Walmart breaks ground on a $1.3B, 1.5M-square-foot fulfillment center in Carnesville, Georgia - about 1,000 Franklin County jobs expected by 2029

What Now Atlanta reports Walmart celebrated the Oct. 27 groundbreaking of a next-generation fulfillment center at 10725 Old Federal Road in Carnesville, Franklin County - a roughly 1.5-million-square-foot facility backed by a $1.3 billion investment, the retailer's sixth high-tech fulfillment center in the U.S., with construction expected to finish in 2029 and about 1,000 full-time hires planned from the local community. The automated facility is built to store roughly twice the SKUs of a traditional center and speed same-day and next-day shipping, and Walmart says it will expand Northeast Georgia's role in its supply chain. For a fix-and-flipper: this is a corridor thesis, not a metro comp mover - Carnesville sits roughly 70 miles northeast of Atlanta on the I-85 spine toward Commerce and Athens, and 1,000 permanent jobs plus a five-year construction runway add long-run exit demand for housing in Franklin, Banks and Hart county towns like Carnesville, Lavonia and Royston.