a competitive selection process by understanding Buffalo Rock's requirements and offering a profit-sharing arrangement that worked for all parties. Lease structure affects the entire development. The 20-year lease, negotiated rent increases, tiered profit sharing, and purchase option were important considerations for both Taylor & Mathis and Buffalo Rock. Financing required a change in plans. When the initial lender couldn't secure a participating bank, Taylor & Mathis worked with another lender to finance the development. Collaboration delivered $2.5 million in savings. Taylor & Mathis, Buffalo Rock, and Vardaman identified 35 to 40 cost-saving opportunities while maintaining the facility's requirements. The design allows Buffalo Rock to grow. Taylor & Mathis worked with Buffalo Rock and Vardaman to incorporate infrastructure for future automation and allow for a 150,000-square-foot expansion, even as Buffalo Rock's immediate needs changed. 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 Mathishttps://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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.

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 futureHow office and hotel uses allowed the team to make better use of a shared parking deckThe challenges of keeping the bank, drive-through, utilities, and site access operational throughout constructionHow the team managed construction during the pandemic while working around Auburn football weekends and other major downtown eventsWhy the redevelopment became more than a new bank headquarters and helped support continued investment in downtown AuburnConnect:- 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 Mathishttps://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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathishttps://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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.

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 trendsSoutheast infrastructure, ports, and inland port drayage savingsE-commerce growth and its impact on warehouse demandBuilding design trends: power capacity, automation, and employee amenitiesClear height standards and institutional investor expectationsEV fleet charging and rising industrial power demandBig box versus small bay industrial developmentLand, entitlement, and construction cost challengesData center competition for industrial landConnect 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.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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathishttps://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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.

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 risenThe supply and demand forces behind tenant improvement, demising wall, and finish cost increasesHow the e-commerce surge, the Texas bomb cyclone, and supply chain shocks compounded pricingThe rise of spec office finish and why it became standard for multi-tenant warehouse spaceHow data center development is pressuring steel, MEP trades, and skilled laborThe way higher cap rates, interest rates, and rent growth shifts are reshaping underwritingWhy does front-end site development carry the most risk and the most opportunity in a dealConnect 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.  Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts:We hope you’re finding value in Build on Better Decisions.  Your feedback is important to us, and we’d love to hear from you. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor and Mathishttps://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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.

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 Mathishttps://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. Here’s how you can help.  Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”  Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!  And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.