(This story, in slightly different form, originally appeared in ALM's Fulton County Daily Report.)

ATLANTA-Locally based Alston & Bird LLP has chosen Birmingham, AL-based developer Daniel Corp. to determine the feasibility of a new Midtown office building with the firm as anchor tenant. But in the current credit market, even securing a major law firm as a tenant does not guarantee that a building can get built. The oversupply of office space in Midtown, where the vacancy rate for class A space is 20%, does not help.

"In a normal environment, we would have hit a home run. In today's environment, we just got handed a very, very difficult assignment," says Steve Baile, a senior vice president with Daniel.

Baile acknowledges that Daniel faces an uphill battle in securing financing for the project in the moribund credit market. "To have a tenant of this size and stature, if the credit market can't do this deal, it will give some idea of how challenged the financial markets really are," he says.

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.

Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Meredith Hobbs

Meredith Hobbs writes about the Atlanta legal community and the business of law. Contact her at [email protected] or 404.419.2837. On Twitter: @MeredithHobbs.