Now Pre-Leasing · Watkinsville, Georgia
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park — 7,200 square feet of new brick-and-steel flex space, divisible to ±3,600 SF suites, one mile from downtown Watkinsville and next door to the Oconee County Administrative Building on the US 441 corridor.
Availability and pricing current as of September 2026.
The opportunity
Oconee County has the second-highest median household income in Georgia, one of its top-ranked school systems, and 44,893 residents. What it does not have is anywhere for the businesses that serve those households to actually operate. The Industrial Development Authority sold the last accessible acreage in Gateway Technology and Business Park in 2023. The county attorney’s assessment of the alternative, on the record that same year: “The Watkinsville Industrial Park is full.”
Building 700 is one of ten buildings approved at Moreland Heights Business Park — a new flex campus on 8.37 acres off Macon Highway, a mile and a half from the county’s administrative offices and a mile from downtown Watkinsville. Full brick on all four elevations, required by the zoning conditions. Twenty-foot eave height. Grade-level drive-in access at the rear, a storefront office frontage at the street, and a floor plate laid out for a single user or up to three bays.
Building 700 is being delivered as a shell, which is the point: the interior gets built to the tenant’s plan rather than to a developer’s guess. Three architect-reviewed test fits are already drawn — two suites, single tenant, and showroom-plus-service — and any of them can be the starting point. Now pre-leasing; delivery schedule is established at letter of intent.
Sources: Median household income $121,217 and population 44,893 — U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, ACS 2020–2024 and the July 2025 estimate. Quote — Oconee County Attorney Daniel Haygood, August 2023.
Ten buildings approved, up to 73,800 SF
Moreland Heights Business Park, on 8.37 acres off Macon Highway.
Foundation survey of Moreland Heights Office Complex — Phase 2, prepared by Baseline Surveying & Engineering and dated 2 July 2026, reproduced as drawn. Building 700 is outlined for identification. At the date of survey three of the ten buildings were complete and the remaining seven are shown as surveyed foundations. Building sizes, phasing, and parking are subject to change.
Specifications
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park is a 7,200 SF single-story flex building on a 60′ × 120′ footprint, with a ±56'-7" clear between long walls and 20′ eave height · ±17′-9″ clear at sidewall.
| Total area | 7,200 SF (60'-0" × 120'-0") |
|---|---|
| Divisibility | Up to three bays; ±3,600 SF two-suite split is drawn and reviewed |
| Eave height | 20'-0" nominal |
| Clear height | ±17'-9" at the sidewall, rising to ±20'-1" at the ridge |
| Clear span | ±56'-7" between long walls — column-free floor plate |
| Structural grid | 20'-0" on center, seven-line column grid |
| Drive-in doors | Two, 12'W × 14'H, rear elevation |
| Personnel doors | Two 3'×7' at the rear; paired storefront entries at the front |
| Exterior | Full brick veneer, all four elevations, over rigid insulation |
| Roof | 24-gauge Galvalume standing seam, 1:12 slope |
| Structure | Pre-engineered steel rigid frame |
| Floor | 4" slab on grade over vapor barrier |
| Power | Three-phase capable; stubbed to the interior, meterable per suite |
| Water / sewer | Both stubbed inside and splittable per suite |
| Insulation | Ceiling insulated in the shell; walls insulated at buildout |
| Construction type | Type V-B, single story, unsprinklered |
| Parking | Surface parking on site |
| Zoning | OIP — Office-Institutional-Professional (conditional) |
| Ownership form | Condominium unit — Moreland Heights Office Complex Condominium, Plat Book 2026, page 5 |
| Availability | Now pre-leasing; delivery schedule established at letter of intent |
All dimensions and areas are approximate and subject to field verification against the stamped construction drawings and the recorded condominium plat.
Permitted uses are subject to Oconee County zoning (OIP, conditional) and the recorded condominium declaration. Prospective tenants should confirm their intended use with Oconee County Planning before executing a lease.
Test fits
Each scheme was drawn from the stamped construction documents and refined after review by an architect experienced with this building type.
Scheme A
Two mirrored ±3,600 SF suites, each with a ±525 SF office pod at the front: a 21' × 11'-6" reception with a built-in break counter, a private office, an accessible restroom with clearances drawn, and a second restroom serving the work bay. Four restrooms share a single plumbing trench. Each suite keeps its own storefront entry and its own drive-in door.
Best for: Two contractors or service businesses; an owner-user with an income suite.
Scheme B
One tenant, the full 7,200 SF. A ±1,067 SF office block spanning both storefront entries: reception, conference room, three private offices, men's and women's restrooms, a break room, and storage — with a 3'-8" clear corridor. The remainder is open clear-span work space with both drive-in doors. Converts back to Scheme A later with a single demising wall.
