This Week in Metro Atlanta: Cobb Puts $1.15 Billion on the Ballot, and the City's Apartment Pipeline Hits Zero

Three things landed in the last few days that change a number somebody is about to act on, and one of them you can act on tomorrow morning. Early voting in Georgia opens Tuesday, October 13, and Cobb County has a six-year, $1.15 billion question on its ballot.

Cobb is asking voters on November 3 to renew its one-cent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. The current SPLOST expires December 31, 2027; the new one would start collecting January 1, 2028 and run through 2033. Cobb's overall sales tax rate would stay at 6 percent -- this is a renewal, not an increase. Commissioners voted 4-0 to put it on the ballot. The projected take splits about $794.5 million to county projects and about $355.5 million to the seven cities, divided by population.

The county list is where a Cobb homeowner should look. Transportation is the biggest category at $309.2 million, including $130.1 million for roadway resurfacing, $48 million for intersection and corridor improvements, $28 million for pedestrian improvements and $25 million for drainage. The single largest line item is a new state court building at $174 million, on a parking lot between Haynes and Waddell streets a couple of blocks from the current courthouse -- Chair Lisa Cupid cited county growth of more than 100,000 people since 2010 and more judges needing space. Another $144.8 million covers libraries, parks, senior services and solid waste, including $91.9 million in park renovations and $8.2 million to expand the Tim D. Lee Senior Center. Two new fire stations in Districts 1 and 4 run about $15.4 million each, and the sheriff's office gets a $60 million medical infirmary at the Adult Detention Center. On the city side, Mableton leads at $97.1 million, then Marietta at $78.2 million, Smyrna at $70.9 million, Kennesaw at $46.8 million, Acworth at $28 million, Powder Springs at $24.3 million and Austell at $10.2 million.

Here is why this is a real-estate story and not a civics story. Cupid said plainly that if the renewal fails, the county looks to property taxes for the same work, and East Cobb News framed it as upward pressure on property taxes to cover deferred maintenance. A one-cent sales tax is paid in part by everyone who shops in Cobb, including people who live elsewhere. Property tax is paid only by people who own Cobb property. If you own a house in Cobb, this measure is really a question about which of those two bills your road resurfacing shows up on, and the version that costs a Cobb homeowner the least is not the one most people assume when they see a sales-tax measure on a ballot. One East Cobb detail worth a phone call rather than a headline: the SPLOST funds work on the East Cobb Library, but the accounts differ on what that means. Hoodline and Atlanta News First both describe relocating the branch out of its current strip-center space, Hoodline putting it at $20 million and capped at 17,000 square feet; East Cobb News describes it as a reconstruction. Early voting runs October 13 through 30, weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays October 17 and 24 from 9 to 5, and Sundays October 18 and 25 from noon to 5 at the East Cobb Government Service Center only. Election day is November 3.

Second item, for landlords and for anyone deciding between renting and buying. RentCafe's rental competitiveness report, using Yardi Matrix data as of July and covering the April-through-June quarter, found that the City of Atlanta opened no new market-rate apartment projects of 50 units or more during the quarter. None. New supply was the lowest share on record for the city, down from 0.83 percent of existing stock in summer 2025, and Atlanta was one of only two large markets -- those above 80,000 units -- with nothing opening. Eight renters competed for each available city apartment, units took 44 days to lease, and nearly 64 percent of tenants renewed rather than move, up 1.2 points and the highest peak-season renewal rate in four years. Suburban Atlanta ran seven renters per unit, renewals above 66 percent, and new projects at 0.43 percent of local stock, the lowest in more than three years.

Read that carefully, because most coverage oversells it. Nationally, RentCafe put the average at nine renters per vacant apartment, 42 days to fill and a 62.8 percent renewal rate -- so Atlanta at eight renters and 44 days is still slightly easier than the typical American market. Atlanta did climb to 33rd of 139 markets, up 19 spots and its highest ranking on record, but it climbed from a very soft starting point. What actually changed is the supply side. For three years the story here was concessions, two months free, landlords competing for tenants because so much new product was delivering at once. That pipeline has emptied. If you own rental property in the city, your pricing power in 2027 is better than it has been since 2022, and the renewal number says your existing tenants already know moving is harder. If you are renting and waiting to buy, the free-rent era in new buildings is closing, and the gap between your rent and a mortgage payment is going to narrow from the rent side rather than the rate side.

Third, on the Westside. Duracell cut the ribbon Tuesday, October 6, on a $56 million global innovation center for research and development at Science Square, Georgia Tech's life-sciences district off North Avenue. Duracell's own announcement puts the finished facility at 83,000 square feet at 101 Nerem Street NW, with 120 jobs, and Urbanize reports it across four floors; the company moved its R&D operation there from Bethel, Connecticut. Worth noting the lease grew: when Trammell Crow Company announced the deal in March 2025 it was 59,000 square feet across two floors. Trammell Crow developed the building with Georgia Advanced Technology Ventures, a Georgia Tech affiliate. Duracell already assembles more than two billion AA and AAA batteries a year at its LaGrange plant and has run a Fairburn distribution center since 2020. The Development Authority of Fulton County approved a property tax break of nearly $870,000 for the project in 2024, when it was still code-named Project Phoenix.

One hundred twenty jobs does not move a county. The pattern underneath it does. Science Square is an 18-acre district planned for roughly 500 homes alongside its lab and office space, and what a research district needs to keep filling up is anchor tenants who sign long leases and move people in from out of state. Duracell relocating an entire R&D function from Connecticut is that kind of tenant. So if you are looking at the blocks around North Avenue west of Northside Drive -- English Avenue, Vine City, the edges of the Atlanta University Center -- the question is not what 120 jobs do to demand. It is whether the district lands its second and third anchor, because that is what turns one building into a reason for someone on a research salary to want to walk to work. Watch the next lease announcement there more closely than this one. And if you own property in Cobb, read the project list before you vote: the alternative funding source Cupid named is your own tax bill.