“Project Catfish” is a proposed robotic fulfillment center with 3000 robots, 100 feet tall, 4.5 stories high
This is the proposed site plan for “Project Catfish,” a robotics fulfillment center on Newnan Crossing Bypass and Highway 16 East. The larger building is proposed to be 100 feet tall
The proposed “Project Catfish” industrial development along Highway 16 East and the Newnan Crossing Bypass (Georgia) will be a fulfillment center with over 3,000 robots and approximately 800 full-time jobs, according to the developers.
Seefried Industrial Properties wants the main building to be 100 feet tall, with 4 ½ stories, and completely exempt from the building materials requirements of the county’s Quality Development Corridor district.
“Architect Thomas Hollands said he is designing a master plan for a fulfillment center that can be used throughout the country. Each floor serves a specific purpose and all come together to provide a certain output, he said. Hollands said he chose different textures, designs and shadowing “so everything doesn’t look so flat and plain. It is a tall building but I think it masses very well.”
The architectural design for the Coweta project is a master plan that will be replicated around the country, according to the architect for the project.
Greg Herren of Seefried said that his company has built a number of fulfillment centers for the company over the past 10 years.
“Unfortunately, I’m under a non-disclosure agreement, so we can’t say specifically who the user is,” Herren said. “You may have suspicions of who that is and you may be correct.”
Over the years, the design of the fulfillment centers has changed “to match the lessons learned,” he said.
Robots will perform most of the menial tasks in the center, and efficiently is gained by expanding vertically. “They can build fewer buildings around the country if they can go vertical,” he said.
Attorney Melissa Griffis said that entry level jobs will start at $15 per hour with full benefits including retirement benefits, and the company will also hire part-time and seasonal workers.
“With the industrial parks that we have on the books now — with Orchard Hills, Bridgeport — what was your desire with this facility here, that first of all was not zoned industrial and also would require all of these types of variances?” asked George Harper. “I’m just curious on your site selection.”
Bridgeport Industrial Park on U.S. 29 South is one mile away from the Project Catfish site, and the Orchard Hills Business Park is right across Interstate 85 from the site.
Herren said that his clients want their associates to have easy ingress and egress to the site, and the site provides “terrific transportation,” he said.
It also provides good access to employment centers and I-85. Other industrial parks have challenges, he said. “This site is ideally located for warehouses. I know you don’t want warehouses. This is a distribution and fulfillment center.”
The property is shown as a commercial corridor on the county’s comprehensive plan and future land use map.
According to the Community Development report, approving the requests will create “a precedent for future requests of those businesses that locate in areas not suited for their activity.”
Griffis said that requiring even the first floor to be built to the standards of the quality development corridor “would kill the project.”
Evans wrote that, based on the site plan he is seeing, “I will be looking straight out at a 2,000 foot long expanse of completely unbuffered trailer storage, truck docks, parking spaces and a 100-foot-tall metal building, crammed into a relatively small tract of property to create one of the densest, if not the densest, industrial site in the Atlanta area.”
The 100-foot building is one of two proposed for the site. The other is a nearly 4,000,000-square-foot rear-load facility, which will sit closer to Highway 16, while the larger building will front the Bypass.
Source article: Sarah Fay Campbell @ times-herald.com (May 14, 2020)
