ATLANTA-Christopher Wagner, formerly an associate in the local office of CB Richard Ellis Inc., joins Duncan Gibbs in a career move that makes Gibbs a senior vice president in the local office of the Dallas-based company.

ATLANTA-Five new commercial projects valued at more than $200 million are planned for the metro area over the next 18 months. Two condo residential towers, two apartment complexes and an office condo undertaking comprise the surge in construction activity.

ATLANTA-Cousins Properties Inc. has landed a big name on its usually faceless board of directors. He is Erskine B. Bowles, a nationally recognized banker and the former chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton.

ORLANDO-Without offering rent concessions, the New York-based developer of 16,000 apartment units nationwide credits its success in a difficult metro market to a strategy of marketing Vintage Cottage Apartment Homes in the high-density Orlando International Airport residential market before construction began last year.

ORLANDO-Continuing its decade-old strategy of buying land at the lowest possible market price and then holding the dirt for long-term appreciation or development, developer Daryl M. Carter and his associates paid three separate sellers a total $1.63 million for properties in Orange, Lake and Sumter counties.

ATLANTA-The North Miami Beach-based REIT pays $47.2 for the nine-year-old, 100%-leased, 512,630-sf Presidential Markets shopping center in Snellville, GA, 20 miles east of Downtown Atlanta. Cousins Properties Inc. and Presidential Marketcenter LLC, both locally based, were the sellers.

ORLANDO-The subsidiary of Minnesota-based ABC Companies pays $625,000, or about $7.47 per sf, for a 1.92-acre site in Orlando Central Park South where the company is expected to break ground this year on its second multi-vehicle preventative maintenance facility.

ATLANTA-Aldi International purchases an 80-acre tract for $3 million, or about $38,000 per acre, in tiny Jefferson, GA, 30 miles northeast of Downtown where construction on the project is scheduled to begin in summer 2004.