Best for: A growing company that wants the whole building now and optionality later.
Scheme D
Suite A carries an open showroom across the storefront with consultation offices and a receiving area served by the west drive-in door. Suite B is the Scheme A office pod, unchanged.
Best for: Design showrooms, building products, appointment-based sales. Requires written confirmation of use from Oconee County Planning — we'll help you get it.
Who it’s built for
Oconee County permits roughly 300 to 400 new homes a year and counts 123 construction establishments — its second-largest industry by number of businesses. Those companies need a front door, a shop, and a place to park a truck. Almost none of them can find one here.
Electrical, plumbing, HVAC, landscape, remodeling, specialty trades. A finished office and reception at the storefront, a clear-span work bay behind it, a 12'×14' drive-in door at the rear, and the Oconee County Administrative Building — planning, permits, inspections — next door. Contractor office and shop use is named directly in the property's zoning entitlement.
Building products, equipment dealers, IT and AV integrators, dental and medical labs, print, signage, fabrication and finishing. Brick exterior and storefront glass at the front for the clients who come to you; clear span and drive-in access at the back for the work.
For the practice or firm that wants a full building rather than a suite — with room for records, equipment, and inventory behind the office. Full brick, storefront entries, and the ability to build the floor plan to your own plan rather than inherit someone else's.
Kitchen and bath, flooring, tile, lighting, closet and cabinetry, window treatments. A drawn test fit puts a showroom across the front of a suite with receiving behind it.
Showroom and any customer-facing use requires written confirmation from Oconee County Planning — we will help you obtain it before you sign.
Permitted uses are subject to Oconee County zoning (OIP, conditional) and the recorded condominium declaration. Prospective tenants should confirm their intended use with Oconee County Planning before executing a lease.
Sources: 123 construction establishments — Data USA, 2024. 334 housing units permitted — U.S. Census Bureau / FRED, 2024.
Why this corridor
Building 700 sits on the US 441 and Macon Highway corridor in Watkinsville — the road Oconee County moved its entire administration onto in 2023.
01
Oconee County consolidated its administration into a new building at 7635 Macon Highway in July 2023 — planning, permits, inspections, public works, the tax commissioner. Building 700 sits off the same road. For anyone who pulls permits or bids county work, that proximity is worth real money in windshield time. Courts remain at the historic courthouse in downtown Watkinsville, a mile away.
02
A Georgia Main Street community with a restored 1902 schoolhouse arts center, a National Register tavern from 1801, sixteen-plus restaurants and cafés, a Saturday farmers market, and a downtown development plan adopted in January 2026. Wire Park and the new county library anchor the north end; the 16-acre “15 South” project is adding 203 apartments, townhomes and a grocer.
03
Direct access via Macon Highway to the Watkinsville Bypass. North to the Athens Perimeter in about six minutes; south to I-20 at Madison. US 441 is a designated Governor's Road Improvement Program corridor with funded widening segments programmed in Oconee County.
04
The 75,505 SF Publix-anchored center at Experiment Station Road, plus Butlers Grove and 441 Central — two more commercial developments in progress at the Hog Mountain Road intersection. Oconee Mercantile, approved at 158,959 SF across seven buildings on Macon Highway, is in development on the same corridor.
05
Athens Academy — 887 students on a 152-acre campus — sits on US 441 in Oconee County. Presbyterian Village Athens, the area's only Life Plan Community, is between Hog Mountain Road and US 441 with roughly 200 staff. A new QuikTrip recently opened directly across US 441 from the county administrative building.
06
The University of Georgia is 14 minutes away: 43,888 students, 12,063 employees, and a $9.2 billion annual economic impact on the state. Downtown Athens is 14 minutes; the Classic Center and its new 8,500-seat Akins Ford Arena generated $89 million in economic impact last fiscal year across 606 events.
Regional access
On the US 441 and Macon Highway corridor in Watkinsville — about seven miles south of Athens, with State Route 316 running west toward metro Atlanta and State Route 53 northwest to Interstate 85 at Braselton.
Distances and drive times are approximate, measured from the property by road, free-flow conditions. August 2026 · OSRM routing on the OpenStreetMap network.
The market case
Across the United States, small-bay industrial and flex space runs materially tighter than the big-box product that dominates the headlines: 5.2% vacancy for buildings between 10,000 and 50,000 square feet, against 11.5% for buildings over 500,000 as of Q3 2025.
The reason is supply. CBRE’s analysis of shallow-bay inventory — buildings under 50,000 SF with 14 to 28 foot clear heights — found that nearly half of it was built before 1980, more than 80% before 2000, and only about 5% since 2010. Nationally, small-bay assets under construction amount to less than three-tenths of one percent of total industrial stock. Land cost, construction cost, and the economics of multi-tenant buildouts have made this product very hard to deliver.
In Athens specifically, that scarcity shows up in pricing: flex properties traded at $117 per square foot in 2025, against $83 for industrial overall — a 41% premium.
And in Oconee County it shows up as a shortage. The Industrial Development Authority sold the last accessible acreage in Gateway Technology and Business Park in 2023. The county attorney described the Watkinsville Industrial Park that same year as full. Oconee’s commercial zoning strongly favors office and institutional use; new flex-capable inventory is not something the county is planning its way toward.
“The Watkinsville Industrial Park is full.”
5.2% vs. 11.5%
U.S. vacancy: small-bay (10k–50k SF) against big-box (500k+ SF) industrial
5%
Share of U.S. shallow-bay inventory built since 2010
Nearly half predates 1980; over 80% predates 2000
March 2026 · CBRE
$117 vs. $83
Athens flex against all-industrial sale price per SF, 2025
A 41% premium for flex product
February 2026 · NAI Elrod, CoStar data
Gallery
Two images below show a different, completed building of the same type and carry a badge saying so. Interior renderings of Building 700 are in preparation.
Representative image — not the subject building
Representative image — not the subject building
Terms
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park is offered at $15.50 per square foot per year, triple net, plus an estimated $1.20/SF NNN charge. Availability and pricing current as of September 2026.
Questions
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park is 7,200 square feet total, on a 60' × 120' footprint. Building 700 is laid out for up to three bays; a two-suite split at roughly 3,600 SF each is already drawn and has been through architect review.
Twenty feet is the nominal eave height at Building 700, measured out-to-out of steel. True interior clearance is about 17'-9" at the sidewalls, rising to roughly 20'-1" at the ridge. Both numbers are published because the difference matters if you are racking.
Building 700 has two 12' wide by 14' tall drive-in doors on the rear elevation, plus 3'×7' personnel doors at the rear and paired storefront entries at the front. Door configuration is subject to field verification against the current stamped drawings.
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park is zoned OIP — Office-Institutional-Professional, with conditions. The approved concept describes contractor offices, general office, and service businesses with roll-up doors. Storage is permitted as accessory to your primary use, not as the primary use itself. Some uses — anything customer-facing or retail-flavored — need a written read from Oconee County Planning first, and we'll help you get one before you commit.
No. Building 700 is a Type V-B unsprinklered shell, which sets limits on occupancy classification. We'll walk through what that means for your specific use early rather than late.
Either way works. The landlord can deliver finished space with the buildout amortized into the rent, or a tenant can perform its own buildout under a negotiated allowance. Three test-fit schemes are drawn and available for Building 700.
Building 700 is pre-leasing now. Delivery timing gets established at letter of intent, once shell completion and buildout permitting are firm. We'd rather set a date we can hold than one that sounds good.
Yes. Moreland Heights Business Park is approved for ten buildings and up to 73,800 square feet of office area; three are built. If you need more or less than 7,200 SF, tell us what you need and we'll tell you what's possible.
Quite a lot. Oconee County moved its administrative offices to Macon Highway in 2023 and a QuikTrip recently opened across US 441. Polias is developing 441 Central — an anchor, inline space and outparcels — about six-tenths of a mile north of Building 700, and has the 158,959 SF Oconee Mercantile approved just up the road. At Butler's Crossing, Butlers Grove is adding an eat-drink-and-wellness destination. All of those are in development rather than open, but the direction of the corridor is not ambiguous.
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park is offered at $15.50 per square foot per year, triple net, with an estimated $1.20/SF NNN charge covering common area maintenance and shell insurance. That rate is for new brick-and-steel construction with a column-free floor plate, drive-in access and three-phase capability. Availability and pricing current as of September 2026.
More about the master project on Moreland Heights Business Park — 10 buildings approved, up to 73,800 square feet.
Inquire
The fastest way to a straight answer. We’ll come back with availability, buildout options, and a read on whether your use works under the zoning — before you spend time on a site visit.
Daniel Bennett
Thrive.Real Estate | Commercial
Thrive.RealEstate, LLC · Georgia licensed real estate broker
706.425.4105
daniel@thrive.realestate
Building 700 at Moreland Heights Business Park
1052 Moreland Heights Road, Watkinsville, GA 30677
Now pre-leasing. Delivery schedule established at letter of intent.